Macintosh Systems Books

I thought this was an amusing book that described a collection of neat ideas. Most of them are not too technically sophisticated so that you could have come up with the design yourself if you are a technical person, using web resources, but the value was in the idea itself and the way it is suggested.

Since I am a computer engineer I was hoping to find that this book offered some home projects let alone hacks. First let me state that this book doesn't offer any "Hacking Projects". To be honest it barely offers any "Home projects". Fortunately for me I have a friend who is an electrical engineer. This book is extremely misleading. More than half of the projects listed in this book simply can not be accomplished because the projects mentioned severely lack the required information or were never honestly tested to see if the might actually work. A good part of this book suggests you will need a skill set of 3 out of 5 to accomplish a given task. What it doesn't say it that you will need significantly more money and electrical knowledge than this book will ever provide. Many of the projects listed here are extremely costly and provide little advantage to some running it through a computer. In addition, you will have to know a computer language [Pearl] in order to get remote benefit from any project. Having looked over the Pear scripts I have found some mistakes in the programming. It seems to me that O'Reilly just wanted to sell a book.

A great deal of the projects in this book are basically various forms of X10 module automation. The projects include how to automate a light with motion sensing, how to remotely monitor your pet, creating a whole house audio or time shifted audio, a keyless entry system, and intrusion detection and deterrence. For each project the items are detailed, the software described in detail, information is included on where to locate them, assembly instructions, scripts, and everything else you need to complete it. Only basic skills are needed for each project. Each project includes information on estimated cost, time and difficulty ratings so you can easily decide which ones you will tackle and which ones you may not want to. Home Hacking Projects for Geeks is recommended to anyone wanting to have a little fun with home electronics.

Home Hacking Projects for Geeks is a really fun book to read which also provides instructions on how to perform some very interesting home improvements. This book reminded me a little bit of O'Reilly's other book "Smart Home Hacks", only the hacks in this book are not all specifically smart-home related. In any case, some of the hacks in the other book mentioned are also found in this book. "Home Hacking Projects", however, does contain some fun projects I haven't seen anywhere else.

Some of the more interesting projects in this book include how to remotely monitor your pet, creating time shifted radio, and how to make your home talk. One thing I really enjoyed about this book is that examples are provided for both a Linux and Windows environment. Additionally, configuration information is provided for your router, if the completed project is to be accessible from outside your home network.

While there are some projects included in this book that you might find elsewhere, this book does an excellent job of providing clear and detailed instructions, including wiring diagrams (if applicable), screen shots of configuration information, and a lot of other things that make the successful completion of these projects much more likely. You'll have a blast automating your home with this book.

Nothing in the splash page, back cover or anywhere with info letting you know it is almost 100% about the X10 hardware. I already own a house full of X10 stuff, so the fact that I wasted money on this book burns my soul. Not one thing deals with how to set up, rig or configure any of the projects without having to spend money on whichever X-10 product will do the job. If I wanted that I would just buy the product and read the installation guide that comes with it.
The author suckered me into buying the book... don't let him sucker you!

I think this is still one of the best reference books for implementing SAP, particularly the change management aspects. The 2nd edition had many updates that should negate older, more negative comments.

I enjoyed reading this book, it has an easy reading style, and I keep a copy of it on my desk to refer back too. It is a good introduction to the organizational issues that can arise when SAP R/3 is implemented in a company. If you read this book and want to know more about what the individual modules in SAP R/3 can do, I recommend getting the latest copy of "Using SAP R/3", published by QUE.

This book will serve well for managers who are planning to or going through their first R/3 implementation project. However, you probably would not need it any further after you have succeeded in your first project. Realistic people and organisational issues for project management are presented with limited technical detail.

This book is actually a methodology for implementing a new system, no matter which one. So, main points covered are change process issues, pitfalls in the implementation process and ways to ensure the success from a organizational point of view. So, little technical or programming stuff is supplied apart from some generic structure of SAP. If that is what your are looking for, this is a good book. Don't come here for technical/programming stuff or even for an end-user manual.

