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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nice blend of techie and practical information..., March 25, 2008
This review is from: Taking Your iPhone to the Max (Technology in Action) (Paperback)
So you've taken the plunge and bought an iPhone. You've read what passes for an instruction manual, and you're amazed that everything just seems to work. But you *know* there's more that you're missing. Taking Your iPhone to the Max by Erica Sadun does a very good job in walking you through all the major parts of the iPhone interface, explaining how they work, and giving you plenty of "hidden tips" along the way. I changed a few ways I do things on my iPhone after reading...
Contents:
Selecting, Buying, and Activating Your iPhone; Interacting with Your New iPhone; Placing Calls with iPhone; iPhone Messaging; iPhone E-mail; Browsing with Safari; Preparing Your Media in iTunes; It's Also an iPod; iPhone Photos; Google Maps and Other Apps; Hacking the iPhone; Index
Since the "instruction manual" included with the iPhone is about eight panels of a fold-out piece of paper, you're not going to get much in the way of instruction when you buy the thing. You can download the PDF guide from Apple's site, but how often did you ever read the manual of your prior cell phone? Thought so... Sadun presents the information in a much more relaxed and understandable format. Rather than a simple "do this, this, and this", she explains why things work the way they do, as well as some things that aren't common knowledge. For instance, there are a number of service shortcuts you can use to get information about your AT&T account. *225# will give you the balance of your bill, *646# will give you the remaining number of minutes on your account, etc. I'm sure you can dig up that information somewhere, but it's all nicely formatted and presented here in a logical, cohesive manner. Personally, I hadn't known of (or remembered) about punctuation dragging, where you touch the .?123 key and then drag your finger over to the punctuation character you want. Since it's a single character action, the keyboard immediately returns to the alpha setting. I find myself doing that all the time now.
While the book is well-suited for the non-techie phone users, there's also coverage of the jailbreak process and how that works. She references that technique in a number of places, and explains where you can find certain directories and files if you've got command-line access to your iPhone. As this came out before the official Apple API release, you won't get any coverage of it here. But when you get down to it, the people who will use the jailbreak method probably won't want to play by the restrictive rules of the official API anyway. :)
This wasn't the first iPhone book I've read, but it was no less valuable than the first one. I find myself picking up new tips and tricks that I didn't remember or that didn't stick the first time. And given the size and style of the book, it hits a nice blend between pure tech and hand-holding newbie. Nicely done...
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Mix of Beginner and Techie Content, November 16, 2008
This review is from: Taking Your iPhone to the Max (Technology in Action) (Paperback)
Great Mix of Beginner and Techie Content
As an iPhone user since summer of last year and a current user of a 3G phone, this book presents a great resource for someone who is just starting with an iPhone to someone fairly savvy. The content that covers the general usage of the phone is a lot better than any documentation that comes with the phone and there is a lot of information that you pick up along the way.
At first, I thought some of the earlier chapters were a little basic. As I was reading, I was surprised at the number of things that I picked up which now seem painfully obvious that I never knew before. Things like unlocking the phone faster or better using the iPhone stereo headset. After those chapters was a lot of meaty content.
There are a couple chapters on better email handling and browsing on the phone. For email handling, there's a good overview of how to setup mail on the iPhone and through iTunes as well. In Safari, I learned a few things for moving around and managing pages.
The next section is about prepping media for use on the iPhone and about the iPod functionality. There is also a section for hacking the iPhone. While this is a section that requires keeping current outside of the book, it is a good base of knowledge to know what to look for.
My usage of photos and the camera had been pretty limited before reading the book. Two things I took out of this section was the idea to use the iPhone more as a slideshow player than a camera (since I generally don't like the phone's camera) and to use Flickr to upload the pictures that I do take. The end of that chapter includes a dozen of oddball uses of the camera and some of them are really oddballs.
The book itself has an attractive layout and is easy to go through. There is a good mix of content and call-out tips which provide plenty of information for getting the most out of the iPhone. This book covers both Windows and Mac.
All in all, it's a very practical book that gives plenty of overview and great nuggets that will enhance your experience on the iPhone.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Taking I Phone to the Max, August 11, 2009
This review is from: Taking Your iPhone to the Max (Technology in Action) (Paperback)
This is a book for I Phone beginners. It goes step my step and shows you how your I Phone operates and gives you tips on how to get the most out of it. It is a little short on illustrations so some one that has a hard time picturing thing in their mind might have a trouble. The title may miss lead some into thinking it is how to hack your I Phone and it gives you a few tips on that, but it is basically an I Phone operating guide
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