iPhone: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition [Paperback]

David Pogue (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0596804296 | ISBN-13: 978-0596804299 | Publication Date: August 11, 2009 | Edition: 3rd

If you have a new iPhone 3GS, or just updated your 3G with iPhone 3.0, iPhone 3.0: The Missing Manual will bring you up to speed quickly. New York Times tech columnist David Pogue gives you a guided tour of every feature, with lots of tips, tricks, and surprises. You'll learn how to make calls and play songs by voice control, take great photos, keep track of your schedule, and more. This entertaining book offers complete step-by-step instructions for doing everything from setting up and accessorizing your iPhone to troubleshooting. If you want to learn how iPhone 3.0 lets you search your phone, cut, copy, and paste, and lots more, this full-color book is the best, most objective resource available.

• Use it as a phone -- save time with things like Visual Voicemail, contact searching, and more
  
• Treat it as an iPod -- listen to music, upload and view photos, and fill the iPhone with TV shows and movies
  
• Take the iPhone online -- get online, browse the Web, read and compose email in landscape, send photos, contacts, audio files, and more
  
• Go beyond the iPhone -- use iPhone with iTunes, sync it with your calendar, and learn about the App Store, where you can select from thousands of iPhone apps

Unlock the full potential of your iPhone with the book that should have been in the box.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The new iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3.0 software have arrived, and New York Times tech columnist David Pogue is on top of it with a thoroughly updated edition of iPhone: The Missing Manual. Each custom-designed page helps you use your iPhone for everything from web browsing to watching videos. The iPhone is packed with possibilities, and with this handy book, you can explore them all.

iPhone 3GS Picture-Taking Goodies
by David Pogue

If you have an iPhone 3GS, then you’re in for some extra camera goodness. See the white box in the center of the screen? That’s telling you where the iPhone thinks the most important part of the photo is. That’s where it will focus; that’s what it examines to calculate the overall brightness of the photo (exposure); and that’s the portion that will determine the overall white balance of the scene (that is, the color cast).

But often, dead-center is not the most important part of the photo. The cool thing is that you can tap somewhere else in the scene to move that white square—to make the camera recalculate the focus, exposure, and white balance.

Here’s when you might want to do this tapping: 1) When the whole image looks too dark or too bright. If you tap a dark part of the scene, you’ll see the whole photo brighten up; if you tap a bright part, the whole photo will darken a bit. You’re telling the camera, “Redo your calculations so this part has the best exposure; I don’t really care if the rest of the picture gets brighter or darker.” 2) When the scene has a color cast. If the photo looks, for example, a little bluish or yellowish, tap a different spot in the scene—the one you care most about. The iPhone recomputes its assessment of the white balance. 3) When you’re in macro mode. If the foreground object is very close to the lens—4 to 8 inches away—the iPhone automatically goes into macro (super closeup) mode. In this mode, you can do something really cool: You can defocus the background. The background goes soft, slightly blurry, just like the professional photos you see in magazines. Just make sure you tap the foreground object.

About the Author

David Pogue, Yale '85, is the weekly personal-technology columnist for the New York Times and an Emmy award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News. His funny tech videos appear weekly on CNBC. And with 3 million books in print, he is also one of the world's bestselling how-to authors. He wrote or co-wrote seven books in the "For Dummies" series (including Macs, Magic, Opera, and Classical Music). In 1999, he launched his own series of amusing, practical, and user-friendly computer books called Missing Manuals, which now includes 100 titles.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 3rd edition (August 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596804296
• ISBN-13: 978-0596804299
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #127,653 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #26 in Books > Computers & Technology > Hardware > Internet & Networking

More About the Author

David Pogue is the personal-technology columnist for the New York Times. Each week, he contributes a print column, an online column and an online video. His daily blog, "Pogue's Posts," is the Times's most popular blog. David is also an Emmy award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News and a frequent guest on NPR's "Morning Edition." His trademark comic tech videos appear each Thursday morning on CNBC. With over 3 million books in print, David is one of the world's bestselling how-to authors. He launched his own series of complete, funny computer books called the Missing Manual series, which now includes 60 titles. David graduated summa cum laude from Yale in 1985, with distinction in Music, and he spent ten years conducting and arranging Broadway musicals in New York. He's been profiled on both "48 Hours" and "60 Minutes."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 3.0 OS iPhone Manual, August 21, 2009

By 

B. A. Dilger "floating world" (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: iPhone: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition (Paperback)

This is the current manual for the iPhone 3Gs and the upgraded iPhone 3G 3.0 OS. Though unofficial, if you want to understand the powerhouse in your hand this comes highly recommended. Author David Pogue, et al, has written an extremely user-friendly text with useful graphics. It's great to be able to navigate through the new 'cut, copy, and paste' feature with relative ease. In my review of the 2nd edition I stated that this book was a whole lot more usable than the online instructions. It is. And again for reference you can purchase the electronic version from the iTunes App Store on your iPhone (iPhone the missing manual, third edition). I prefer the book itself since that is the way humanity has received it's wisdom for millennia. And all it takes is a little study with this manual to control the smart phone of the ages.

