Rating: 

And now, a short list of reasons why you'll want this book. Apple claims that Panther has 150 new features, but Pogue says this is actually an undercount (2), and says about his book there's not "a single page that hasn't changed since the last edition" (7), which covered 10.1 and 10.2. While reading the book, I marked over 50 new features that are important to my workstyle, but in the interests of brevity, these are the ones most likely to appeal to all users. Panther has a new sidebar to complement the dock (18-20); Filevault can encrypt and decrypt your account transparently (363-66); window management is much easier with Exposé (124-28); servers and shared folders--even from PCs--appear automatically in the sidebar (18, 22, 397); Safari is improved and installed as the default browser (640-51); Text Edit can open and save Microsoft Word format, though not footnotes, unfortunately (311); Image Capture can work over a network, and can control scanners and web cams (275-76); Preview works much faster and can search and copy text from PDF files AND can open raw Postscript files, which means they can be saved as PDFs that can be printed at clear resolutions on cheapo inkjet printers--no need for a Postscript laser printer to see clean output (297, 435); in fact, print dialog boxes now offer saving as pure Postscript (427); color labels for files/folders are back from OS 9 (74); the built-in Help program now works contextually, producing results only for the program you're using (53); all menus, dialog boxes, and the dock now can be controlled from the keyboard (18, 138); Activity Viewer offers another way to force quit misbehaving programs (119, 312); Digital Color Meter can grab color values from images and web pages (316); Font Book organizes fonts by families and allows you to form sets that you can turn on and off as needed (436-42); the calculator finally acquires scientific capabilities, a "paper" tape, and performs conversions (263, 331); the Chess game is updated with new 3-D looks and can be rotated in space (264); Disk Utility now offers the option to clone a hard drive--good news for people in charge of Mac labs (317-18), and it can burn multiple sessions on a CD (340); faxing is now built in (431-35); GIMP-Print is included, a Unix collection of print drivers for scads of older printers (421); Virtual Private Networking to connect to corporate networks (666) and Firewire networking (390) are much improved; Mail has at least nine major improvements, including much better threading and filtering (574-615) and seamless cooperation with Microsoft's Exchange Server; iChatAV is free, and although the iSight camera isn't, a free iChatAV account at .Mac is (615-16).

Oh, and the default volume format for hard drives is journaled (692) for better troubleshooting, and for security Panther redoes group designations for user accounts (407, 511) and adds a master password that sits between administrator privileges and root (365, 376). If anything in that last sentence is foreign to you, that's another reason to buy this book. Also, Panther permits scheduling of print jobs (427)--a big boon on networks--and of unattended startup and shutdown (241). It even includes the ability to Zip and unZip files (94), and to clone your .Mac iDisk on your hard drive (564) for greater speed. Overall, it's also faster than previous versions.

The book now contains mini-manuals for iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, and iTunes, even though the Missing Manual series has book treatments of each. Of course, the Panther book skips all the tips, tricks, and resources for these programs, but it has enough to get you going successfully. It covers much more, such as ways to import address books from Entourage and Outlook, an AppleScript tutorial, a Unix tutorial, an OS 9 tutorial with tips for speeding up Classic, how and why to use web sharing and Secure Shell, and ways to change the interface colors, icons, and information labels (change "Trash" to "Rubbish," for example). And the appendixes include installation (A), troubleshooting (B), and "secret keystroke list" (F).

Despite having to dictate the book "due to a wrist ailment you really don't want to hear about" (764), Pogue maintains his good humor, which means the book is fun to read. His style faintly resembles that of Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry. For example, in his discussion of AppleScript Studio (216), his aside is "ASS for short--how did that one get past Marketing?" Or when explaining how to activate iTunes visual displays, he says of the light show (345), "The effect is hypnotic and wild. (For real party fun, invite some people who grew up in the Sixties to your house to watch.)"

All is not perfect, however. I found eight grammar snafus (about one per 100 pages!) and five factual errors, only one of which (583) is really confusing because it refers to a picture that doesn't exist in the text (although what you're supposed to see has just been explained clearly). And two discussions confused me: about Firewire networks (390ff) and about command-line (Unix) file searching (518). But another benefit of the Missing Manual series is that once I've reported these miscues to Pogue, they'll be incorporated into subsequent printings of the book. Pogue pledges (9) to keep the book current with Apple's continuing updates of 10.3 (this printing [11] covers through 10.3.2), and to keep errata lists--along with much of the software mentioned in the book--on the website (www.missingmanuals.com). My previous experience with six other books in this series suggests that Pogue will indeed keep book and web site updated.

You'll definitely get your money's worth from this book. But beware--you'll probably be enticed to buy others in the Missing Manual series.