"Mac OS 9: The Complete Reference" Reviewed

Macintosh books played a big role in my Mac education -- the first five years of which were without the Internet. Ones I found particularly informative and helpful are Jim Heid's MacWorld New Complete Mac Handbook; Lisa Lee's Upgrading and Repairing Your Mac; several volumes of David Pogue and Joseph Schorr's MacWorld Mac Secrets; Joe Kissel's The Nisus Way; and when the Internet did finally make it out to the boonies where I live, Adam Engst's Internet Starter Kit.

Without these weighty volumes (literally in most cases) on by bookshelves, my formative Mac experience would have been greatly impoverished information-wise.

I love books, and much prefer sitting in a comfy chair by the fire with a real paper and print book than reading words off a computer screen, even if I'm reading about computers. Never mind that I spend a lot more time these days doing the latter than the former.

Gene Steinberg's "Mac OS 9: The Complete Reference" is a tome in the tradition of those great Mac books I mentioned a moment ago. It certainly has the "bookshelf hugging weight" at 916 pages, and it is chock-full of useful information, especially for Mac neophytes, but there's stuff to learn for Mac-veterans like me as well.

The book's publisher, Osborne/McGraw-Hill, refers to "Mac OS 9: The Complete Reference" as "the definitive work on Apple's current and last 'classic' operating system." While that is an accurate description, it perhaps sells the book a bit short, since Mr. Steinberg, who publishes the Mac Night Owl Website, writes a weekly Mac column for the Arizona Republic/AZ Central, and appears on Craig Crossman's Computer America radio show, covers a lot more ground than just the Mac operating system.

Actually, it's mostly the first 243 pages focus more or less exclusively on Mac OS 9, including chapters on networking and AppleScript. The other 650 or so deal with things you might use with OS 9, or indeed in most cases with other versions of the MacOS. There are, for example, hardware sections on setting up a PowerBook or iBook; hard disk management; Installing and using a scanner, CD burner, digital cameras, audio speakers.

Turning to application software, Mr. Steinberg includes tutorials on using four popular Mac word processors: the ubiquitous and ponderous MS Word, Nisus Writer, AppleWorks, and Mariner Write. Various Mac graphics programs are compared, including Adobe's Illustrator 8, PhotoDeluxe 2.0, and of course PhotoShop 5.5; Corel's CorelDRAW 8; Thorsten Lemke's shareware GraphicConverter; and Macromedia's FreeHand 9.

If you're interested in desktop publishing, Steinberg provides an overview of the three big names in Mac DTP software: Abobe's PageMaker and inDesign, and QuarkXpress.

Font management is covered, as is financial management software (including a section on online banking and stock trading). There is an overview of desktop video production, and a chapter on gaming on the Mac.

There are separate chapter on file sharing, one for Mac to Mac and the other for Mac to PC. Another chapter covers file backup techniques. A fairly long chapter covers Mac viruses and virus protection software, and there is a section on troubleshooting.

The Internet is not ignored, with a chapter on the relative virtues of AOL versus an ISP, and another on Web browsers. The book is sufficiently up-to-date to include Internet Explorer 5 and iCab 1.9.

Mac email programs are compared, including the orphaned Claris Emailer, Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Messenger, and AOL. Want to know more about ftp file transfers on the Web? There's a chapter on that as well, and the final chapter covers the world of Internet chat.

Mac OS 9: The Complete Reference also includes special added material from noted network guru Pieter Paulson on handling special configuration issues under Mac OS 9, particularly when working in a cross-platform network.

Calling this book "The Complete Reference" is not unjustified. While it's more advanced than the "Dummies" books, I think a complete Mac neophyte who thoroughly read this book would emerge a reasonably Mac-competent user, and I can't think of another volume that covers the spectrum of Mac usership as comprehensively.

There are many pitfalls in trying to target a book like this too broadly, and Gene Steinberg has wisely chosen to avoid them and focus on orienting his presentation mainly toward newer users. This is not a manual for techno-geeks, and it's written in clear, easily-understandable English and without gratuitous jargon. If you get stumped, a good glossary is provided. The Table Of Contents is well laid out as is the Index. The book is liberally illustrated with screenshots.

One feature I especially appreciated is the italicized Notes and Cautions interpolated throughout the text, which tell you "why" in addition to "what" and how." However, I did take tentative issue with one of the cautions.

On page 341, Gene says that the Startup Disk Control Panel will not choose from among partitions on the same drive. That has not been my experience.

For example, my PowerBook 233 G3 has four partitions, three of which contain operating systems, OS 9.0, 8.5.1, and 8.1 respectively. The Startup Disk Control Panel quite happily switches from one to another with no problem.

This also worked with my PowerBook 5300, which has four partitions as well; my son's PowerBook 520 and WallStreet 233; and a friend's Performa 6500.

I emailed Gene to check, and he replied:

"I have personal experience on a number of Macs where it simply did not work (and only a handful where it did function). Since it is neither predictable, nor dependable, I cannot, as a general rule, recommend the procedure.

"Specifically, another partition is checked in Startup Disk. You restart, and it goes right back to the original partition. You open Startup Disk and all the partitions on the volume are checked."

So I shall defer to Gene's greater Mac erudition, but it still works fine on my Mac.

Generally, I couldn't find much to complain about with this book. If you are new to the Mac and would like a one-stop resource to get you up to speed on the platform, this book is what you're looking for. It would also make a fine present for someone you know who has just bought a Mac or who is not getting the full potential out of one they've had for a while. Come to think of it, "Mac OS 9: The Complete Reference" would be a fine learning tool for institutional or business training of Mac users.

And even if you're a seasoned Mac veteran, but would like to learn about the more than 50 new features in OS 9, this is a good resource for that and a lot more as well.

On thing that "Mac OS 9: The Complete Reference" does not include, that nearly all the Mac books I mentioned at the beginning of this article did is a CD-ROM. I guess the Internet has pretty much made bundling "shovelware" with books like this obsolete, although I did appreciate it in the old days.

I should also mention that Gene Steinberg was assisted in writing "Mac OS 9: The Complete Reference," by his 14 year old son, Grayson, who he says "was hard at work behind the scenes researching and writing first drafts on a number of chapters for me. His work was so good, in fact, that some of the peerless prose you read is his. Grayson's greatest contribution was to Chapter 26, which covers Mac games."

"Mac OS 9: The Complete Reference" is priced at $39.99.

Orders for "Mac OS 9: The Complete Reference" may be placed with Amazon Books here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0072125063/genesteinbergina/103-0938581-7609467

Charles W. Moore

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Monday, 06-Oct-2008 15:11:04 EDT