Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now.
On today's episode let me show you how to correctly identify your Mac.
Now if you ever have to report trouble to Apple or perhaps post a question to the discussion
forums at Apple.com or for any other reason to tell somebody what type of Mac you've got
it is important to be able to know what information you need to convey and to get the correct
information.
It can be very difficult for somebody to help you if they don't know really what you've
got.
It's like asking a mechanic what is wrong with your car but not telling them what type
of car you've got.
So let's take a look how to figure out what Mac you've got, what to call it properly,
and how to get important information like the amount of memory you've got, hard drive
space, and things like that.
The first thing you want to do is you want to make sure you have the proper name for
your Mac.
Now you can go to your Apple menu here and About This Mac and it will give you some basic
information here about your Mac.
But if you click the More Info button then the screen that appears will tell you the
name of your Mac.
For instance I'm currently using Mac Pro.
It is important to look at this name and understand the difference between things.
For instance, Apple doesn't really make a MacBook anymore.
They make a MacBook Pro and a MacBook Air.
Also the MacBook Pro is divided up into two very different types.
The MacBook Pro with the retina display and the regular MacBook Pro.
Also you will see here is some more information.
For instance this says this is a Mac Pro from early 2008.
So this should give you a pretty complete picture of the name of your Mac.
Now if you have an older Mac or you are running an older version of OS X then you may see
something different when you hit the More Info button.
In this case you get this list here on the left and you can click on Hardware here at
the top and then you get a list here of information.
You get the same information.
Here is says you have a MacBook Pro 15".
So you can get the same thing there, it just doesn't look as nice.
So whichever version of OS X you are running it might look a little different.
But the information is there.
Now on this screen you will also notice other things.
What type of processor you've got, things like that.
What is really important for somebody to know might be the amount of memory you've got.
So you may want to go and say I have a Mac Pro, early 2008, and I have 10 GB of memory
in it.
Then in addition on this screen, but also previously when we were looking at About This
Mac, bring that up there, we can see that we've got some of that information too and
it tells you the version of OS X you are running.
This is critically important for anybody that is trying to help you with something.
You need to know what version.
In this case you have version 10.8.3 and that's critical for you to tell someone.
Another thing that is pretty critical is to know how much disk space you have available.
If you are running out of disk space then that could really give a hint to any problems
you are having.
So in About This Mac you can click on Storage and it will give you a rundown.
I have several hard drives here but it will give you a run down of what is on each hard
drive.
How much space.
So in this case, this is my main hard drive here, it tells me how much I have free out
of the total.
So you can see I have about 102 GB free out of about 500 GB of space.
Now if you are trying to talk to somebody about something going on inside of an App
then it is important that you tell them what version of that App you've got.
For instance here I am running Pages and say I have a question for somebody about Pages.
Well I can go to Pages, About Pages.
This is true for almost any application.
You can go to the menu item with the name of the App and find the About box there.
Sometimes for some Apps it is under Help.
But usually it is right here and you go to that, and then this will give you the version
number.
Now in this case, for instance, it is not enough to say I'm using Pages '09.
What you really want is the version number.
In this case version 4.3.
So there are the critical pieces of information that you need to know about your Mac.
You need to know the model name and also the version of that model like Mac Pro 2008.
You need to know how much memory you've got.
You need to know how much storage space you have on your drive and how much is available
and you need to know the version of OS X that you are running.
In addition to that it also helps to give the version number of the App that you are
discussing.
I hope you found this useful.
Until next time this is Gary with MacMost Now.