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The Macintosh Bible, 8th EditionEdited by Clifford Colby, Marty Cortinas [there are 30 authors]From
PeachPit
Press Review by Gary Coyne
Intended user: Beginner, and Intermediate. I've been getting MacBibles since the first edition. There was a period of time several editions ago where either due to the writing, editing, or perhaps reflecting on the state of the Mac market, the quality had gone down somewhat. But now, with the release of this 8th edition, the Macintosh Bible is the strong helping friend it should be. This Mac Bible follows pretty much the same format as they all have with minor variations. This edition has 22 chapters divided up into 4 parts. The first part includes a chapter on the basic Mac Interface, a chapter on hardware and the history of Mac hardware, the Mac OS, memory, storage, printing, external peripheral devices, prevention and troubleshooting. The 2nd part has chapters on word processing, spreadsheets, databases, personal and business management software, and utilities (such as compression, backing-up software, etc.) The 3rd part includes graphics, web design, and multimedia, page layout, fonts, and games The 4th part includes networking, internet, and cross-platform compatibility. There is also an Appendix on buying Macs, and a glossary. At the bottom of the Table of Contents, there is a Time line covering the history of the Mac. The time line covers such events as Annie (the pre-Mac) in 1978, the introduction of PageMaker in 1985 by Aldus, Adobe introducing Photoshop in 1990, and Apple releasing Applescript in 1993. My only regret is that these events are only broken down by year, not identified by month. A small quibble, but hey, this is a review. As mentioned below the title of this article, there were 30 authors responsible for this book. The Editors have done a good job balancing out the writing styles, as nothing is glaringly different. Perhaps one of the points that invigorated this Bible is OS X. In pointing out the specific differences between OS 9 and OS X, there seems to be a greater depth in writing. There are specific sections for OS X, and when specific paragraphs are for OS X, they are identified with a special icon (like many of these books, there are a variety of icons including "Hot Tips," "Bad Feature," Mac OS X," and "Warning" amongst others). Despite the many differences between OS 9 and OS X, there are a variety of actions that are the same in both OSs. As such, it would have been good if there had been an inclusion of [9], [X], or [9 & X] included with every system help, tip, or comment so the reader knew if such a comment is applicable and/or useful to their system. As this book is mostly for beginners, I do want to direct your attention to Chapter 8: "Prevention and Troubleshooting." Nothing can be more frustrating for anyone than when your computer is acting like it doesn't like you and you have a report due in less time than you have to complete it AND your computer is acting like it doesn't like you--freezing, crashing, and burning. Starting on page 345, this is the first section a beginner should read and then read it again very soon. I do not feel that this section is as fully written as I would like, but it's a good place to start. What is missing is a better explanation of how to differentiate between hardware and software related problems and what are program-caused problems and system-caused problems. Knowing how to differentiate between these can save enormous amount of time and energy when trying to resolve problems. Interestingly, one of the authors for this chapter, Ted Landau, is the author of the absolutely wonderful book "Sad Mac, Bombs, and Other Disasters." If you want more, this is the book to go to. There is a lot of material for beginners here, but there is something for advanced users as well. Advanced users may enjoy the 1st part with long discussions on the history of the various Macs, the various operating systems, printers, etc. The author(s) have done a great job of compiling a wonderful collection of facts, trivia, and historical tidbits that, as I read, I was going "Oh, I remember that," "Oh, so that's what happened there," "Hm, so that was the order of those events." The fact is trivia is fun and this book is filled with it. However, this book is intended for the beginner and one of the problems most beginners have is that they are mostly unaware of all the programs out there and what the advantages and/or disadvantages of these programs are. To assist the beginner, another long-standing section of the Mac Bible are guides on how to use basic programs. A basic introduction to the generic program type is followed by several pages providing hints and tips on several key programs. For example, three pages are provided specifically to Microsoft Word, two pages specifically to FileMaker Pro, almost two pages to 4th Dimension,. Jeepers, books have been written about these programs, a couple of pages is... is... well... it seems bizarre. Actually, it's something else that isn't so bizarre: it's some general information for the beginner who may have heard about some program called Photoshop and wonders what the difference is between that and Freehand. Or, why someone may want FileMaker Pro instead of a spreadsheet. For this reason, the few pages provided are actually pretty good. And, if you are somewhat familiar with these programs, the tips provided are probably, no definitely, worth skimming through. The full reality though is that even the expert in one program may be a beginner in another. If you need specific information on one specific program, don't waste your money on this book, get a book dedicated to that program or activity (i.e., networking). If you need some good general information, this book will suffice. One other small complaint is that when special key commands are suggested, they are fully written out (e.g., "Shift-Option-Command") instead of using the industry standard icons found in most other books. While the full writing out of these keys may help the beginner, it does not help the beginner who then picks up a book with the icons not knowing what is what. Nowhere within the book is a picture of these icons and what key they represent. One last piece of trivia: When the Mac Bible first came out, it introduced the concept of bundling a floppy disk with the book. The floppy disk had fonts, a few pictures, some shareware, whatever they could fit onto the 800k disk. A subsequent book provided two floppies, one for right-brain things and one for left-brain things. Then came the CD. When they brought out two CDs, they were not "officially" with the book--you either had to purchase them separately or a somewhat more expensive "bundle." Now, there isn't even a reference to CDs of times past (and there hasn't been for some time now). What would have been nice is if on the book's web site, they provided a link to every program/company mentioned in the book broken down by chapter. Yes, this would have been a bit of work, but certainly much less work than what used to be done for the floppies and the CDs. While the intermediate and advanced Mac user can use "Google," "Yahoo" and use other search engines to find pretty much anything they want, it is the beginner that this book is most important for, and such assistance would probably have been much appreciated. Maybe for the eagerly awaited Mac Bible, 9th edition.
Applelinks Rating
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