| Teach Yourself Visually Mac OS X |
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| Written by Belinda Carter | |||||||||||||||
| Wednesday, 01 January 2003 | |||||||||||||||
Carrying the Teach Yourself Visually Mac OS X book around won't give you RSI or OOS -it's barely 300 pages long. But despite its compact size it manages to pack in a comprehensive guide to the latest operating system (Jaguar included) for the new user or old hands.
Tell-all Mac Bibles are so nineties. If you did manage to find what you were looking for with the aid of the index, it was difficult to know where to start and stop reading. No doubt you gave up in frustration until someone with more knowledge and patience came to the rescue and showed you how. This book makes it much easier, especially if there is no other Mac user handy to help out. Although there is an index, forget about it and use the Contents section. Colour-coded chapters and single line entries make it easy to use and link to double page spreads covering a single activity or concept. Visual metaphors help explain concepts to readers - a toy bulldozer pushing a reclining window around the desktop gets across the idea that windows can be moved. Further information on the topic is contained in the form of a question and answer section or screenshots with step-by-step numbered instructions and pointers make it difficult to go wrong. If you need to delete a file or send an email you will be shown how, using menu-based choices rather than simply given lists of instructions to follow.
I might have given the impression that the book is very basic but it simply assumes that some users come to the Mac computer with no knowledge to start with. However current Mac OS 9 users will find material to explain how Mac OS X operates in the initial chapters and a later one on sharing a computer is useful in explaining how this works. Mac OS 9 users will find the visual explanation of the Mac OS X helps with the transition to this radical new system. Various applications bundled with the system are also covered. The glamorous iMovie, iTunes and iPhoto rate their own chapters while the lesser-known ones such as Chess, Calculator, Stickies, Keycaps, Quicktime and DVD player squeeze into one. Sharing a computer with other users is covered and networking is handled clearly and effortlessly. The remainder of the book is given over to the Internet: browsing the web with Internet explorer, finding stuff with Sherlock, sending Mail and chatting using iChat. The degree of hand-holding in this book is not for everyone and sooner or later the user will grow out of this book and move on to David Pogue's Missing Manual or Gene Steinburg's Little Black Book. It isn't much help with troubleshooting or installing the system software but it nevertheless remains a good book for beginners or those unable to attend classes due to isolation.
Illustrated with screenshots and computer-generated illustrations featuring flat screen iMacs, eMacs and the latest G4s, this gorgeously illustrated book is produced by a Canadian family business called Marangraphics. It is not their first Mac book in the series; there's an earlier one on the iMac, numerous ones on individual applications and plenty of books on PC operating systems under the same or related imprints. Related Articles
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 21 February 2007 ) | |||||||||||||||
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