Macintosh Books

I first encountered this book in a masters course at FSU. After reading it I got that excited feeling that I get when I encounter an astounding book. I was sick and tired of computer books that are product driven and programming content crazy. I hadn't seen any books tell you what you could do with this programming you just learned. This book shows you the steps it takes to develop your idea, from knowing your audience to post-production. Now you can learn not only that techie stuff everyone else does now you can know what to do with it.

Hi, I'm Jeff Burger, author of Multimedia for Decision Makers. A special "howdy" to my regular readers in NewMedia magazine! Don't have time for the inch-thick tomes on multimedia? This book is for you! At only 170 pages, it's gives you the technology overview you need, not the gory bits and bytes. More importantly, it answers questsions like: How can it be used in marketing, training, retail, and presentations? How are my peers and competitors using it? Where's it all going? It even has running summaries down the margins, making it even easier to get to the information you need fast. Think of it as an executive brief on multimedia in business! Then if you want more detail, check out my other two books. The Desktop Multimedia Bible (Addison-Wesley) - a best-seller in the field - gives you fundamental info on the technology, tools, and techniques of graphics, audio, video, computers, and interactive technology. My latest book, Multimedia Studio for Windows (Random House), details the top Windows multimedia productions tools and includes a CD-ROM with free test drive versions of the software along with tutorials from yours truly. Enjoy! Jeff Burger

This "Visual Quickstart Guide" gives step-by-step help for using all of the components of Netscape Communicator. I wanted to know how to set up my computer to use the mail; I found answers to all my questions in an quick easy-to-follow manner. This is a "must" for those using Communicator on a Mac!

As a neurology resident, I find this book to be extraordinarily helpful. It is, as the title of this review suggests, the first text I consult for any neuropathology question. It is also an outstanding resource for concise summaries of the clinicopathological hallmarks of a wide variety of conditions.

The book contains numerous high-quality photographs of gross anatomical pathology and histopathology. The text is well-written, clear and concise. There are a number of handy summary tables in each section. The overall layout of the book is clear, aesthetically pleasing, and visually appealing. The color coding of different sections is helpful in reviewing a given topic, and the index is complete.

Some previous reviews suggested that bibliographic references could be more complete. While this is true, I find it to be a minor point in such an otherwise outstanding text. For comprehensive treatment of any given subject, other, more detailed textbooks are available, but few can rival the clarity of text and quality of pictures in Ellison et al.

From the perspective of an academic neurologist in training, this is the one neuropathology book I want to have on my bookshelf. It is an outstanding contribution to the field.

Thielen's book not only gives the reader a workable method for delivering (relatively) error-free code, but if taken as metaphor, gives good methods for making a more error-free world in general. Well written, small, concise.

I found that the "Dummy" books were very helpful with my old Mac/Office software, and l purchased this book on that basis. So far, it has been most helpful on my iMac/Office 2008 setup, clarifying procedures and capabilities, and helping me in understanding the systems. I recommend it.

I have been and still am reading Official Netscape Communicator for Macintosh. It is absolutely the best book on Netscape because it is in simple easy English. I recommend it to all my friends and my fellow Macintosh Users. It has humor, wonderful illustrations, and clear & to-the-point tips on everything you need to know in the powerful Netscape. The accompany CD ROM is sensational and has great special effects. I put this book right up there next to Internet Starter Kit by Adam Engst. Two wonderful books you can not get along without!!

My friends and I are currently studying this book in our womens study group and we really love it. What a blessing it is. It is like learning from a friend, and is so well written. I am thankful for the Godly wisdom these women have shared through this book, and for the time and effort they put into it. I recomend this book highly! You will be blessed.

There are a bunch of books about the history of computing, but this one is unique -- it reprints original papers from Babbage through EDVAC and EDSAC in the late 1940s. Some of the papers are a tough slog, since the terminology is unfamiliar, but there's no better way to get inside the heads of the people who invented all this stuff. And what's really amazing is that by 1948, they were designing recognizably modern computers. If it weren't so overpriced I'd say every programmer should have a copy.