Wish I had picked this up earlier in my consulting career. The last 1/2 of the text could be applied to every ERP / MRP implementation I've ever been on. The authors do a great job documenting the "people issues" that often get left out. They discuss managing change, expectation setting, training, top management support. All those diffucult , often ignored , subjective "soft" stuff, that kills the spirit of the implementation team. You probably won't like the book if you're a die hard programmer. There's little technical programming here. But that's great if you're new to SAP, and want a non technical , yet detailed discussion of the set up and data requirements. I also used it to understand where the integration points would be - tables and data types - when implementing JDE, and had to bring SAP manufacuring data over to JDE financials. Most recently, skimmed highlighted areas to prepare for an interview. If I never install SAP, it was still an excellent investment in methodology.

The software that accompanies this book is obsolete (14.0). You will have to pay an additional $100 to obtain the updated software (16.0).

This book is a great help in understanding and simplifying the SPSS program. Exercises are reasonable and allow practical application of steps discussed in the short chapter pages.

Receive book in excellant condition. I am using it in class now. Thanks.

This book basically goes through what the options are under file, edit, view, etc. The help menu in the program would suffice for this. It also does not go through enough examples of when you would use the options.

Using SPSS is a good manual to navigate you through using SPSS. It is idiot-proof to follow if you just do what it says. Time-consuming to read the whole thing but good for picking out specific functions to learn. Would recommend this book. Includes a CD with data sets to use while following along with the reading.

This review was created for the University of Wisconsin Mac User's Group: http://wiscmug.org/

Let me start with an overview of my expectations of this book (based on books of this type), and then I'll get into my reactions to the book itself.

Target Audience:

I always have two reservations concerning books like this one. The first is the target audience. Who is this book actually for? I'd break up the Mac user base (and probably the PC user base as well) into four categories: beginner, advanced beginner, serious user, and advanced user/programmer.

Beginners aren't just people who started using the Mac yesterday. I'd consider my parents to be beginners. They've been using a Mac for several years now, but they still don't know how to move files around or what the key combination for, well, just about anything is. My dad has to use two fingers to click and drag on his iBook's trackpad, and when I recently told him to copy and paste an e-mail message into a web browser window, he didn't even try to copy and paste, he just retyped it.

Most people get past this stage and begin to really use their Mac. They become curious about what their Mac can do. They experiment, start trying out new software, and generally have many, many questions. I'd call these people advanced beginners. (Incidentally, I think that the reason why people like my parents never get out of the beginner stage is because they are afraid to experiment. The computer is pretty unique in that, quite often, you can undo what you just did. Try that in your kitchen.)

Asking lots of questions is good, since the answers allow people to advance to the third stage, a serious user. Once a person knows enough about their Mac to seriously integrate it into their daily life, they can get real work done and be efficient about it. This is really the whole point about using your Mac, or any computer or tool, for that matter.

Some people of course go even beyond this stage, understanding how to control their Mac from the terminal in OS X, programming their Mac and writing their own software. Advanced users don't feel constrained by the software or the user interface(s) (or sometimes even the hardware) that's out there.

So who is this book's target audience? I expected it to fall around the advanced beginner to serious user (and I think that it does). As beginners, this book would be way above my parent's heads. Even books in the "Missing Manual" series are a little tough for them (and this book is not laid out as a step by step guide to using particular programs as those books are). Advanced users may get something out it, although they may already know most of it (depending upon which apps they use on a regular basis). However, no matter how much you know about the Mac, there are seemingly always a few more little tidbits hidden in the woodwork, so probably everyone could learn something from this book.

Books and obsolescence:

But this brings me to my second point: obsolescence. Books that deal with the features of any computer program are usually outdated by the time they hit your local bookstore (or even by the time the ink hits the page). "Mac Annoyances" is written for Mac OS X 10.3, iLife '04, and about two revisions of iPod back. I'm writing this in July 2005, and the book had it's first print run in November 2004. Already the book is one iteration of updates behind, and with new hardware and software updates always on the horizon (thank you Apple and the developer community!), it won't be long until it is multiple iterations behind.

While many of the tips and tricks are still kicking around in newer versions of software (and not everyone updates the software on their Mac right away, if at all), some of the bugs will have been squashed, and some things are simply going to work differently as time goes on.

For example, the iTunes 4.9 update includes the ability to subscribe and listen to podcasts. Very cool, and definitely a feature to mention in a book like this (especially how to subscribe to podcasts from places other than iTMS and why you might want to). Unfortunately, the associated iPod updaters, while enabling podcast support, broke the ability for the iPod to automatically update smart playlists without having to resync to iTunes. Annoying? Yes. But by the time any book or magazine will have had this flaw noted in print, Apple will have fixed it by then. (Apple, you listening?) [UPDATE: Apparently not. While Apple has posted a tech note on their web site about the problem, since writing this review in August, Apple has release two new iPods, two new iPod updaters, and two new verisons of iTunes, and no fix for this problem. Apparently, the new iPod nano and new iPod with video do not suffer from this problem. Does Apple expect me to buy a new iPod just to get back functionality that my old iPod used to have?]

