Rating: 

His first book on OS 10, enabled me to migrate from OS 9 with less pain and more humor than I could have anticipated. As a long-time Mac user (since 1985!) I had become entrenched in its ideosyncrancies (in fact making a living from helping designers and Print shops work with them). OS 10 was not just an upgrade...it was a change of life, and after first installing it, I considered running back to the comfort of OS 9 (where most of my friends and designers still reside). David's writing style, clarity, humor AND thoroughness was my personal friend and tutor through the minefield of OS 10 hell. I read the missing manual chapter by chapter and implemented each nuance as it came up... after a month I was fully converted. It empowered me to actually master the interface, not just to use it. It is actually painful to go back to 9 now.

I eagerly awaited his second version (which covers Jaguar-OS 10.2) and it hasn't disappointed me. Jaguar is a MAJOR upgrade, and even seems to run faster on my old G3 i mac. But the over 150 additions to this version were not on my radar. David again came througth and showed not only what they were, but how to use them (like inkwell) ...but beyond that he has wonderful sidebars that explain how to further take advantage of them and blend them with other aspects of the system.

Hip writer that he is, he has included separate "Where'd it Go?" dictionaries for Mac upgraders as well as for Windows "switchers". He covers the logic of the folder organization for both Mac users and Unix geeks, as well as troubleshooting, Unix Terminal commands, and ichat, ical, .mac. He even shows how to Hack the Mac OS... if you want to. This is truly "the book that should have been in the box"... in keeping with the missing manual's stated goal, and it should reside dog-eared on your desktop- next to your mac, not in the bookshelf. Even if you have the earlier version of the book, once you upgrade to Jaguar, this should be the very next supplement. Even better, buy the book and it will convince you to upgrade to Jaguar ( it even has a handy section on how to do that too)!