Mac OS X 10.1: Visual Quickstart Guide

Maria Langer

The latest release of the venerable Mac OS makes only incremental improvements on its predecessor, but it's worth remembering that the predecessor was Mac OS X--a watershed release that incorporated a UNIX kernel for the first time. In Mac OS X 10.1: Visual QuickStart Guide, Maria Langer makes incremental improvements to her book on Mac OS X, documenting the new features of version 10.1, notably support for DVD movies and easy CD burning from within the Finder. It's nothing earthshaking, but this is the version of the book you'll want if you're unfamiliar with Mac OS and have just purchased a Macintosh. Langer's book is one of the best Mac OS beginners' primers around.

The Visual QuickStart style, which relies heavily on the close integration of text and graphics to convey information, suits Mac OS well. In the one-page spread on burning CDs, for example, Langer presents a nine-step process that's illustrated by no fewer than five screen shots. Every time she references a dialog box or menu in the text of her instructions, there's a picture of the relevant interface item to the side, so it's always clear what you're supposed to be seeing. This sort of picture-heavy tutorial is typical of coverage throughout the book. --David Wall

Topics covered: Everything an everyday user (as opposed to a programmer or network administrator) can do with Mac OS X 10.1. The fundamentals of file management with the Finder, launching applications, printing, connecting to the Internet, and using Sherlock are all covered. There's even a little AppleScript coverage for Mac users who want to do a little automation.

1 Basic Quick Start for X
This is an extremely basic book. I could have used this book for maybe the first two weeks after I installed X. If you know how to get around the aqua interface of X and the "iapps" then you do not need this book. If you know what Samba is don't consider this book.

The book covers X up to 10.1.3 and the "iapps", 10.1.4 is out now and 10.2 will be out soon, but that should not deter you from buying this book if you are a mac newbie. This book is for the user converting over from a PC environment or possibly an earlier OS mac user like 8.6-9.1 or earlier. This is not for the intermediate to advance mac or PC user. I have looked at all the chapters and I think I may get one or two bits of information. That hardly makes it a worthwhile purchase. I would recommend the advance version of this book after Maria updates it.

Besides the fact that the book should be aimed at only beginners instead of beginners to intermediate users, the book is well written and uses the X aqua interface well to explain the topics. If have any of the other Peachpit Visual guides, then you know the format. I love the format and think the book is well written, but I did not learn much if anything from the book so far. Langer does make it clear after you read a few chapters that this book is for the beginner and advanced users should buy her Mac OS X Advanced guide, however, this book was not advertised that way by Peachpit. Overall, good for the beginner, but worthless otherwise. I find it hard to believe that Maria would have spent the time to write a book that covers so little of the OS X experience. Skip this book and buy something more advanced and useful, as you learn OS X you will be glad you did.