Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual

Too many of the Mac OSX guides are little more than colorful, hand-holding versions of the Help menu that Apple includes with the computer. Pogue's manual, therefore, easily beats the field as a more informative, comprehensive, useful guide to Macintosh operating systems. It's a book to be consulted from time to time, not read from cover to cover. At the same time, I've recently had some freezes and disastrous, time-consuming, expensive crashes with an iMac and Macbook, compounded by ineffective professional "repair" services that I feel might have been avoided with a bit more advice. For example, there are repair programs that promise to fix everything. Drive Genius, Tech Tools, Disk Warrior--which is the best, and when and how are they best employed? A few more recommendations on, for example, the best kind of back-up system, including size, would be helpful and, as I recently discovered, some help setting up Garageband for simple tasks such as voice recording and editing would be enormously helpful. And it's still unclear to me why there appear to be three Applications folders (in the User's area, in the Finder, and on the hard drive). Life would be so much simpler without all of the sharing and users' features for a one-owner machine. Mobile Mac wouldn't be such a hovering danger if it weren't so easy to replace vital with irrelevant information by a misguided synchronization of the program (better, I say, to run between Macs than try to figure out where to send what and in which direction--whether from the computer to the "cloud" or vice versa). Perhaps it's understandable that the author can't play favorites in recommending Mac peripherals (e.g. Can Toast really do anything that a Mac without it is already capable of? Which add-ons are worth consideration, and which should be summarily excluded? Is G mail really so much superior to Apple Mail?). In sum, the Mac is "intuitive" to some but not all of us, and Pogue's guide, large as it is, falls considerably short of covering your backside in every emergency. So perhaps it's understandable that, short of acquiring a library of a dozen different volumes dealing with assorted Mac issues (all likely to become dated within a couple of years), I have yet to discover the all-purpose Mac book to go along with an owner's Macbook.

As a VISTA-phobe Mac switcher, no one did a better job than Pogue at making me feel at home with Leopard. He's done it again for Snow Leopard -- where eye candy was sparse, but getting the OS ready for the future was the driving force, as well as much needed updates of the standard apps to enhance performance. Outwardly, Snow Leopard is no avalanche, hence much of the book is an updated quality rewrite of the Leopard book; but where it counts -- as in describing the newly streamlined Automator -- the author maintains his outstanding track record of clarity and humor.Thinking it was little more than a cleverly promoted Leopard version update, I installed Snopard upon release ... what a mistake! Frequent failures in opening or closing files, inability to send mail and constant crash reports made me hold on to a reserve Leopard drive - if only to get the email out. Many (but hardly all) of these glitches were corrected by the 10.6.1 release; although importing and saving files with Adobe products remain daily crash report events [feels like a beta tester!]. No way was I going to let Snopard take over until I had it checked out by Pogue. As a measure of my confidence, Pogue gave me the lowdown (and the courage) to do a surprisingly simple 'Clean Install' of Snow Leopard after a 2-month wait, letting go of Leopard's security blanket, and allowing the (yet imperfect) beast to take over as the OS for my computer.The dauntingly-sized book may seem overwhelming at first, but the author has that rare gift of simplifying daily operations, yet provide all the detail that more advanced users demand. The chapter on Automation alone is worth the price of admission; with the drastic makeover of "ImageCapture", now serving as a frontend image collector within Automator, I would have been lost. Also, I feel reassured that some of the 'bugs' aren't Apple's so much as third party providers', and that Apple will address remaining incompatibilities with the Finder; moreover, as recommended, even with 8MB of RAM, the 32-bit kernel mode seems more stable than the 64-bit mode - at least for using non-Apple software.Overall, this book comes as close to being the definitve guide to Snow Leopard as can be -- both for newcomers and for oldtimers. Highly recommended!

D Pogue writes a truly excellent guide to the Mac.BUT - a very large *but* - he does not begin where the beginner's actual needs are! Anyone coming from Windows to Mac - with the correct Missing Manual - will find he assumes you know so much more about Apple Mac than you possibly could. I spent ages fruitlessly looking for 'font book' for instance - so simple to any mac-user - but not to a newbie!2] the other missing bit - which really is crucial - is a far better IndexThere is plenty of helpful info here - you cannot grasp it when you are a new user - and unless you can cope with the total overload of trying to read the entire manual in search of what you need, you cannot find this info quickly and easily. Looking at other reviews, it is clear that the 1-star ones are from people who have had this problem. so let's hope the publisher will employ a really thorough Indexer; and encourage David Pogue to do a first chapter which is a real 'beginner's guide'.However - when you have explored your Mac, used it for a while and got used to some of the new ways of doing things, THEN come back to the Manual, and bless the day you bought it. Everything you want to know how to do *better* is there, waiting for you to have the questions ready to ask.

I've lost count of how many times I've turned to this book when I needed to understand about my Mac's OS and how to improve or resolve what was occurring. It was VERY useful. It also meant I could do any standard solutions before taking my Macs to the Genius Bar in an Apple Store, therefore not wasting a journey for something simple I could have done at home myself.I think I would get even more from it if I actually read through it like a workbook cover to cover alongside my Mac, but who has that kind of time unless you specialise in IT or something?I get the new Missing Manual book each time I upgrade to the next higher OS as there are changes and improvements each time and it's helpful to have the most up to date support.Couldn't recommend it more highly.

Almost 900 pages, this book is surely the ultimate Bible for OS X Snow Leopard users.Tons of information, with a comprehensive index - and moreover, all of it READABLE.I really like the author's enthusiasm and his upbeat, humourous style.One previous reviewer mentioned the limitations of the Mac online help. I would go even further and say that this is the one area, in my humble opinion, where Microsoft beats Apple hands-down. In my experience, the help feature on Macs is utterly useless. And that's where this manual comes in. It must have been a labour to write, but it's a joy to read.Recommended without reserve!

This is an excellent manual. Until I received this I was really struggling making the change from Windows and I thought I had made a big mistake buying an iMac. Now I am really excited and my knowledge, abilities and enthusiasm are growing daily.I had bought a manual at the same time as my iMac which was totally useless as it assumed that the reader already had knowledge of Mac OS X.David Progue and O'Reilly are a great combination.I highly recommend this manual; it is way ahead of the competition

If you bought the tutorials when you purchased your computer but you can't remember all you learned - or didn't get the tutorials because you thought you'd work it all out for yourself. Well, think again. Here are heaps and heaps of answers to get you moving again in all things Snow Leopard. Don't despair, help and explanations are here. And David Pogue (New York Times Technology correspondent) is friendly, very informed and has heaps of experience and likes it a lot only when it all works well. He has provided a great guide and manual. Very Recommended.