[.ca] Teach Yourself VISUALLY Mac OS X, v. 10.2 Jaguar (ISBN 076451802X)

An excellent gift for the beginner on your list:
Teach Yourself Visually: Mac OSX v.10.2 Jaguar; Maran, Ruth; Illustrations by Russ Marini & Steven Schaerer; Screen Artist and Illustrator Darryl Grossi; Copyright 2003; Maran Graphics. Publ Wiley Publishing, Inc. NY, NY; Softback; ISBN 0-7645-1802-X This book of slightly more than 300 pages is visually very attractive. It would make a nice gift. The author recognizes that some people do much better when instructed with visual images. Toward this end she has created a well illustrated book that takes the beginner by the eye and introduces operating a computer equipped with Mac OSX v.10.2. This book will definitely get a neophyte started and probably productive using OSX at the beginner level. Basic operations and concepts are illustrated and explained. Included applications are explained. The author has taken simplification too far perhaps though. There is no hint that there are alternate ways to achieve the results mentioned in the book. This approach can be misleading unfortunately. One example of the pitfalls of over simplification is on page 182 where the author states "You need to ... have a .Mac membership to publish photos to the web." As you know, there are several alternates to this approach. The most glaring oversimplification is the assumption that the computer will always function properly and will not need disk or file maintenance. "Troubleshooting" and "Maintenance" are not indexed terms. There is no guidance for malfunction, no mention of caution around renaming or moving files and folders, etc. This book is clearly for the person who is new and simply wants to get going. Toward this simple end the book is excellent. The user will be in need of another text or a knowledgeable friend to assist the first time a program hangs, crashes or there is any need for an application outside the suite provided with MacOSX. "Classic" is another term completely absent from the index. Pros: Excellent introductory book for someone who is both a computer novice and primarily a visual learner. Cons: Very little information on dealing with the inevitable problems that occur. Simplistic introduction which does not suggest to the reader a path to advanced exploration and learning, nor even that one exists.

Another Glossed Over Beginners BOok:
I had recently rec'd the OS 10.2.2 "Visual Quick Start Guide" and BOTH of these books kind of gloss over the real meat of the OS. I would have liked to see something on the Windows file connectivity, my office has both mac's and (ugh) PC's that need to share files, and NEITHER of these books even touched on that subject.