Another example would be the inability of Dashboard widgets to be deleted through the Dashboard user interface in Mac OS 10.4. This was eventually fixed in 10.4.2, but other Dashboard weirdness still exists that I hope will be fixed in future 10.4 updates.

So, presenting the information in this form (as a book) presents certain problems. We now have better ways of presenting the most up-to-date information (namely, the internet). Books have fantastic data stability, but horrible search and update functionality. In addition, because the book takes a Q & A approach to solving specific problems, some information that really should go together winds up being scattered across multiple pages or even sections. The author does realize this and tries to mention associated information whenever possible, but not always.

Thus, this book isn't specifically at fault on the second point as much as the entire genre is. John Rizzo keeps a blog to address this issue; however, it is more focused on Windows annoyances than Mac ones (I'm not sure if that's a commentary on the state of affairs, but I'll just assume so).


Hits and misses of the book:

Now that that's all out of the way, what's actually in "Mac Annoyances"? The book is divided up into sections: Mac OS X, various e-mail programs, using the internet (including iChat), Microsoft Office, iLife, iPod, and some basics about hardware. That covers a lot of territory, while restricting itself to applications that a majority of users probably use.

However, I think they still miss some apps that lots of people use (or should be using). I'd like to have seen more of the standard applications that ship with OS X featured, such as iCal, Font Book, iSync, and the utilities. (Of course, the newest features of Tiger, like Spotlight and Dashboard and, my personal favorite, Dictionary, aren't featured either.) There are also a whole set of media player apps that people use, like RealPlayer and Quicktime Player, that have plentiful, if obscure, features. And some sections feel like they barely scratch the surface of interesting features or questions about the interface. Some of this may be a result of phrasing all of the questions as "annoyances" in order to match the title, but the sections covering the iApps and iPod left me wanting more.

Of course, if you don't use a particular app (for example, I've never had a Mac with a SuperDrive, so I've never ever opened iDVD), the suggestions in the book aren't going to be of much worth to you. On the other extreme, if you use an application extensively, you may already be familiar with all of the ins and outs that are presented.

I would classify myself as a serious user, although I do dabble in a little programming here and there. I was pleasantly surprised to find out some stuff I didn't know about my Mac, and some solutions to annoying little problems that I hadn't bothered to take care of. So here are three detailed examples of things I found useful in the book, and one example of something I didn't.

Spellchecking:

I've pondered upgrading Mail.app's spell checker for a while, since it isn't that smart, but I didn't know how to do it and it wasn't so bothersome that I felt obligated to do something about it. The book recommends an OS X version of a standard Unix spellchecker, a good (read: free) suggestion. But it actually didn't get to the root of my problem with Mail.app's spellchecker.

Spellchecking in general could have been an entire sub-section of the book, because it is something that has to be (or should be) used a lot. But this would violate how the book is set up to some extent. So the suggestion of installing a separate spellchecker for the entire system to use was put in the web browser section.

One of the main reasons I use Microsoft Word is because of its AutoCorrect spellcheck feature, something which I didn't know (although it totally makes sense) is duplicated in third-party spellchecking software. So I may actually buy SpellCatcher X, what the book suggests, although I'd like to find out more about how OS 10.4's new, standard Oxford English dictionary has affected the playing field of spellchecking before plunking down $40.

Web browsers:

I think this book gives a very good comparison of the browsers that are out there for the Mac. It isn't exhaustive in the number of browsers (it includes Safari, Firefox/Camino/Mozilla, OmniWeb, even IE, but ignores Opera and iCab) or their features, but is certainly more detailed than what you might find in a MacWorld article on the same topic. It also, as mentioned earlier, suffers from the fact that all of the browsers have been updated since the book was published (some browser development groups even offer nightly builds if you really want to surf on the bleeding edge).

But it does cover the main points: bookmarks, pop-ups and ad blocking, flash, cookies, searching, and printing. There were even some things about browsers that I didn't know about, such as using a browser to see what's on your iPod (or any hard drive). Windows forced this file browser metaphor on it's users, and I think that there are a lot of disadvantages with that, but it can be useful in certain situations, so it's nice to know you can do this in some browsers written for Mac OS X.

