Mac OS X Tiger: Missing Manual
by David Pogue
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Book Reviews of Mac OS X Tiger: Missing Manual
Book Review: Worthwhile for any level of experience, and entertaining to boot!
Summary: 5 Stars
The great thing about this Tiger edition (or any of the previous editions, for that matter), is that the entire spectrum of Mac users will get something worthwhile from it. If you're a long-time Mac user, there's detailed info enough to qualify as Power User tips, while complete beginners will find things explained fully so they're not left trying to figure out what's being discussed or what they're supposed to do.
On top of that, it's all delivered in Dave Pogue's extremely friendly and entertaining prose. No comedic stand-up routines to wade through to get at the info, but with a quiet wit and intelligence throughout that keeps you reading. Yes, even though it's a computer manual. Even if you're thinking you'd never want to read a computer manual, this will surprise you. And you'll be instantly rewarded with tons of practical info and how-tos that make such a difference in day-to-day usage of your Mac. For example, I've been using Apples since before there were Macs, and I got a bunch of nifty tips on finessing my use of the Finder in the very first chapters!
Tiger's a whole new beast, and while the obviously new features are covered (Dashboard or Spotlight, say), there are major improvements and tweaks to almost everything, and this is a Really Good Guide for pointing out the new lay of the land (even those things you think you know already. Like the Finder.)
So if you're going to get one book on Tiger, get this one. It's accessible so you can get in, get what you need and get out again quickly if you're looking for specific help, while still in-depth enough to make a more comprehensive reading of it rewarding. If you're brand new to OS X or to Macs in general, get this one because it's the best systematic tour guide to the whole new world you've just jumped into, even going so far as to provide sections on where the things you're looking for from your old system (whether OS 9 or Windows) have gotten to in Tiger.
They could offer money-back guarantees on this book, it's that good.
Book Review: Easing the switch
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently switched to a Mac (a MacBook Pro) after 20+ years as a PC user. I primarily use my laptop as a mobile Office suite and I have loaded it with Music programs for composing (Finale & Sibelius) and recording/editing (Ableton Live) but it was OS X that I needed the help with. While there are a lot of similarities between PC and Mac, I knew I was going to have to adjust a lot of my thinking to take advantage of the speed and efficiency of this new machine.
My brother-in-law suggested this book series saying that it was written clearly, thorough and light on pretension or industry talk, but not insultingly simple like the Dummies series or the other "made easy" books. I couldn't be much happier with the book. It's deep, clearly written and full of advice, tips and step-by-step that assumes you've already figured out how to turn it on.
My only complaint, and it's relatively small given the size of the text, is that many of the page number references in the text are wrong. The first chapter had at least two or three references to other chapters that were off by a page or more. It's nothing that a little hunting couldn't fix, but it still caused some minor confusion. The book's introduction refers you to the errata page on their site where most of these fixes are listed, but that's one more step in what could've been fixed with a simple keystroke had it been caught before press...a minor nuisance but a nuisance never-the-less.
As an average user with a solid background in computers (though nowhere near as deep as a programmer or Mac guru), this book fit my needs exactly and with great detail. All in all, it's a great book for the average user seeking to become familiar with all the power Macs can bring to your control.
Book Review: Helpful for Beginner and Power User alike
Summary: 4 Stars
Like most of the books in the Missing Manual series, this is well done, full of diagrams, pictures, and other useful information. A few of my favorite parts of the book are the sidebars. There is an occasional "Nostalgia Corner" sidebar which points out various "old way things were done" and the "new way things are done". The "Gem in the Rough" sidebars explain potentially useful, but probably not obvious, features of OS X. There are also "Power User Clinic" sidebars for the true OS X geeks.
The book does go into the iLife apps at a high level, but if you're looking for details you should check out the separate iLife (iMovie & iDVD, iPhoto, GarageBand, etc) Missing Manual books. For that matter, there are a lot of books that would do a better job getting into the nitty-gritty specifics of various applications or features (like AppleScript) of OS X - which is not the purpose of this book. This is a high level introduction to just about everything OS X can do for you.
If you're new - or relatively new - to OS X, this is definately a book I'd recommend. I've loaned it to a few of my buddies (recent "converts" to the Mac) and they've all given it a thumbs up. If you've done Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther and now Tiger - hmmm... it would be good for the new features (Spotlight, Dashboards, Automator, etc) but I wouldn't put it on my "must have" list. Definately on the "nice to have" list, though.
As always, the Mac is less work and more play (unless asked a direct question by spouse or boss, then it's all work and no play). Anyway, for grins (or groans) turn on the Speech Recognition (Chapter 15) and ask your Mac "Tell me a joke".
Book Review: Chatty Dialog Makes Difficult Reading
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought the book as the reviews were pretty good and I wanted a quick way to learn features in OS X that were not obvious for a computer-savvy chap like myself.
I recommend that you go to the nearest bookstore and try reading a few pages or a chapter before deciding to purchase this book instead of an alternative.
The author takes 822 pages to communicate what could likely be presented in less than 300 pages. The dialog is overly "chatty" and the author worked to stretch the text to 822 pages.
Here are a few excerpts.
"Apple has a name for the animation you see when you minimize, open, or close a window: the genie effect, because it so closely resembles the way Barbara Eden, Robin Williams, and other TV and move genies entered and exited their magic lamps and bottles."
"Here and there--in System Preferences, TextEdit, Microsoft Office, and many other programs--Mac OS X offers you the opportunity to choose a color for some element: for your desktop, background, a window, and so on."
"Address Book is Mac OS X's little-black-book-program--an electronic Rolodex where you can stash the names, job titles, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and Internet chat screen names of all the people in your life..."
That's 822 pages of long run-on sentences with happy, cute, and chatty dialog to describe everything. That's every single screen, feature, option, mouse click, everything in Mac OS X. The examples cited above were randomly picked by opening three arbitrary pages.
If your preference is for concise communication of howto's and features this is not the book for you.
Book Review: The perfect camponion for an intel mac!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the quintessential book for understanding OS X. It explains pretty much everything you would want to know about the world's most advanced operating system (that's why it's 800 pages long!)
The author writes everything in very friendly easy to understand language, so that you'll never be lost in computer jargon. At the same time, the author has a very clever and funny sense of humor. His jokes are never off topic and are very refreshing. His sense of humor is what makes it possible for you to actually read the whole book and get all of the useful information out of it without getting bored. His approach is like the cool History teacher who tells jokes and makes fun of everything, but teaches everything you need to know, while you're having too much fun to realize how much you're learning.
I've been using Windows and DOS my whole life, until I bought an iMac this summer. The basics of using Mac OS X were easy enough to understand on my own, but I wanted to master the OS to the same extent I mastered Windows XP from my years of experience. I had a lot to learn, and I wanted to learn it fast. This book was as perfect a guide as I could have imagined. Now I know all the keyboard shortcuts, all the secret gems, all the advance features, everything I wanted to know and more. I finally have as deep an understanding of Mac OS X as I had for Windows XP.
Thank you David Pogue for helping me get the most out of my mac!