Compras Nikon Bluetooth |
Apple, however, provides little documentation - and the online Help files are of marginal value at best.
As a result, a good manual is pretty important to help you get the most out of your machine (and there is way more under the hood than most users realize). Pogue's Missing Manuals are beautifully written and easy to follow, and truly are the manuals that should have shipped in the box! Highly recommended!
My problem with most computer "how to" books is that I either can't understand them or they are written for "dummys". This book, however, is written in an easy to follow style and uses simple language.
I recommend this book to anyone who has upgraded to Panther, is thinking of upgrading to Panther, or may some day in the future upgrade to Panther. It's just that good!!
And I was not disappointed.
I've been using Panther now since November, and picked up this book at the same time. And it still sits on my desk as a reference, because I haven't been able to commit all the tips and help to memory. This is also a pretty good book for users new to OS X, but as an experienced user, Pogue points out all the little tips and tricks that make OS X a dream to use.
The format, structure, and graphical features are the same as the earlier editions, although this volume is a bit larger, at 763 pages, including index. All the important and most popular features of Panther are covered comprehensively, including the new Sidebar navigation feature, the Expos application "launcher", FileVault encryption, the return of the Labels feature, and fast-user switching. The new applications are covered here also, like the built-in fax program, iChat AV, and the Font Book font manager.
Pogue is best when he provides power-user tips and discloses hidden or little-known features of Panther. The nearly-obscure ColorSync control panel now illustrates gamut spaces in color profiles, for example, and he describes "Pixlet", a new video codec which is a lossless highly efficient video compression tool (supposedly designed for use by Pixar employees and associates only).
Other little-known tidbits include descriptions and insights to some of the Developer tools on the XCode Tools CD . There is an OSX version of Simple Text which includes a sound-record feature, not available anywhere else in Panther or in OSX applications, with the exception of iMovie. A special feature is the addition of mini-manuals on Safari and the iLife applications - iMovie, iPhoto, iChat, and iTunes.
This leaves an opening that Pogue is readily trying to fill. There are screen captures on most pages, which in no small part adds to the book's heft. But the figures and text explain their subjects well.
Experienced unix users may well find joy here. If you worked on AIX, HPUX, IRIX, Solaris or others, you know that they have basically standardised on the Common Desktop Environment GUI, which is very nice. But OS X is also a unix. Eerie. An alternate universe where there are the familiar terminal windows and command lines. But the GUI has been totally reworked. Logically very coherent and polished, once you get used to it, perhaps with this book to help you.
Starting with what one sees when they first start up Panther, Mr. Pogue takes the reader through the basics of the Mac desktop; folders and windows, organizing things, the Dock, the Sidebar, and how to arrange and rearrange things to suit your own tastes and needs. Experienced Mac and OS X users may find things slow at the beginning, but Mr. Pogue does provide the whys and wherefores of Panther in a well-written, easy to understand manner that does make it a pleasure to read through every section. Mr. Pogue makes excellent use of hi-lighted boxes bearing titles of Frequently Asked Questions, Up to Speed, Nostalgia Corner, Gem in the Rough, Power Users' Clinic and Troubleshooting Moment to explain and add emphasis to what is being covered in that chapter or section. The screen shots also add to explaining things as you go along.
As you read through the book, you are shown OS X programs, the use of OS 9 in the scheme of things "X", and then the components of OS X that are available with the software. You are also shown the free programs that come with OS X; Font Book, iCal, iTunes, iSync, Safari, Sherlock, QuickTime Player, to name a few, and how to make use of their capabilities. Want to import pictures from your digital camera to your Mac? Page 288 will show you how, and then show you how to share them, print them and finally email them out to friends and family.