It also gives some suggestions for web browser add-ons, such as PithHelmet for ad blocking and Sogudi to add functionality to the Google search field in Safari. I wish that it had listed more of these, or at least more places to look for these (I don't remember even running across a mention of Version Tracker). One of my favorites is Pimp My Safari (www.PimpMySafari.com).

Microsoft Word:

This was actually the most useful section I found from the book, and it makes me want to check out some more books about Word/Office, like those in the "Missing Manual" or "Dummies" series. Page after page I kept reading and thinking to myself "Oh, so that's what you need to do in order to do (fill in simple, obvious thing here that drives you a little nuts about Word/Office)". Included tips covered tracking changes, hyperlinks, several suggestions on spellchecking, the work menu, office assistant, keyboard commands, formatting, selecting non-continuous sections of text, and working with tables of contents and large documents.

Some of the tips provided overviews of the different functionalities of different versions of Word for the Mac (and now I'm even considering upgrading to Office 2004, something that the Microsoft marketing juggernaut couldn't get me to do).

This section made me realize that I am no where near a serious user of Word, because there are tons of features in there that I had no clue about. Of course, this is one of the oft-mentioned problems of the Office suite: feature bloat. But for every, say, ten useless features that I don't know about (and hopefully never will), it sounds like there might be one feature that's buried but would be useful.

Sherlock:

There's a whole sub-section of the internet chapter of the book devoted to Sherlock. Does anyone use Sherlock anymore? Did anyone ever use Sherlock? I used to use it a little but 1) it was slow, 2) the UI tended to be cumbersome, and 3) the third-party channels kept breaking with version updates (and sometimes simply for no apparent reason). I did use Watson, the third party app that did many of the same things and worked better for whatever reason. But more often than not I just used the web to do the same things that I could do in Sherlock or Watson.

I think we've recently seen an evolution of Sherlock's main design principle, that of information-specific search capabilities, in Dashboard. Plus, some of these search capabilities now (finally) seem ready for prime time. For example, Google maps rocks, and the fact that the API is open, so people have created extensions for Google maps, like Workout Tracker at particletree.com/gmaps/workoutTracker.php, rocks even harder.

Some more helpful tidbits:

I can't help but briefly mention a few more little tidbits in the book that I found to be helpful. One thing everyone should be forced to read before they are ever allowed near a computer are the included tips for writing effective e-mail. Most of the things are common sense, which begs the question why do I still get e-mail that is less fun to read than getting a root canal? I remember having to write boring sample letters in my English class in elementary school - I hope that now they are teaching kids how to write good e-mails (but I wouldn't be surprised if many teachers didn't understand the differences between a good letter and a good e-mail).

The book also lists some useful yet surprisingly obscure keyboard commands. There are also a lot of suggested hacks that rely on the Unix underpinnings of OS X, including changing the "Connect to Server" dialog box to allow you to browse your network, folder modifications/management, and changing the functionality of those little arrows in iTunes.


In conclusion, if you use several of the apps listed above and still have a lot of questions about using those apps on your Mac, this book might help. There are certainly a lot of other tips and tricks out there on several web sites (check the WiscMUG links page for starters), and this book won't have the hottest, newest information (nor will any book). But I did find some very useful pieces of information in here, especially those about spellchecking and using Word. Thus, I think that the question to ask yourself is "Based on the above description, does it sound like this book could answer many of my advanced-beginner questions about the Mac?" and if the answer is "Yes", then it's time to pick up a copy.

I am not a Mac user, so I can't comment much on whether or not I agree that the annoyances addressed in the book are the things I would find annoying.

I can say that, contrary to the hype, I found the Mac to have just as many quirks and annoyances as Windows when I was supporting both operating systems. The annoyances might be different, but the operating system was not as perfect and intuitive as one might be led to believe. Suffice it to say, I believe a book like this will be just as welcome to the Mac audience as similar books in the PC and Windows world.

The title of Mac Annoyances may be a little misleading in some ways. It almost should be called Mac Hacks (O'Reilly does offer Mac OS X Panther Hacks as well) because many of the tips are not so much about an annoyance, but rather provide insight into tweaking or modifying the OS or application to work in a particular way.

