MacWorld Mac Secrets 5th Ed.

By David Pogue & Joseph Schorr

IDG Books

© 1999, IDG Books

$49.99 (USA)

Review by Gary Coyne

Secrets. Everyone loves secrets. You are supposed to keep secrets. But don't ever tell David Pogue or Joseph Schorr a secret. Not only will they tell everyone the secret, they'll print the secret into big book (1291 pages) ---and they will get paid for it.

Actually, these aren't supposed to be secrets; more accurately, they could be considered "hidden and little known facts." Unfortunately "MacWorld Mac Hidden and Little Known Facts" just doesn't trip off the tongue quite as well.

If you had all day to play on the Mac and press every variation of keys when selecting the "About..." in the Apple menu, most of these secrets wouldn't be hidden to you either. But you don't and they do and that's why they wrote a book about them. In fact, this is the 5th edition of this book. With 2.5 million copies of all their "Secrets" books in print, and since their day job is to write about things Macintosh for MacWorld magazine, unlike you and I, they Do have all day to sit around and press every variation of keys when selecting the "About É" in the Apple menu. Theirs is a rough life no doubt.

The book is (reasonably) up to date, as much as any computer book can be, and covers OS 8.5, the iMac, G3 (but not the new blue G3), USB, Office 98, and the latest on the Internet. Information covers a wide variety of topics, including one on monitors. Specifically, the chapter on Monitors is broken down thusly:

• How a CRT picture tube works
• What VRAM is and how it affects your display
• The importance of monitor resolution
• Tricks and shortcuts for multiple-monitor setups
• The PowerBook screen: How it works.

But on every page there are collections of trivia and facts that get the reader caught every time he or she opens the book. For example, most readers will probably know that if he or she has a multiple monitors set up, he or she can move windows from one monitor to the next---that's the advantage of multiple monitors. But did the reader know that there is ONE window that cannot be moved from one monitor to the next.? That window is the Monitors and Sound window. Also, if anyone reading this has a PowerBook 540 or (its equivalent) a Performa 450 and is using a system earlier than 7.5.3, check the Monitors control panel. These computers have built in 8-bit video. However, if in the Monitors control panel one selects 640 by 400 (not the normal 640 by 480) and restart, the computer screen will now have 16 -bit video.

These examples demonstrate one of the wonders and fun of this book. This author of this review has never owned a PowerBook 540 or a Performa 450---but knowing that useless piece of trivia is fun. Trivia like this makes one say things like "wow" and "cool" while reading.

But the best part is that in between all the fun trivia is the really important and/or and really helpful trivia. For example, what's the difference between color depth and monitor resolution? What is VRAM and how much do you need? And why does running your computer at 256 colors allow the computer to run faster than when running at millions of colors?

But wait, there's more. The book comes with a CD with 500 MB of "commercial software and award-winning shareware." Also included on the CD is one of more ingenious additions to be placed on a book's bundled CD: the book. The book on the CD is in pdf format (Adobe Acrobat's public document format) so that with Acrobat or the free Acrobat Reader, one can read the book while on the computer or away from the computer with the um, ah, eh, real book. Regrettably, there is no hyperlinking whatsoever, so if you are looking at the table of contents or the index, clicking anywhere will get you nowhere. Fortunately in Acrobat, you can click on the page number box, enter the page you want and get there just the same. Just in case the reader wishes to know what has changed from the 4th edition to the current 5th edition, the 4th edition is also placed on the CD. Elsewhere on the CD there are fonts, sounds, clip art pictures, utility programs, and free software in a demo version (with some form of self-crippling like an inability to save or print), that some companies have provided.

There is a pleasant range of shareware and freeware provided. Games, art programs, utilities (both useful and not) should successfully take up several evenings of roaming. Although most are recent versions, it may be wise to go on the web to check to see if any programs that you have particular interest in are in fact the most recent versions. Fortunately, this CD provides a great way to view and test these programs to see if you want to spend the time on long downloads to get the latest and greatest.

Unfortunately, because the computer business is as fast as it is, some topics were out of date or not even available by the time the ink was dry. There is little reason to be concerned, because as sure as this is a great book, once the disks were sent to the publisher, Pogue and Schorr were already started on the 6th edition.

.

October 06, 2008