Customer Reviews

Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Leopard Edition

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have to strongly disagree with the reviewer here who suggests buying the "Leopard Edition Missing Manual" instead. Yes, there is duplication of content here, but there is also content that is NOT in the other book, and I think a Windows Switcher is going to be much happier with this book than the other. In an ideal situation, I'd give them both and have them read this first.

Sure, it could have been done better, and maybe there really is no need for two thick books. Maybe all the "switcher" stuff should be taken out of the "regular" book and all the "this is the way a Mac" works stuff should be taken out of this - then the two could and should be sold as a set for those who need or want both. Certainly both these books could use some trimming; they are fat and hard to handle.

This is the book I'd give my wife if and when I can get her to give up her Windows PC (I hate that stupid thing and cannot wait for it to die!). She'll be much happier with this than she would be with the other book.

I have recently moved from PC to a MacBook. After being a PC guy for the past 20 plus years, I found it very difficult to figure out how to do things with the MAC. Everything is different on the Mac OS. The first time I tried to change from PC to Mac I became frustrated and returned to the PC. A few months later, I decided to give it another try. This book has been a savior! This really is the book that should come with the MAC. It is very complete without being a "techie" manual. I can easily find the things I am looking for and they are easy to understand. There is even a section that describes what I use to do on a PC and how to do it on the Mac. If you are switching from a PC to Mac, definitely buy this book!
The Missing Manual also makes a similar book titled "Mac OS X Leopard". They both have a lot of the same stuff in them. "OS X Leopard" can get a little more into the weeds for a newbie. "Switching to the Mac" has the section that allows to to look up what you used to do on a PC and tells you how to do it on a Mac.

I was going to give this book 5 stars until I read the review that mentioned that formating isn't found in the index. He's right. I also checked "Mac OS X Leopard Bible" and also "Mac OS X 10.5" Quick Start Guide, and it isn't in either of those two either. I recently bought a digital photo frame and discovered that photos wouldn't load directly on it, the SD card wasn't even recognized as being available. So then I tried to format it on my PC in NTSC, and same thing. I tried FAT and only had slightly under 200 MB on a 4GB card available. Finally I used FAT 32 and it worked. I haven't tried it on my iMac yet - big question. So where are the answers?

That being said, I made the mistake of not buying this book before I tried to use the new iMac. I've used PCs for 25 years, and MS has partitioned my brain into Windows. I made the switch because of all the hoo-rah about the wonderful multi-media integration on the Mac. I won't describe all the wheel-spinning I did for months, but on a PC, when you do a 3rd party software downwload, you often get the query, would you like to create a shortcut. Try to find the word "shortcut" in Mac Help, or in the indexes of the two other books mentioned above. The word just isn't there. I know, this is simple stuff, but if you don't know that alias = shortcut in the Mac world, you're out of luck. I had heard so often that Mac and Apple were "intuitive," so it's a word I now despise. If your brain is Windows partitioned like mine is, there's nothing intuitive about a Mac, until you reconfigure your cranial neurons to Mac OS X. Then it's pretty nice.

I was ready to give my iMac to one of my daughters and go crawling back to Microsoft, when I decided to get this book. It opened up many of the possibilities for me, and I quickly purchased a few other titles in Pogue's Missing Manual series, and now I'm off and running, enjoying the new Mac. I think I'll keep it. Based on the format issue, I'll give this book 4 stars, but I would still buy it and recommend it to other switchers. Do yourself a favor, buy the book before you start aimlessly frustrating yourself and blindly plowing around Mac World. And buy a few other books after reading some of these reviews. You'll need 'em.

After using the Tiger version of Mac OS X (10.4) for a couple of months, I updated to the Leopard version (10.5) and obtained the Leopard edition of David Pogue's book from O'Reilly. Because of the new features in Leopard, this edition has expanded from 515 pages to 590 pages.

Although I expected to find a short section listing all of the new features introduced by Leopard, its absence is not a serious problem. These lists can be found on the Internet and then printed for reference.

This edition of the book follows the same chapter layout as the Tiger edition and includes all the very helpful features for anyone switching from a Windows-based PC to an iMac or MacBook. In addition to continually taking the PC-user's viewpoint in every section, there are chapters and sections especially designed to ease the transition. The most helpful for PC users are:

Chapter 1 - How the Mac is different

Chapters 5-7 - Transferring files, emails, contacts, etc. from your PC and also, Mac capabilities for replacing specific Windows programs

Appendix B - Where Did It Go? You'll find yourself referring to this useful appendix often to quickly find out how to do all the things that were second-nature on the PC, e.g., Ctl-Alt-Delete to `kill' stuck programs, shutdown, zipping/unzipping files, taskbar & system tray, favorites, and much more.

It you are switching from a PC to a Mac running Leopard, you'll love this book. But if you already have the Tiger edition and just want the Leopard content, then you will benefit more from purchasing the more comprehensive (almost 900 pages) Mac Leopard OS X: The Missing Manual, 2007, which is also by David Pogue.

For anyone that is not familiar with the wonderful, easy world that is the Apple Macintosh, consider yourself a poor, ignorant soul. Ever since the first Macintosh computer was launched in 1984, the Mac has been the most user-friendly computer available to the masses, and with the newest operating system X Leopard Edition, the same is true, only times X!!!

For existing Windows users who have decided to make the switch because they got their slick new iPod and loves the way it works or they just got a look at a Mac recently and decided it was for them this is the perfect manual for making the switch!!

Covering basics like getting e-mail up and running, importing bookmarks, listening to music, viewing digital pictures and all the other important parts of everyday personal computing is all contained in this book. Written by the amazing David Pogue, every topic is covered in an easy to read manner and this manual is chock full of images on nearly every page!!