Some of the tips or advice are not as helpful as you might hope for. For instance, tips on how to get the Safari web browser to work the way you want or perform certain functions often end with "switch to another browser".

Overall, the book is written fairly well and the tips will make sense to most beginner to intermediate level users.

(...)

It wasn't made clear in the listing that this is essentially out of date -- Panther was an interim OS and this book is written from a Panther perspective. Tiger has been with us for more than a year, and the listing for this book should make it clear that this is out of date. A waste of my $$.

The author covers methods of dealing with a wide assortment of quirks and interesting default settings that the wizards at Apple chose to use in the building of their sophisticated new OS. Some of the annoyances Mr. Rizzo helps the reader fix are fairly basic, but most are for the serious user who will find a small nuisance to be a true headache if they are a heavier user of their machine than I am of mine. There's a note near the beginning of the text that recommends a couple of books for the novice with OS X. I suspect they are a good idea. I found much of Mac Annoyances difficult to follow until I watched the first two discs of the Mac Academy program for OS X.

Mr. Rizzo is very qualified to write this book, and he is phenomenally generous with recommendations of web sites, software, and books that the reader can visit or acquire to solve glitches that aren't just a matter of knowing how to find and change some well-hidden settings. The annoyance fixes that I tried worked as advertised, and so I assume the more technical fixes that I didn't need will work as well. I have to make the same assumption concerning the ones requiring downloads or purchases of additional software. Pleasantly, almost every graphic of the computer screen that accompanied the text of an annoyance was visible without having to turn a page. There are also excellent explanations to accompany the annoyances. Even as a novice, I leaned a great deal from what Mr. Rizzo has to say about various settings and set ups. A great example is why one should have one's e-mail not accept HTML material.

While the material in the book is very thorough, I thought it's physical presentation on the page could be improved on. There didn't seem to be a standard way of listing the steps to correct an annoyance. Typically, you have to read the verbiage carefully and notice what's capitalized and pull the steps out of the text. Other times there were set ups with arrows between the names of icons or tabs or whatever had to be clicked on. At the very least some bold type and/or a different font would allow an easier time seeing and reviewing the steps. Even better might be a box with the steps nestled in the text. Lastly, a light green ink is used to indicate which figures to refer to. My half-century-old eyes have trouble seeing it.

Mac Annoyances is full of useful tips. Some really do banish annoying behaviors, such as the Microsoft Office Assistant and Microsoft Word's autocorrect features (and some that are not, in fact, from Microsoft), but others are just useful, such as option-mute-speaker-key bringing up System Preferences and information on how to keep the iTunes library on an external drive. Macs may not be as annoying as PCs, but there are enough non-obvious settings and tricks that a book like this is useful.

The book is aimed at an intermediate level, for people who are competent Mac users but who might not feel comfortable figuring out Terminal commands (there are a few, but it's at a cookbook "cut and paste" level) or using the Developer Tools.

I think it's a good book for intermediate Mac users who want to know some of the hidden tricks that can help make their Mac experience easier.

Love the manual. Have used Excel and Word from the beginning, but upgraded to Office 2008 and ordered the manual at the same time. My old manual are dog eared and well used and this one is starting out the same way. Very useful. Would not hesitate to buy again.

A tip: don't buy manuals for your new software until you have used it for a while. Use 'help' functions built in your software as much as possible. Document your big questions in a list and when you've got maybe 4-5 questions, that's the time to check out the manuals.

When shopping, I pull out every manual I can find for the software and sit down and read. The key aspects of a good technical manual are organization and ease of reading.

Ultimately, I buy the book that answers all or most of the questions I still have after working with the software for a while.

This is a good manual. It's got both a book and an online form. Note the online form is available for free for a limited time, then you will need to pay a subscription fee.

It's not a bad idea at all to have an online version as well as the book:

Online is available if you're traveling and don't have the book in hand.
Online searches can be quicker than the book.
An online version will be updated when new versions of the software come out and/or new issues about the software arise.

The downside of this manual--it's got a lot more information than I currently need. It didn't answer the one pressing issue I had about resuming a document at the last edit and both my husband and I searched for that one question.

Still, my very technical husband and I both like the O'Reilly line of software manuals because they tend to be some of the most complete out there. Add in the online versions and you have a book that should last beyond the first blush of software use.

Rebecca Kyle, August 2008

No doubt at all it should have been in the box!

Covers everything from installation, standard and options, user guide through to trouble shooting. First class manual at a first class price!

