Macintosh Troubleshooting Pocket Guide for Mac OS [Paperback]

David Lerner (Author), Aaron Freimark (Author), Tekserve Corporation (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2002

The press has called Tekserve Corporation, the idiosyncratic Macintosh repair store in New York City, "The Epicenter of Mac Culture in NYC", "The leader in Apple triage services" and "warm and eclectic - maybe even a little eccentric".

Unfortunately, not everyone can get down to Tekserve's West 23rd St location for the clear, down-to-earth Mac troubleshooting advice that Tekserve's owners dispense. For the rest of us, O'Reilly & Associates has published the Macintosh Troubleshooting Pocket Guide ($12.95) written by David Lerner and Aaron Freimark, of "the world's best Macintosh repair shop".

This slim pocket guide has the answers to frequently asked Macintosh troubleshooting questions. Imagine the quirky record store in the movie "High Fidelity," or the popular "Car Talk" show on National Public Radio, and you'll have a good idea of this book's flavor.

Tekserver has long provided its customers with a free "Frequently Asked Questions" document. We recently discovered this FAQ sheet and realized that-- like New York itself-- it was too good to leave just for the New Yorkers. With the help of Tekserve, we turned this FAQ sheet into the Macintosh Troubleshooting Pocket Guide.

The Macintosh Troubleshooting Pocket Guide covers the most common user hardware and software trouble, from disks stuck in drives to lost files. It's not just a book for Mac OS X (although it includes tips for OS X and Jaguar, the latest release), it's for anyone who owns a Mac of any type-- there are software tips going back as far as OS 6. The Macintosh Troubleshooting Pocket Guide distills the answers to the urgent questions that Tekserve's employee's answer every week into a handy guide that fits in your back pocket or alongside your keyboard.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

is the co-founder of TekServe, NYC's leading Mac repair store. In the dark days of the Mac's decline, when his partner wanted to start servicing PCs as well, David drew a line in the sand. His faith has been rewarded, and Apple's resurgence has made David very happy, and very busy.

graduated from Cornell University in 1993 with a bachelor's in Applied & Engineering Physics. A systems engineer at Tekserve, Aaron has a Consulting and Graphic Design business, and also manages to spend a lot of time doing community organizing with the Humanist Movement in New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (November 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596004435
• ISBN-13: 978-0596004439
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 4.9 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,292,057 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Little Book...., November 8, 2004

By 

Michigan Apple User Group "a Macintosh User G... (Detroit MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Macintosh Troubleshooting Pocket Guide for Mac OS (Paperback)

The Macintosh Troubleshooting Pocket Guide is a great little book. It is informative. It is for OS 9 and OS X. It's small size is useful and convenient to carry it around with you and your laptop. It's small size, also, makes it undaunting for those who don't particularly like to read. Finally, it has a nice, question and short answer, format to it.

Here are a couple of questions/problems in the book for example; "A disk is stuck in my Mac." My Mac froze up. Now what?" I just spilled beer/tea/coffee/syrup on my keyboard." It then goes on to give a short answer to your problem.

The information ranges from problems such as these, to basic computer questions such as "What is Firewire Target Mode?" "How do I turn on File Sharing?" and "How do I clean my screen?"

At $12.95 it is a great book to have around whether you're a beginner or more experienced. If you are a beginner you can read it from cover to cover in order to learn more about your computer.

If you're more experienced it is a great reference to have around if you can't quite remember something or that certain key combination. Finally if you don't like to read, this is the book for you because it is about a centimeter thick instead of an inch or two thick, yet is surprisingly packed with good useful information.

Tony Moore - Michigan Apple User Group

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars unsure how helpful it will be, April 27, 2003

By 

Damian Heffernan (canberra, act Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Macintosh Troubleshooting Pocket Guide for Mac OS (Paperback)

Two things about this book: Firstly it is actually a reprint of a FAQ that is available for download or viewing on a website, and secondly unless you actually have a problem it's quite hard to tell wether or not it will help. I have had a couple of the problems that are mentioned in this book and their advice is spot on so it may be safe to assume that they do actually know what they are talking about with regards to other problems. Books such as this are quite hard to rate as problems come up infrequently and each problem seems to have it's own unique features so a general guide may only get you out of trouble fifty percent of the time. That said this company is quite legendary when it comes to fixing Mac's so the book certainly has potential to be helpful if you do encounter standard problems. It would also save you hunting around for that A4 printout of the FAQ and it's quite a nice pocket sized reference book and a high quality printing.
If you want a hard copy and aren't able to print this off the website then certainly buy this book.

2.0 out of 5 stars Not very helpful, March 6, 2010

By 

Barry D. Mcgrath "sly dog" (los angeles ca usa) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Macintosh Troubleshooting Pocket Guide for Mac OS (Kindle Edition)

I got this book in a Kindle edition - and the Kindle isn't really the device to use for a quick reference. Some of the formatting on key sequences and so on aren't even laid out correctly with the multiple keys on different lines.

In addition, the material in the book is much more OS9 than OS X. I really don't think help on updating from OS 8.6 to OS 9 is the kind of problem I expect to run into anytime soon.

I read through it when I got it and didn't see anything really worthwhile. I haven't opened it since.

I expect a lot more from O'Reilly books than I got from this one.