For all recent Mac OS X users or people who have made the switch, this book truly SHOULD have been in the box with the OS. It's an incredibly well-written resource, and while it's full of hard data and examples, it's really fun at the same time!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Pogue, author/publisher of the spot-on "Missing Manuals" - a series well-regarded for consistently delivering what it promises - ought to be keel-hauled for producing such a sloppily cobbled and pitifully proofed reissue of his widely-lauded "Mac OS-X Leopard", all under the thin veneer of a smashing title (sure got this recent switcher's attention!).

Fortunately, the manual retains most of Pogue's inimitable touches of thorough attention to technical detail; by all rights it should have been a winner -- sad to say, it falls far short of that lofty target. This manual easily would have merited 4 stars for content, but instead turns out to be a second-best also-ran, flying under a false flag. Spend just a few more bucks to get the heavy-weight version of the author's authentic Leopard "Missing Manual"; while the switcher's tips appetizers are identical, the latter heaps more and fresher Leopard meat on your plate.

Section (even chapter) text seems to be blatantly copied-and-pasted verbatim from "Big Mac", including give-away wording lifted from that manual such as '(page 835)' on p. 570 in this 590-page book. Even the handy 5-page 'secret' master keystroke list (Appendix C) is exactly the same as the original's Appendix E. And, annoyingly, on and on. The 'new thin aluminum keyboard' (fig 1-5, p.21) shows four keys at bottom left (like the wireless keyboard), whereas the redesigned USB keyboard sports just three widened modifier keys [Ctrl, Alt (eh, Option), and Command], confining Fn to just one key near the top.

The Index -- an invaluable tool for transplants trying to come up to speed in the Mac world -- obviously hasn't been proofed, in that 'System Preferences' with 27 subentries is wedged between 'Sounds' and 'Spaces', to reappear (identically spelled, but with just one subentry) in its correct alpha position. I checked the Index in vain for 'Proxy Icon', a term foreign to Windows users; 'Formating' (a disk), that perennial Windows headache, likewise isn't referenced.

In brief: This is more of a 'Missed' [in the sense of opportunity lost, or failing the mark] than a 'Missing' Manual. By all means purchase this author's Mac OS-X 'Leopard' bible rather than this repackaged version, whose title may be its sole claim to originality.

A year ago, after careful consideration and a lot of research, I decided to take the plunge and after many years of Windoze (since 3.1), I decided to to try a Mac. I bought "Switching to the Mac" to ease some of the pain of the transition, which it most certainly has done. There is a wealth of information in this book that is very helpful in switching over.

I would have given this book a much better review except for two things. First, many of the tips on getting information and files from my Windoze machine over to the Mac simply didn't work as promised. I did eventually get most of it over, but some of it, like my Outlook Express address book I never got over. I had to reenter it manually. Overall, getting data from one to the other was not nearly as easy as I expected it to be from Pogue's book.

The second major flaw is the "Missing CD" referred to throughout the manual. They claim that the information that could have been put on a CD and included with the book, and which would have driven the price of the book up several dollars, is not included, to keep the price down, but is available online. Simply put, it's not. I tried to find and download two of the promised articles, and couldn't find or download them. I send a complaint to Missing Manuals publishers, and I got an apologetic reply promising me they'd find and direct me to the articles. They never did.

I'd have been a lot happier with book if they had just left the CD out, without any hollow promise that there was extra material available online.

In spite of my issues, this is, basically, a good, well written and fairly complete manual. I recommend it with these two caveats:

1. Don't believe that getting data from a Windoze machine to a Mac is as easy as it is portrayed in the book. Sometimes, even when a number of alternatives are given, they work, and sometimes they don't.

2. The "Missing CD" is still missing.

I'm now getting ready to purchase an iPhone, and am considering the Missing Manual as a possibility. But I'm not believing for a second that the "Missing CD" promised therein will actually be there.

I took the plunge and made the switch after 26 years of DOS/Windows. It was a difficult choice - expecting to have to learn so much to be able to configure, use and troubleshoot the MAC. It turned out to be easy. This book made a huge difference for me to get up and running quickly and become productive quickly. Great tips inside (especially on moving Outlook content over), short cut keys, Windows=MAC functions/keystrokes, etc. This book is worth every penny I paid. I would say it more than paid for itself in the time it saved me from reading manuals or figuring it out on my own. Thank you.

With the advent of yet another Windows version, and the professed capability to have Windows and Mac OS on the same computer, I have made the switch (or more accurately, are in the process of divorcing Windows). This easy to read and well indexed reference has been just enough information to get me from my IBM Thinkpad with Windows XP to the MacBook Pro running Windows XP in a VMware Fusion virtual machine. It is amazing to have the Windows toolbar at the bottom of the screen and the Mac doc on the side.

It doesn't have all the answers, but with the documentation that accompanies the VMware Fusion I have all I've needed, and not too much fluff or technical verbage in the way. I stumbled into the book while traveling, but it is the one I needed to make the transition smooth, yet keep an understanding of how it works at the user level.

The perfect addition to the sparse (but necessary) manuals that accompany your new Mac, and a copy of VMware Fusion.

The Mac operating system may be more logical & stable than Windows, but starting from scratch on a Mac can be difficult. This book does an excellent job of using what we already know from Windows and explaining how to do it on a Mac. I love that David really takes the time to explain the reasoning behind the Mac way of thinking; it helps with the learning curve. It is easy to read, progresses logically from beginning to end, and with a great index continues to be a valuable reference. Would absolutely buy this again, and plan on purchasing it for anyone else I know who is switching. As a bonus, several items are available from the book's website, both manuals and helpful programs.