After using the Tiger version of Mac OS X (10.4) for a couple of months, I updated to the Leopard version (10.5) and obtained the Leopard edition of David Pogue’s book from O’Reilly. Because of the new features in Leopard, this edition has expanded from 515 pages to 590 pages.
Although I expected to find a short section listing all of the new features introduced by Leopard, its absence is not a serious problem. These lists can be found on the Internet and then printed for reference.
This edition of the book follows the same chapter layout as the Tiger edition and includes all the very helpful features for anyone switching from a Windows-based PC to an iMac or MacBook. In addition to continually taking the PC-user’s viewpoint in every section, there are chapters and sections especially designed to ease the transition. The most helpful for PC users are:
Chapter 1 - How the Mac is different
Chapters 5-7 - Transferring files, emails, contacts, etc. from your PC and also, Mac capabilities for replacing specific Windows programs
Appendix B - Where Did It Go? You’ll find yourself referring to this very useful appendix often to quickly find out how to do all the things that were second-nature on the PC, e.g., Ctl-Alt-Delete to ‘kill’ stuck programs, shutdown, zipping/unzipping files, taskbar & system tray, favorites, and much more.
It you are switching from a PC to a Mac running Leopard, you’ll love this book. But if you already have the Tiger edition and just want the Leopard content, then you will benefit more from purchasing the more comprehensive (almost 900 pages) Mac Leopard OS X: The Missing Manual, 2007, which is also by David Pogue.
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