Mr. Pogue then takes you into the technology of OS X and its UNIX underpinnings. Administrator and Standard accounts are shown, their setup and usage, signing in, logging out, Fast User switching, Networking... the list just goes on. Every aspect of the OS is shown and explained, from A to Z. Best of all, Pogue does it with humor, wit and a writing style that doesn't bog you down or put you to sleep, particularly when you get into the aspects of UNIX. For new users of the Mac or new converts to OS X, Unix and the use of Terminal is geek-speak to the nth degree. Bash, tcsh, pwd, Is, cd, mv, rm, srm, using man; they're explained and their usage is also shown. While you might not want to use them, it's good to have the knowledge available just in case you have to use it somewhere down the line.
I was a bit surprised at the amount of little gems that I picked up as I read through the book. Access to the Character Palette, keyboard viewer, storing Apple Software Updates... how many of you know that you can save that Software Update by choosing UpdateŽInstall and Keep Package? Want to play a game of chess but have no one to play with right now? Why not try playing against your Mac by going into your Applications folder, double-clicking on Chess and then choosing new game. Have a microphone available? Try using the voice-recognition feature and tell your Mac what moves you want to make where. Are you a new convert from an older Mac OS and you've just switched to OS X and you're not sure what happened to some of your favorite Mac features? Not to worry as Appendix C provides you with a complete guide as to what stayed and to what disappeared. Oh, and for the new Mac users who have switched from Windows, don't worry, Appendix D will provide you with a handy-dandy listing of what does what in OS X.
Oh, by the way, when you first open the book, there on the inside cover is a drawing of the Missing CD-ROM that didn't come with the book and that just saved you $5.00 off the cost. Not to fear, you are directed to go to http://www.missingmanuals.com and click on the Missing CD icon. Once there, you will find links to 22 sites containing additional software that Mr. Pogue covers in the book.
I really enjoyed reading this book. It is well written and covers what a Mac user needs to know to work with OS X Panther. As has been stated in the past with Mr. Pogue's other Missing Manual books- this is what should have come in the box with your Mac. But since it didn't, run, don't walk, to your nearest bookstore or online book seller and get yourself a copy of Mac OS X - The Missing Manual (Panther Edition) This is a definite must-have for Mac OS X users!
Highly Recommended!
My Mac Rating: 5 out of 5
http://www.mymac.com/showarticle.php?id=1313
As I see it, there are really two groups of people who might be wondering whether or not they ought to buy Pogue's new Panther book: Mac users who own a previous edition of the Missing Manual, and those who don't. For the latter folks, the short answer is yes - you should buy this book. And for the former, the short answer is probably. Keeping in mind that all the various online retailers offer significant discounts on the book, and that you can also get 30% off if you've registered a previous edition with O'Reilly, it's going to only wind up costing you about twenty bucks, and it's definitely worth it. The book hasn't just been updated to reflect changes and new features in Panther - it's also been updated to reflect reader feedback on previous versions, including things like more information for people migrating from Windows, and mini-manuals on some of the iLife applications. There isn't a single page that hasn't been changed from the Jaguar edition of the book (and there are over seven hundred pages).
Some of my Mac-using friends have told me that they haven't picked up anything from the Missing Manual series because they're under the impression that they're basically novice guides. This is both right and wrong - it's absolutely true that beginners will get their money's worth from a Missing Manual and that they won't get lost in an abundance of overtechnical discussion. The part that isn't true, however, is the implication that these are books only for beginners. I've been using Macs for over ten years now (and various Unix-like systems for five), but my copies of the Missing Manuals get dog-eared and underlined more than any other technical books I own. One of the reasons I'd dispute the claim that this book isn't useful for advanced users is that sprinkled throughout are dozens of little productivity notes - a keystroke here, a shortcut tip there - and this is the stuff that I, at least, really get off on, while it seems like novice users tend to be content with straightforward dragging and double clicking. I dive into Part One ("The Mac OS X Desktop") with my Mac in easy reach not because I don't know how to minimize a window, but because I had no idea that (for example) there's now a Finder keystroke to jump immediately to the parent directory. That's not to say topics typically associated with power users aren't given their due, though. Even people who know their Unices (and Unix workalikes) will probably welcome the coverage of NetInfo Manager and other OS X oddities. If you find yourself stuck on some particular topic, chances are it's covered here. It's not by any means an exhaustive guide to BSD, but it's a good way to get started with Darwin. I end up using this book often enough that it has its own place of honor on top of my G4 (my other Mac books are also nearby, of course, but they're not necessarily quite so handy).
