Amazon.co.uk Review
Widely esteemed Mac authority
David Pogue weighs in on the latest offering from Cupertino with
Mac OS X: The Missing Manual. It's a fact-packed romp through the operating system and the extras that come with it, made resoundingly more readable by the depth of Pogue's knowledge, his familiarity with Mac history, and his eagerness to engage novices as members of the Mac user community. Unlike most books about Mac OS X, this one explores its Unix-like underpinnings (the Apple implementation is called Darwin) pretty thoroughly. However, on the logic that if you wanted to use Unix, you would, Pogue emphasises the traditional, graphical Mac interface over the Terminal window.
Pogue, who's written about Macs for years writes about Macs at the user level with clarity. He's also quite good at dealing with the numerous options and variations that apply to Mac procedures, and makes very good use of sidebars for clarifying details. In a section on printing, for example, Pogue explains why there's no longer an option to turn off background printing (true multitasking has rendered the option obsolete). There's also good coverage of the online iTools, tailored to people unfamiliar with integrating remote resources into their personal computing environments. --David Wall
Topics covered: Apple Mac OS X for people who will use the operating system, either on a standalone computer with Internet access or on a computer that is part of a home or organisational network. Running applications (in Classic mode as well as in native Mac OS X mode), printing, networking, multimedia, security (including Keychain), and utilities are all covered.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Clark Morledge, Williamsburg Macromedia User Group, May 15, 2002
This is the best reference manual I have seen for a Mac operating system, and is among the best of reference manuals for any type operating system.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