53 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Just what I need, August 19, 2009

By 

Missapple "Linda Cameron" (Tri-Cities, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: iPhone: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition (Paperback)

This book covers all iPhones including the new 3GS and software 3.0. It can be bought as a hard copy or a PDF (Portable Digital Format) or as ePub (which you can put right on your iPhone or iPod Touch). If you like, you can buy both the hard copy and eBook for a discount special price from O'Reilly's website, the publisher.
For this review, I am using the PDF version and reading it on my Mac. I also put the ePub version on my iPhone, then if I am away from home and I need to look up how to do something, I have it right there with me. Advantages to having the electronic version of this book is that it is easy to search in Acrobat. I can also enlarge the text on the screen if my eyes are tired.
I am a new iPhone user, but I am not on an AT&T monthly plan. I had been thinking of buying an iPod Touch, but knowing that the iPhone is an iPod Touch and then some, I talked my brother into selling me his 3G iPhone for the cost of him buying a new 3GS iPhone. He was happy to do that since he got the new model iPhone for "free" and I got a very cool device that is an iPod Touch and much more. It has a camera, GPS, microphone, speakers and the ability to be a cell phone.
Not having owned one before yesterday, I had very little experience with how to use it. iPhone The Missing Manual is a real boon for me. Besides learning how to use my fingers to navigate through all the iPhone areas, I am learning a wealth of other cool things I can do with the iPhone.
For the beginner, it is nice to get a description of the seven basic finger techniques for doing things--tap, drag, slide, flick, pinch, spread, double-tap and two-finger tap.
Already on day two I have used the iPhone to make calls using Skype (calling other people's phones) and I was extremely pleased at how well it works. You have to have Wi-Fi for any internet usage on the iPhone if you aren't on a cell phone plan. With Wi-Fi (which I have in my house) I can also get email and answer it, go to web pages, use FaceBook and Twitter and upload photos directly from the iPhone to a MobileMe web gallery. Thanks to this book, I also figured out other people can upload their photos to my web gallery rather than send them to me as email attachments which I would have to download to look at.
Another really cool feature of having an iPhone and a MobileMe account, is that you can enable a feature called "Find My iPhone" in case you lose it. If you just lose it in the house, you can make it beep loudly for a couple of minutes which should make it easy to find. If you have lost it somewhere else, you can send a message to the iPhone asking whoever finds it to return it. If the person isn't honest and doesn't return it, you can also find the area on a map from the GPS in the phone to locate the phone. Besides all that, you can remotely wipe the iPhone to protect all your personal data. That is such a cool feature. Anyone who uses an iPhone should definitely also have a MobileMe account just for that. MobileMe is great for a lot more though.
If you think an iPhone doesn't have much to it--think again. This book is 418 pages. Sure, some of the information doesn't apply to me, but there is a lot that I can use.
David Pogue is always worth it, and I definitely recommend this book.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Do I need another Iphone Manual? Yes, I do!, September 29, 2009

By 

Eddie Wannabee (Western Hemisphere) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: iPhone: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition (Paperback)

Call me dense, too busy to learn the hard way, technologically challenged but do not call me late for supper! I will not make apologies for wanting to learn from the best how to use the Iphone 3GS to its full extent and with the help of iPhone: The Missing Manual: Covers All Models with 3.0 Software-including the iPhone 3GS I am finally well on my way. What appears to be a cut and dried device is undoubtedly much more. Yes, I did go to the Apple Website and I went through some tutorials when initial questions arose. But like a wise reviewer pointed out some people prefers to learn the old fashioned way: with a book. I have purchased several books on computers throughout my time using computers. No, I am not very fluid on computers, even though I have to admit to myself I have learned quite a bit over the years and it makes me proud to realize I was not the "zero to the left" once I feared I was when it came to computers.
David Pogue's is a fine and well informed teacher. He knows a lot more than the average user. I have bought his book on Leopard (when I finally made the switch from PC's to Apple, so glad I did by the way), also the one on Office 2008 for Macintosh so I knew that he is a capable, competent source writer. At one time I even got mad to be buying so many books but that is what some must do to learn and I am one. The Iphone book by David Pogue is a delightful, entertaining, visual learning experience. I had my doubts what book on this subject to buy because similar books had release dates before the 3GS came to the market. I kept waiting and looking for reassuring reviews on what book dealt with the 3GS and was considered at least a 4 Stars. I realized soon enough that the number of people flocking after books for Iphone 3GS was extremely limited (is it because the average owner is more savvy? do not need to purchase additional resources and are content with Apple's?) so I couldn't single out the best of the bunch. Finally I gave Mr. Pogue's book a try and as I have been reading it at night, in bed might as well say it because I find it a very relaxing learning environment, with the wonderful Iphone 3GS laying right besides me and ready to interact with, I discovered that for the money you can not go wrong with this book. He is funny, all of a sudden he will say something very amusing, it is just his style. But he also seems to be a 5th Degree Black Belt on the subject at hand. Yes, this is an updated version and it definitely covers the 3GS. Thought I write this review when I noticed how few were available. I am sure other authors writing on the same subject have the potential to be as good as Mr. David Pogue but I chose his book for I know he knows. 5 Stars, Love the Iphone 3GS with its camera, video capabilities, voice memos, wallpapers, bluetooth, etc etc. For such a streamlined device it sure packs a lot of goodies!