Never received this book I ordered because for the 2nd time, Amazon decided to ship via USPS and ignore the fact that in some parts of the USA the postal service does not deliver to street addresses and requires either a PO Box or counter pick-up. Hence my "Missing Manual" went back without ever being notified of it's arrival. Rather than correct the problem and send via UPS, FedEx, or DHL (the later I would not recommend in this case, since they sometimes work with the post office at the local delivery), - or resend to the actual PO Box, Amazon just refunded the order. Now Amazon asks for my review? Well this is the only review I can give, since I have YET to see the book.

I have been greatly impressed by the writing and knowledge of this author. He is thorough in his descriptions and can lead even the most novice or computer illiterates find their way through the book and get some things done on their computer! This is a MUST have book as a resource and useful "buddy" to help walk you though this software. It is even entertaining and can get you to smile!
Highly recommended!

THIS IS A GREAT LEARNING TOOL FOR iLIFE 06. COMPLETE AND UNDERSTANDABLE DIRECTIONS. BOOK WAS A NEW UNUSED ITEM AS STATED. QUICK DELIVERY.

Logically and spaciously designed, well-written and conceived, ilife 06 is the perfect beginner's introduction to creative tools. It allows someone who has net zero experience in visual, audio, or web processing to put something together on the web in a matter of days. The reason ilife 06 is so good is that it limits itself to instructing true beginners and never tries to be an all-in-one manual. Of course that's also the book's downside: it will only take you through the software's most basic uses, even though the ilife suite is a much deeper set of applications. Result: eventually you'll need another instructional guide, but untill then, this is the best start-up on the market.

After glancing through the book I was very disappointed. The introduction told you that this was not a comprehensive guide and it was merely a supplement to other information such as the help and Jim Held's book. This was not stated in the information on the book. If that's the case, why not get Jim Held's book? I was particularly interested in iWeb. The information given for iWeb was sparce. It merely gave information on setting up a page and importing pictures from iPhoto onto the web page. It said nothing about links and other important web information. Perhaps it was on the disk. I dont know. I never opened the disk because I knew I wanted to return the book. The only reason I gave it two stars at all was because it said that the disk contained turorials.

It's a good tutorial book, but kind of specific to their examples. For a dumb guy like me ;), I couldn't kind of bring their expertise into my projects.

Some of the other reviews have dinged this book because of its "beginner" nature, but this is precisely why you are using a training book for beginner to intermediate type software. If you knew how to use the software already, why would you need a book? No program in iLife '06 is professional quality, it was never meant to be.

The iLife suite of products was developed to be user friendly while at the same time making attractive projects. The developers have achieved this quality beautifully, and that is why we have all paid a premium to own a MAC.

As an intermediate user of the iLife programs, I have done projects on my own and with the help of books (I have both Jim Heid's book and Rubin's book). And for my money, Rubin's book is easier to use and more logically set-up. I found myself wanting more information with Heid's book, but have found that all of the information I need is included in Rubin's book. Both books are visually very attractive, but I have to give the nod to Rubin for content. It seems more thorough and logically presented. The lessons included in the DVD are a great way for beginners to learn the products.

I would buy this book again. It achieves exactly what it set out to do; introduce you to the iLife suite of programs.

I have been cutting on FCP now for 4 years and this has been my goto FCP reference guide book. This book definitely has a lot of good information in it, however I have found quite a few of the procedures I am looking for to not be outlined clear enough that you can read that section and accomplish what you had hoped to do on the first try. (quite a few procedures require a bit of trial-and-error) I have also found it difficult to look in the index for certain topics and been able to find what I was looking for easily. This book is better than the manual which comes with FCP, but if you are looking for clear, simple instructions that are easy to find and follow, I would look to another book.

It seems that the author does not understand what someone getting this book would want. To begin editing. I am not a rank amateur, but this book made me feel like one. The process of actually beginning did not start until chapter five - (page 159) and even then you don't really have a clue what's going on. Finally in Chapter 9 (page 281) you start Basic Editing. It was too complicated, but my thought was to start with Chapter 9 and then go back and put together what I might need to know. I found this book to be a disaster. Swimming through a lot of information I would only need if I were editing Star Wars X, instead of trying to organize a documentary with six hours of interviews.

Great great complete readible and easy to understand book. It's become my BIBLE along with the FCP manuals..but it's condensed all into one book where as FCP has five. This is good for the beginner as well as the advanced user.