Aside from the little-bit-of-everything approach, one of the most refreshing features of the Missing Manuals series remains the writing itself - surprisingly readable, often funny, and rarely confusing. These are some of the few technical books that I'm willing or able to read cover to cover, and some of them I've even read in bed or on the subway. As for specific parts and chapters that stand out from the rest: the new mini-manuals dealing with iLife applications like iTunes and iPhoto are a welcome addition. They'd been more or less ignored in previous editions of the OS X book, since they've got their own books, but the Panther edition introduces a section on each to get you started. Another of my favorite portions of the book is the addition of Appendix F, the Master Mac OS X Secret Keystroke List. It will take a while before I'm able to memorize all of them, and in the meantime it's great to have them all collected in one place.
I would never dream of upgrading to the latest OS without reading author David Pogue's insights about how to make the most of the new system.
From the start, the beauty of the Mac OS had been that users never had to memorize a lot of random codes and commands to become adequately familiar with the way the system worked. But the way I look at it, it's not always enough to be adequate: why spend so much buying the latest platform software without spending a little more to learn about the two-thirds of it that isn't easy to figure out intuitively?
But it's not just the information in the book that makes Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition - like its predecessors - is so good. It's also Mr. Pogue's breezy writing style: he somehow manages to be easy to understand to beginners without sounding patronizing to those with a stronger background.
Mr. Pogue's essential guides to and articles about the Mac OS have become nearly as central a component to the Mac experience as a user's favorite web browser or that latest version of iTunes. If you use the Panther OS, you can't afford not to have this book.
David has not disappointed - within minutes I found several tips on Mail and Safari that were well worth the modest Amaz price. I've been using Macs for nearly twenty years, so there's obviously a lot here that's not new to me - but there's a lot that is! The "Missing Manual" had doubled the value of my having upgraded to Panther (OS 10.3). It has made it easy for me to start taking advantage of system features that I never took the time to figure out.
The section on the Terminal and Unix command line is brief, but still a very helpful intro to the complete newbie for understanding whether/why one would want to learn more about those power-tools within your Mac. If you really want to get deeply into that, you'll probably want to go with something like O'Reilly's "Learning Unix for Mac OS X" (ISBN 0596003420 ) after reading David's intro.
As with David's "iMovie Missing Manual" the writing is very comfortable - clear and pleasant, lightened with occasional humor (but without the obsessive lame jokey-ness of some computer guides "for dummies"). This does not FEEL like reading a manual... but is incredibly helpful as one!
David puts everything step by step right at your fingertips. I can tell if the book is well written by looking for certain simple questions to be answered and David does this. You wouldn't believe how many other authors leave the simple rudimentary things out. This will drive most new users nuts.
Simply put, if you don't understand what David Pogue writes than you need to spend more time with your Mac, because, this is the manual that should have came with the Mac
Here's a short list of reasons you'll want this book. Apple claims Panther has 150 new features, but Pogue says this is actually an undercount (2), and says about his book there's not "a single page that hasn't changed since the last edition" (7), which covered 10.1 and 10.2. While reading the book, I marked over 50 new features that are important to my workstyle, but in the interests of brevity, these are the ones most likely to appeal to all users. Panther has a new sidebar to complement the dock (18-20); Filevault can encrypt and decrypt your account transparently (363-66); window management is much easier with Expos (124-28); servers and shared folders--even from PCs--appear automatically in the sidebar (18, 22, 397); Safari is improved and installed as the default browser (640-51); Text Edit can open and save Microsoft Word format, though not footnotes, unfortunately (311); Image Capture can work over a network, and can control scanners and web cams (275-76); Preview works much faster and can search and copy text from PDF files AND can open raw Postscript files, which means they can be saved as PDFs that can be printed at clear resolutions on cheapo inkjet printers (297, 435); print dialog boxes now offer saving as pure Postscript (427); color labels for files/folders are back from OS 9 (74); all menus, dialog boxes, and the dock now can be controlled from the keyboard (18, 138); Digital Color Meter can grab color values from images and web pages (316); Font Book allows you to form sets that you can turn on and off as needed (436-42); the calculator finally acquires scientific capabilities, a "paper" tape, and performs conversions (263, 331); Disk Utility now offers the option to clone a hard drive--good news for people in charge of Mac labs (317-18), and it can burn multiple sessions on a CD (340); faxing is now built in (431-35); GIMP-Print is included, a Unix collection of print drivers for scads of older printers (421); Virtual Private Networking to connect to corporate networks is much improved; Mail has at least nine major improvements, including seamless cooperation with Microsoft's Exchange Server; iChatAV is free along with a free iChatAV account at .Mac is (615-16).