It's three o'clock in the morning, and you need to know the meaning of that obscure English word now! It's not in any of your dictionaries, including _Webster's Third New International Dictionary_. The libraries are closed. If you are lucky, you can pop the _OED2_ CD into your Macintosh CD/DVD-ROM drive, and you have the Dictionary entry on your screen in a flash. This entry includes the headword, ("[t]he word whose spelling, pronunciation, and meaning are the subject of the entry"). In the print version of the Dictionary, this headword is the only way you can search for an entry; in the _OED2 on CD-ROM for the Apple Macintosh®_, it is but one of several ways to access the data in the text.

Also included in the entry are: pronunciation; the part of speech; any variant forms; etymology; definitions, including subsidiary headwords and phrases; subordinate headwords; phrases; and quotations, which include the headword in use and contain a citation, which generally gives further details. All of these included items are separately searchable, too.

The _OED2 on CD-ROM for Apple Macintosh®_ [ISBN: 0199617279] comes packaged in a plastic vinyl box, which includes the CD in its plastic jewel case; a floppy disk, which contains Monotype TrueType™ fonts that need to be installed in the System folder on your hard disk; a software license and mail-in user registration card; and a 109-page spiral-bound manual.

The manual is excellent. Its introduction gives a brief overview and history of the _OED_, and it reminds the user that "the _OED_ is a descriptive dictionary, not a prescriptive one. It does not attempt to set a standard of correct English: it records impartially the uses of writers from every part of the English-speaking world and at every level of the social or literary scale."

Here is the Table of Contents: 1. Introduction (system requirements; installation; getting started; error messages); 2. About the _Oxford English Dictionary_; 3. Application overview (SEARCH menu; carrying out a search; wildcards; proximity searches; FILE menu; EDIT menu; DISPLAY menu; SETTINGS menu; HELP menu; WINDOW menu); 4. Searching (word look-up; text searches; etymology searches; definition searches; quotation searches, including author searches); 5. The query language (the query statement--search field, type, item, results file; constructing complex queries--Boolean operators; combining queries); 6. Troubleshooting: performance tips and warnings; 7. Glossary; Appendix: "Character sets" (3 main groups: Group 1--all the standard Roman characters; accented European characters; Old and Middle English characters; special characters (symbols); keyboard output mnemonics are given for all; Group 2--the Greek alphabet and International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA); Group 3--Other characters and symbols (astronomical, mathematical, musical, palæographic, philological & phonetic (e.g., Arabic, Cyrillic, Early Greek, Hebrew, etc.), prosodic, punctuation mark, scientific, and typographical; Index.

Here are the System Requirements, as stated in the Manual:

*Macintosh® computer with Motorola 68030 processor *Apple® System 6.07 or higher *2 Mb RAM (in addition to the RAM required by the system and any other applications that are open). [You may need to install more RAM in your computer, depending on what other applications (e.g., Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel) you many want to use concurrently with this application.] *1 Mb free hard-disk space *Apple® CD drive or full compatible *Apple® CD-ROM software extension, version 4.0 or higher (to allow ISO 9660 file access) *TrueType™ font extension software *4 Mb RAM resident on printer for Quality Printing. [This option "outputs text the same way as it is displayed on screen."]

Overall, I have found the _OED2 on Compact Disc for Apple Macintosh®_ to be indispensable for work and study. I find the small manual to be quite handy for using the keyboard mnemonics. As a bonus, all the language and symbol character sets remain installed on your hard drive and are available for other uses when the CD is not in "residence." On the downside, you do need to have the CD in your CD/DVD-ROM drive to access the Dictionary. However, I have found the additional searching capabilities of the CD-ROM version (over the print version) to more than compensate for this drawback. If you use a PowerBook, the CD-ROM version is wonderful for use on-the-road, at workshops and conferences, or when holing up in a hideaway to finish that work-in-progress!

Please excuse all the detail if you have found it tedious. I have made the assumption that you would be familiar with this Dictionary, so I have focused on the more technical aspects of this CD-ROM version in case you have need of this information before ordering it. [For the _OED2_ on CD-ROM (Windows), see ISBN: 0195215737]

Highly recommended!