I think that J. Ewing, who wrote the negative review, is on crack (metaphorically J.Ewing, not literally, chill - don't try to sue me for slander. Geez, you need to relax J. Ewing, you need to relax). This book is a definitive guide to Final Cut Pro 4 just as all of Lisa Brenneis' previous version have been for previous versions of FCP. Check out the rest of the amazing reviews for this book. Then, if you too are on crack, listen to J. Ewing. If not, buy this readable, helpful, insightful, and concise guide to FCP 4.

Beware, I have been editing on FCP4 for 12 months and this was the book I bought when I first started-I found it totally incomprehensible for a beginner. After a year of relatively sophisticated editing I still find the book virtually useless. Although packed with 700+ pages of writing, Lisa Brenneis somehow manages to turn simple concepts into mush. If you deliberately tried to write the most confusing description of each FCP operation it would be difficult to achieve Brenneis' level of mind-spinning prose. When she does not over-complicate an operation she glosses over the practical steps for implementation. We had a whole class abandon this book last fall. There could be a few very advanced users out there who actually fathom her illustrations and explanations but they would have no need for this monster. I suggest either the "Dummies" book or Apples training series.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Robin Williams usually does a superb job - she's fun to read, has a perspective which is easy for the reader to understand and puts information clearly while not talking down to readers.

Not this time. If you want a book which tells you more than the very simplest of info about Tiger, don't buy this one. I'm an intermediate level user and I found that there are many glaring gaps in her lessons. I ran into many snags in getting used to switching over from System 9 and she didn't address any of the problems. Nor was her basic information about how Tiger operates useful in helping me trouble shoot the problems.

I wouldn't recommend the book to a new user either, because it was so superficial.

A minor irritant is that the editor (or somebody) did a very poor job of proofing it. There were a significant number of typos throughout the book.

The best I can say about this book is that the author seems to mean well and writes with a light, fun style. If you're a VERY brand new Mac user AND if you're intimidated by more advanced technical information, this book may be for you. Otherwise, save your money and you'll get better info from the various 'help' screeens on the Mac itself.

It is excellent as far as it goes. I wish it was somewhat easier to use by being more complete.

It's probably too basic and not technical enough for the real "geeks" out there, but for someone who just wants to use their Mac and run applications on it, the book is more than adequate. Very easy to read and it makes a great reference book. Diagrams and color illustrations are excellent.

I like Robins ways of teaching, and her book is great. For me it is a bit confusing as I have to keek refering back to other sections. Otherwise great.

before i purchased this book,i read all the reviews and they helped me out tremendously!!i just purchased my mac and was totally lost! this book takes you step by step which was very helpful for a first time computer user. now i'm excited about my computer now that i know how to use it. if you're a first time user and know nothing about macitosh then this is the book for you.

This is a huge book, but I won't be using it as a doorstop as it has been so useful to me for looking up problems and finding answers.
I'm new to Mac and this book puts an end to the Mac mystique. Mac IS easier to use than PC, but it seems confusing to new users. This book uses everyday language to
help with problems and gives a good overview of "how to".
Mac, like MS, now has it's user's guides online. If you aren't online while working, or if you find it tedious to take notes or print the manuals, this book will handle all your inquiries. It doesn't include specific application manuals, but then what computing how to book does? But there is enough contained within to get you going.

I am new to Macs, and rusty with computers. I needed a good basic book, but even I found this book baby talks way too much. As I work through it, I'm finding it to be very annoying that there are endless instructions to go to another page for continued information. She has me flitting around from beginning to back to middle to beginning, etc. With writing like that, of course there is going to be constant repetition of information. Besides putting you to sleep, it makes you wonder if you've already read that section. You'd need a map and a highlighter to know. I don't have time for this.

I remember a critic once said of a John Updike book, "One, don't buy this book. And two, if you do buy it, don't drop it on your foot." Though Robin Williams gigantic OS X book is quite large, and the table of contents goes on for more than a dozen pages, there seems to be a stunning lack of information. For example, I spent 45 minutes leafing through the book, trying to find out how to restart my Mac without loading any of the startup items. In case you're wondering how, you simply hold down the "shift button," but try as you may, you will not find that very simple --but possibly vital-- bit of information in this book. Strangely enough, you will find sections on how to "shift-click" (as though the phrase "shift-click" is not enough instruction), a section on "When to Use the Return key", and a section called "What your Fonts look like." Now, maybe I missed the whole point. Maybe you are the sort of person who has never ever seen a Macintosh computer before, maybe this will help you. But if you are looking for a book full of nuts and bolts info on how to use your system more fully, this is not the book for you.

