Macintosh Systems Books

If you've used the mac much at all, you'll find this book *very* elementary. I've been using the Mac for many years, and there isn't much in this book that you couldn't discover by reading the AppleGuide, or surfing around on mac sites.

A waste if you ask me.

Sams Teach Yourself Mac OS 9 was fun to write because the Mac OS is such a pleasure to use. This book offers both new Macintosh users as well as intermediate users a tutorial approach to an extensive array of features that comprise Mac OS 9. Included in the book is a deep discussion of Color Sync 3.0, QuickTime 4, iMovie, Sherlock 2, Multiple Users, Keychain Access, and other new technologies. The book also covers using Macs on the Internet as well as a basic overview and details about the Macintosh user experience. I would highly recommend this book to be part of any Mac user's library.

Teach Yourself Visually: Mac OSX v.10.2 Jaguar; Maran, Ruth; Illustrations by Russ Marini & Steven Schaerer; Screen Artist and Illustrator Darryl Grossi; Copyright 2003; Maran Graphics. Publ Wiley Publishing, Inc. NY, NY; Softback; ISBN 0-7645-1802-X

This book of slightly more than 300 pages is visually very attractive. It would make a nice gift. The author recognizes that some people do much better when instructed with visual images. Toward this end she has created a well illustrated book that takes the beginner by the eye and introduces operating a computer equipped with Mac OSX v.10.2.

This book will definitely get a neophyte started and probably productive using OSX at the beginner level. Basic operations and concepts are illustrated and explained. Included applications are explained. The author has taken simplification too far perhaps though. There is no hint that there are alternate ways to achieve the results mentioned in the book. This approach can be misleading unfortunately. One example of the pitfalls of over simplification is on page 182 where the author states "You need to ... have a .Mac membership to publish photos to the web." As you know, there are several alternates to this approach.

The most glaring oversimplification is the assumption that the computer will always function properly and will not need disk or file maintenance. "Troubleshooting" and "Maintenance" are not indexed terms. There is no guidance for malfunction, no mention of caution around renaming or moving files and folders, etc.

This book is clearly for the person who is new and simply wants to get going. Toward this simple end the book is excellent. The user will be in need of another text or a knowledgeable friend to assist the first time a program hangs, crashes or there is any need for an application outside the suite provided with MacOSX. "Classic" is another term completely absent from the index.

Pros: Excellent introductory book for someone who is both a computer novice and primarily a visual learner.

Cons: Very little information on dealing with the inevitable problems that occur. Simplistic introduction which does not suggest to the reader a path to advanced exploration and learning, nor even that one exists.

I had recently rec'd the OS 10.2.2 "Visual Quick Start Guide" and BOTH of these books kind of gloss over the real meat of the OS.

I would have liked to see something on the Windows file connectivity, my office has both mac's and (ugh) PC's that need to share files, and NEITHER of these books even touched on that subject.

I don't know what that other guy was smoking, but this book was
without a doubt the most useful book available on implementing SAP.
It is not meant necessarily to be an in-depth technical guide, but rather a utilitarian manual to prepare and equip a company for the arduous task of implementing SAP. I found the insights to be intriguing and accurate, and I would recommend this book to any executive who is donned with the task of training his or her subordinates to the gauntlet that is.... SAP

5 stars, very helpful

This book is an homage to SAP, first, and consultants, second.

According to the fairy tale included as a "real world example" of an SAP implementation, when your implementation gets rough, all you need to do is throw more money and consultants at it because the consultants know best. If you just turn your company over to the knowledgeable consultants, and don't worry about the bill, everything will work out fine.

The book does not include any detailed information about how the system works. It does not include any information about how to deal with interfaces or data conversion or any discussion of customizations and modifications. It does not include any discussion of any of the widely publicized failed SAP implementations and why they went wrong.

Basically, the book tells you the history of SAP (as a software and as a company), gives you a high level fairy tale (an SAP version of "The Elves and the Shoemaker" where the business is suffering during the SAP implementation and the consultants magically come in and solve all the problems and the company lives happily ever after), and then goes on to say that SAP is so good that even when the author had criticisms about the software, it was just because she wasn't taking a broad enough view of how the SAP software was evolving, and once she talked to the nice developers at SAP, they showed her why what they were doing was right.

The bottom line from this book:

1) SAP good 2) Consultants wise and helpful

For more depth, you'll have to go somewhere else.

First, the book is only 363 pages long, not 560 as identified in the Amazon description. So in my opinion a little over priced for the content.

Having said that, I found the book contained a lot of information that I wish had been in Server Essentials. Of course, considering that these are geared towards the Apple exams I suppose you have to give them some leeway.