Oh, and the default volume format for hard drives is journaled (692) for better troubleshooting, and for security Panther redoes group designations for user accounts (407, 511) and adds a master password that sits between administrator privileges and root (365, 376). If anything in that last sentence is foreign to you, that's another reason to buy this book. Also, Panther permits scheduling of print jobs (427)--a big boon on networks--and of unattended startup and shutdown (241). It even includes the ability to Zip and unZip files (94), and to clone your .Mac iDisk on your hard drive (564) for greater speed. Overall, it's also faster than previous versions.
The book now contains mini-manuals for iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, and iTunes, even though the Missing Manual series has book treatments of each. Of course, the Panther book skips all the tips, tricks, and resources for these programs, but it has enough to get you going successfully. And the appendixes include installation (A), troubleshooting (B), and "secret keystroke list" (F).
Also, the book is fun to read. Pogue's style faintly resembles that of Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry. For example, in his discussion of AppleScript Studio (216), his aside is "ASS for short--how did that one get past Marketing?"
All is not perfect, however. Grammar snafus occur about one per 100 pages (!) and of five factual errors, only one (583) is really confusing because it refers to a picture that doesn't exist in the text (although what you're supposed to see has just been explained clearly). And two discussions confused me: about Firewire networks (390ff) and about command-line (Unix) file searching (518). But another benefit of the Missing Manual series is that once I've reported these miscues to Pogue, they'll be incorporated into subsequent printings of the book. Pogue pledges (9) to keep the book current with Apple's continuing updates of 10.3 (this printing [11] covers through 10.3.2), and to keep errata lists--along with much of the software mentioned in the book--on the website (www.missingmanuals.com). My previous experience with six other books in this series suggests that Pogue will indeed keep book and web site updated.
This book is written in an easy, converational style. David Pogue answers your questions and often -anticipates- them. He clearly has a grasp of the subject matter and his readers. The only flaw in this book is that tidbits are on every page, and if you skim the book, you are going to overlook useful things. The book has to be read, sometimes almost line-by-line to catch everything he presents. This is okay though, you'll WANT to read every line.
One sample of the writing is worth repeating. When David describes "Expose", a new Window navigation system in OS 10.3, he says, "In essence, Apple has finally realized that the Desktop really ISN'T "just another program." If the layer of open programs is the atmosphere, the Finder is the earth below." Almost poetry, in a computer manual!
If you only get one book to learn about Mac OSX, this is it.
If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time. I
would relax, I would limber up, I would be sillier than I have been this
trip. I know of very few things I would take seriously. I would be crazier.
I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers and watch more sunsets. I'd
travel and see. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones.
You see, I am one of those people who lives prophylactically and sensibly
and sanely, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I have had my moments and,
if I had it to do over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to
have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many
years ahead each day. I have been one of those people who never go anywhere
without a thermometer, a hotwater bottle, a gargle, a raincoat and a parachute.
If I had it to do over again, I would go places and do things and travel
lighter than I have. If I had my life to live over, I would start bare-footed
earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would play hooky
more. I probably wouldn't make such good grades, but I'd learn more. I would
ride on more merry-go-rounds. I'd pick more daisies.
Friction is a drag.