I have now read seven Mac OS X books (and reviewed several), and I struggled with how to rate this book. Here's why:

5 stars : if you have never, ever used a computer before. This book will teach you about a "mouse", how to click and double-click "the button" of "the mouse", and even how to do what is called "drag-and-drop". Whole chapters are spent on concepts such as this. So if you've never used a computer before, this will be a great book for you to finally learn.

3 stars : for overall information. Nothing of importance is provided that 15 minutes of clicking around wouldn't. Seriously. I'd estimate over half of page space is used for pictures and descriptions for pictures. If you've already used your Mac for 15 minutes, you know 95% of what this book will describe. And even if you haven't, the Apple site (www.apple.com) provides as much if not more info than this book.

0 stars : for how much use I got out of it. I used a Mac earlier in my career (until 1997, System 7.5), and I'd consider myself a "power user" on Windows. This book literally offered me nothing, not even enough value for a single star.

And thus, the struggle of rating the book. For another type of user, the rating would have been different. But I decided to rate the book as it applied to me personally while providing insights for other potential users.

If you're a user like me, I highly recommend Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition instead of this book. Read my review there for more details about that book in particular.

I hope this information proves useful.

I'm most of the way through this book and have been losing interest since the first chapter. This book suffers from 3 fatal flaws: incomplete instruction, nonexistent trouble shooting, and poor code design. The first is very frustraiting, if you learn by doing and try to write the code in the book instead of just looking at the included code, you will quickly find your code does not work because the author omitted entire functions from the book. When learning to walk you will stumble, good intro books should account for that and provide you with the means to pull yourself up. This book provides no help to handle problems and you will make many, with the incomplete information along with the general disconnected nature of objective-C & cocoa you, like me may find yourself spending most of your time with this book debugging rather then learning. Finally as a veteran programmer in Win32, Linux, & embedded systems, I found the author's software design sensibilities to be lacking. Functions seem shoved in to classes for little reason, simple data objects took on complex IO functionality; these poor practices are touted by the author as examples of good Mac programming.

In summary I cannot recommend this book, its shortcomings make it difficult to work with, and these difficulties make it nearly impossible to learn from this book.

Macintosh programmers live in a restricted world; a ghetto, perhaps. The nice features of the Mac user interface and operating system also tend to make it hard to find good programming tools. Luckily, Apple has gone a long way to addressing this with the promulgation of Xcode.

Within Xcode, you can program in various languages, C, Java and, notably, Objective C. The latter is really mostly confined nowadays to a Mac. Anderson shows that the Xcode IDE does much of what you would expect a current IDE to do. Syntax colouring. Easy compiling and linking. Plus the ability to stuff things (binaries and data) into a package. As one chapter explains, this is crucial if you plan on letting others use your code. Putting it all into one package makes the distribution and maintenance far easier. Where you should remember that a Mac will have many packages, and not just yours.

I have to say, though, that I find Eclipse (for Java programmers) to be a richer environment for coding than Xcode. But Eclipse is really only for Java.

I bought this book thinking that it might be a nice step by step tutorial for the Cocoa and XCode development platform. It turns out to be not much of an introduction to anything.

Maybe it is just a personality difference or a difference in my learning style versus the style of the book, but I really hated it. Right off the bat, I could not bring myself to care anything at all about the project for the book. I found the whole thing to be a big, confusing, dreadfully boring mess.

I can see that the book covers some interesting features of XCode. It is a shame that the book is not interesting at all for me. I could not sit and read it or get motivated to follow along. Of course, everyone is different. Maybe you will find it to be a real page turner for positive reasons.

Maybe down the road I will find that this book has some value as a reference. It is also possible that this is simply the worst book I've read so far on the subject, but I have to admit that it has a great cover!

This book covers a lot of ground - great for beginning Xcoders, especially CodeWarrior converts. Not quite as in-depth as I thought it would be, based on the description, but well worth the price.

As to a recommendation, I'd say yes. Step into Xcode is most valuable to those getting started with Xcode, but even for people who have been using it for a little while you are sure to pick up a few tips and tricks.