Macgasm » Chris Gulker

Review: Mac OS X Leopard on Demand

Chris Gulker — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 05:21:23 +0000

Mac OS X Leopard on Demand (Que Publishing, 2007, ISBN-13 978-0-7897-3654-3) is a very good training resource and tutorial manual for OS X 10.5 users. The book rightly categorizes itself as “˜Beginning-Intermediate’ and is a particularly good choice for “˜Switchers’ and others who, new to Mac OS X, want a printed manual. Help desks and those whose mission it is to train and support OS X users might want to keep a couple of copies around as well.

I like the organization of the book: its 500 pages are divided into 21 chapters covering everything from the Finder to apps (like Mail and the iLife suite) to .Mac and networking. Each feature of the OS is covered, usually on facing pages, in well-illustrated tutorials. You can work your way through the whole book, or just flip to the feature you need. Even I, a relatively sophisticated (or, at least, long-time) Mac user found things I didn’t know about Leopard (and the book clearly flags features that are new since 10.4 – very handy).

The tutorials on new features like desktop sharing were of particular interest. The book has 31 pages on TextEdit, BTW, by far the best resource on that particular app (I’d forgotten it does handwriting recognition). One disappointment was the 4-page Preview coverage: it leaves out the new photo manipulation tools, and the iPhoto coverage is even less complete.
Other things I didn’t like were mostly nits: whatever (likely pre-release) version of Leopard the author, Steve Johnson, worked from had some minor features (like keyboard shortcuts) that don’t appear to be in the final release. The cover of the book promises chapters on security and UNIX that aren’t actually present in my print copy, and have yet to show up on the book’s web site.

Short take: good, well-organized tutorial-driven training and reference resource for Mac OS 10.5 (particularly at the $26.39 price offered on the web site).

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Updating or creating contacts in Leopard

Chris Gulker — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:10:59 +0000

I recently received a note in Mail with updated info from one of my contacts. As I moused over it, gray dashed lines appeared around the address, email and phone info, along with a small white triangle in a gray box. Right clicking produced a menu of options, as pictured.

Clicking “˜Add to Existing Contact”¦’ brought up a window showing the Address Book entry for the contact, with the new info neatly replacing the old. Clicking “˜Add to Address Book’ updated the entry. Very cool”¦

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Microsoft, Google, Yahoo andâ€¦ Apple?

Chris Gulker — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:52:10 +0000

There’s much buzz in the Valley over Google’s leap into the proposed MS/Yahoo deal. WSJ has particularly good reporting on Google’s interest and maneuvers in blocking the deal. When giant tech companies are dealing, pundits can hardly resist commenting on what this means for the rest of the industry. Moi, I am interested in what this means for Apple.

The short answer is “˜probably nothing.’ Apple is something of a phenomenon in that, having utterly missed the Internet (witness .Mac), it has nevertheless managed to bring innovation to the dinosaur businesses of hardware and software, and profited handsomely in the process. Indeed, even Apple’s PC desktop business is thriving, and judging by its share price, the market is expecting much more to come.

So, Apple, IMHO, is unlikely to be anything but an observer in Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo – search and its related businesses would be foreign to Apple’s DNA as expressed in iPhone architects and OS X coders (and marketers). Indeed, if Apple were to do anything, it might be to use the “˜big deal’ atmosphere as cover to bid for businesses that could integrate nicely with its decidedly unique path. Apple is cash-rich, and even with a recent 30% decline in share price, has a market cap well over $100 billion, so financing is available if and when Apple decides to move. Might a certain large maker of graphics software be a potential fit”¦?

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