As I am in the process of planning an OS 10.5 Server upgrade, this book has been helpful. I'm still hoping that someone will write more about Print Queue Management in OS 10.5. If you're looking for more info on that subject, you won't find it in here nor in Server Essentials.

Overall, if you're new to supporting OS 10.5 Server or migrating from 10.4 to 10.5, then this book has some helpful information - but maybe you can get lucky and find it at a discounted price. I don't feel it's really worth $65 but I'd consider $35 a fair deal.

I was hoping this would cover my iMac purchase. It does not cover the iMac with the Intel dual chip. I'm hoping to see a 5th Edeition.

Nowadays...scientific CD-ROMs are increasing. But till now, it is also hard to find 'really' helpful titles to study with. "Interbrain" includes appropriate training materials and quite much contents for students learning neuroanatomy comparing to some other titles that filled with few large anaimation files.

But you should know that "Interbrain" do not work on 8 bit lanquages: for example Korean Windows 98. It works only on English Windows 98 (maybe it also works on German Windows 98 because this title has german authors). Furthermore, "Interbrain" requires high performance hardwares - on MMX200, 32M Ram, just "able" to see it. Quite much time is spent waiting next pictures.

I was having problems installing it on my Win98 Computer on D Drive. I installed it to its default directory, and it worked fine. Either it doesn't like D drive, or it doesn't like sub-directories. Install it to its default directory...

well i got this book as a present and i have to say its worth close to 3 stars. first of all i dont have a macintosh os (operating system). i have a pc with windows 98 os. so what is the need with this book when i dont have the proper essentials to comply with the book. well i skimmed through the book and think its very helpful for mac users out there. so if you have a mac and are having trouble with your os then i suggest you get this reference book to help you out. or if you dont have a mac then dont get this book because theres no point in it.

I bought this book to learn some of the new hidden secrets of this powerful program. If you know how to enter a formula in a cell (Excel) this book is a waste of money. It is well written, and a good guide for someone new to Excel and or Word. If you need more in depth information, look elsewhere

The _Mac OS 9.1 Black Book_ is touted by its authors as being written for three groups of people: (1) system administrators; (2) programmers; and (3) power users. Although I do not consider myself to have "geek" status, I might imagine that I am a "power user." Since Apple released Mac OS 9.1 on January 10, 2001, I found the publication date of this book, December 29, 2000, to be slightly suspect. After I browsed the book at random and cross-checked index references, I was rather disheartened to discover that the information seemed to be rather basic (more in line with what one would find in a _ for Dummies_ book). Moreover, I found that the index pagination did not match up with the entries.

Further, I discovered that there were no references to _Microsoft Office 2001 for Mac_, which I consider to be a serious omission since this software was released in September, 2000. There are only a few pages on MS Word and Excel, and the information states that the Mac OS 9.1 user should not have very many problems because of the improvements made in _MS Office 98_!

Another entry that I checked was for the ARA (Apple Remote Access) control panel. The _Black Book_ gave some very basic information on it, and concluded that the ARA was not something that most Mac users would be employing, unless they were connecting to a LAN (Local Area Network). The book gave the rationale that most non-networked users would connect through a PPP rather than use ARA. To me, this information is not only outmoded, it is rather incomplete. Without going into too much technical detail, there are several ways to connect to an LAN, such as using AppleShare, AppleTalk, IRTalk, a LocalTalk cable and adapter, an Ethernet cable, or IrDA (Infrared). Unless I want to connect to one of the online services directly, I always use ARA (rather than PPP) to connect to my ISP (Internet Service Provider) because I get a higher baud rate that way, and ARA supports multiple connections, which is necessary if one is doing data transmission, using more than one browser, connecting to online services (such as AOL), e-mail servers (such as Telnet or Outlook Express), and instant-messaging applications (such as AIM). Also, one might use a DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) modem, cable modem, or direct network connection.

This _Black Book_ does go into some detail about cross-platform connectivity. However, most power-users, programmers, and sysadmins already know about how to address this issue. Mac OS 9.1 is a major system upgrade from Mac OS 9.04 in some respects, but not that much in the area of cross-platform connectivity. However, this book does discuss the new "streamlining" of folders that occurs. It also has a lot of detail on tweaking the "Appearance" control panel settings.

After I looked up a few more topics, I concluded that the information provided in this _Black Book_ was lacking in sophistication for "power-users." Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, there are no other books in print yet that address Mac OS 9.1, (although Apple does provide online help and the "Mac Help" menu on OS 9.1 does cover the basics and "what's new.") So if you are upgrading from Mac OS 8.6 directly to 9.1, and you have not bought a _for Dummies_ book on your Mac system software in some time, you may find this book to be a useful reference.