A review of "Mac OS X: The Missing Manual"

Published by Pogue Press / O'Reilly and Associates

Written by David Pogue

Review by Michael Wolfe

March 2003

Unless you were stranded on a desert island with your new T-book you wouldn’t want to take this book to the beach. On the other hand, if you are in need of information about using or troubleshooting OS X this book is an essential tool. I consider this type of book as reference material and not as a book to be read cover to cover.

The only section of the book I fully read was the table of contents. There you will usually find a chapter or sub chapter that will be of immediate interest to you.

OS X is based on the Unix system. The good news is that you don’t have to know anything about Unix to use this system. Even better news is that if you want a basic lesson in Unix with OS X, this manual has it.

As usual, in one of Pogue’s books there is an excellent troubleshooting section. The Table of Contents and the Index are well written and make finding whatever you need in the book easy.
There is plenty of information on third party software; what is not included is a CD-ROM with the software on it. Not a problem! According to the author, “You just saved 5 bucks!” All the software is downloadable from the book’s web site.

Of the six appendices two of them are indispensable to the first-time user. Titled ‘The “Where’d it go?” Dictionary (Mac version)‘ and ‘The “Where’d it go?” Dictionary (Windows version),‘ they tell you what those files on your old OS are now called and where on your hard drive they are located.