Simplified Mac OS X Tiger
reviewed by Dr. Eric Flescher
Author: Erick Tejkowski Wiley Publishing, Inc. 111 River Street Hoboken , NJ 07030-5774 Booksite: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0764599992.html Released: November 2005. Pages: 240 $25 USD, $32 CND, £17 GBP, 22€ EUR ISBN: 0764599992 Strengths: Very visually oriented specific. Book is well laid, colorfully laid out and includes screenshots, and colorful. Good job done with iPhoto, iTunes watching and editing video. Weaknesses: The automator utility could have shown more examples. No information about the keywords that are used in iPhoto to classify and sort your pictures. |
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Mac OS X Tiger is a proven operating system that has become even more versatile and powerful since being created a few years ago. With each version, there are more proven capabilities that the computer user can utilize in many ways. Some of the operating features are easy to understand and use. Other capabilities may be a little more formidable to understanding. That is where a good book can help understand how to get the most about knowing about Mac OS X Tiger. The book Simplified Mac OS X Tiger is a great book to find the mysteries of Mac OS X Tiger.
The author is a write and developer on numerous Mac-related books and articles that have appeared in magazine such as MacWorld, MacTech and MacAddict. This book has 12 colorful chapters with over 228 pages. The visual appealing step by step instructions are well laid out and easy to understand. The instruction includes red highlight dots that the colorful screen shots help in the demonstration of the knowledge and information. But more visual cues help the understanding.
Color codes
A green-colored computerized creature with legs, sneakers, hands and a cap serves to introduce information on most of the pages.
Red color step by step
Red numbered dots points to the screenshots information instructions. These are very well done, some of the best I have seen in self- help books that clearly illustrate and point out the specific information needed to know. No guess work to find the instructions. These colored dots highlight each specific step by step instruction and red arrows point toward the parts of the screenshots being talked about.
Blue titles - Helpful in boldface
Chapter Summaries
Chapter 1, “ Mac OS X Tiger Fundamentals,” talks about the various facets of the Finder, interfacing with other equipment and running Applications. Small bits, but possibly important information are also included like subsection: Click the mouse once or twice, Controls the Mac with menus, working with the finder windows, changing the windows view option, understanding applications using the dock, toggle applications, put your Mac to sleep, get help and more. This information is basic information, but important especially for novice Mac users.
Chapter 2, “ Mastering the Finder, ” reviews context menus, increasing productivity, organizing windows, customizing icons, duplicating and deleting files, creating file archives and duplicating files. There are additional help sections like the window that talks about “What step do I need to take a copy a file from one hard drive to another disk,” and “ I copied the wrong file, How what should I do?” Suggestions like (p.32) “ increase productivity with the sidebars” simplify screen tabs were informative. Another great example that the author suggests is the remaking of the sidebars my finder windows (page 33) “ is another great suggestion.
Chapter 3, “ Customizing Tiger with System Preferences, ” shows various ways to make your operating system work the your own way. Learn about changing the interface, dock, customizing the desktop background, play a screen saver, adjust settings, keyboard, mouse, date and time. These are some of the inner workings of the preferences that can be adapted to the way you desire.
Chapter 4, “ Completing everyday Tasks, ” works with the daily simple tasks to communicate. Address book, contacts, numerical conversions and reading and writing documents with textedit are here. The new edition here is Spotlight, which is the new application to find information. This application serves to find any type of file or information on your hard drive or, sometimes very importantly, within application that supports it. There is a great little section (page 77) “what is metadata, and what does it have to do with Spotlight?” and “How to find a document (text, HTML, PDF, word-processing files)” on your hard drive.
More fun begins with, Chapter 5, “ Working with Images.” Working with iPhoto is a major portion of this chapter. Importing, exporting, editing and viewing images and more are all previewed to show you how to use iPhoto. However using the little mini- application called “keywords,” (used to classify, find and sort photos and which I just found about and started to utilize) is absent so that cataloging the photos will have to something you will have to find on your own.
Knowing about music is covered in Chapter 6, “ Listening to Music.” Listening and working with iTunes, organizing CD audios, music collections, building playlists burning CDs, sharing music and additional information are covered.
Chapter 7, “ Watching and editing video” delves into the complexity of video editing. Starting with capturing video from camcorders, the chapter then carries you through adding clips, mixing audio, creating titles, using transitions and special effects and sharing movies are reported here.
Chapter 8, “Harnessing the power of the Internet,” includes more information to include starting out about the internet but includes more advanced information for better “surfing” capabilities.
Chapter 9, “ Connecting the other machines on a network” lets you harness the ability to share with other Mac and Windows computers, build web serves, sharing printers, using Ichat and more.
Sharing files with Macs and Window users, adding a iChat Buddy, sending instant files messages with iChat.
Learning about “ Utilities” in Chapter 10, (page 180) highlights network activities, viewing system information, grabbing screen shot, managing printing are the main applications included previously. New applications are Dashboard (P.190) and Dashboard (page 190) and Automator common tasks (page 194). The handy new tools, called Widgets, in Dashboard can display a variety little applications (stock quotes, calculator, and others). Removing a widget and installing other widgets (also highlighted, which is a nice touch, is a website to see where to get more widgets) is most helpful because I found both these operations a needed welcome.
“Automate a common task” is new. This utility allows the working with actions, an automated building block that typically performs a single or multifaceted function. Possibly Apple decided to place this in Tiger to duplicate operations you would normally do many times, saving time and effort. Some of the possible actions are open a folder, sort by date, save list, do events with iCal and more functions. I had tried Automate previously before receiving this book and found the steps a little confusing. However with this book, I found the visual screen shots and additional information assisted me in gaining a better understanding for using these mini -utilities. Also helpful were the two windows which included “Can I use an Automator workflow with launching Automator? “ and “ How do I remove a step from the workflow. “
Knowing about Chapter 11, “ Connecting peripherals to a Mac, “ helped gain a handle on using peripheral devices so that you can connect to your Macintosh (digital camera, iPod, etc). Using a microphone with chat, conducting a video chat, working with iPods are also part of this chapter.
Troubleshooting Mac Problems, Chapter 12, was a chapter I found interesting. Knowing how to quit a frozen application, I knew. However, force-quit from the dock was I probably had not discovered. Here I also found the questions to answer “ Is it safe to force-quit an application?” and “What causes applications to freeze? Is it my fault?” an interested read. Some users might not know how to update their software on a regular basis. The help query, “If I set Software Update to check for updates automatically, will it install software without asking me? “ and “ The update take a long time to download. Is there anything I can do to lessen this wait?”, but a worthwhile read. Also helpful was uninstalling an Application, Repair a disk, Empty startup disc, Troubleshoot with a New User, also with the nine-page index.
This book is a great resource for novice to intermediate users who want to learn about Tiger. The colorful and well laid out pages are easy to read and informative. While the book has a nice set of resources Intermediate to Advanced users may want to consult other books and resources that have more specific and in depth information concerning iMovie, iPhoto, Automator and others.
