The very first Apple related book that I picked up when I made the switch was O’Reilly’s Mac OS X Panther: In A Nutshell. It did a fantastic job at walking me through the operating system and figuring out all the jazzy new stuff that I had to figure out quickly, before my un-productivity caught up with me.
Having never owned a Mac, I was new to everything. No one I knew owned one, and I was certainly flying solo until I found some help in IRC. What I really needed back then was a book that talked about the switch to the Mac, a book that lays everything out before you even make your purchase. A month after buying my first iBook, I regretted not getting a PowerBook, and that certainly would have been avoided with some simple instructions.
The second book in our book recommendation series does exactly that, it’s called Switching to a Mac: For Dummies, and oh my, would it have been a great resource in my early days.
This book is not for the geek, and it’s certainly not for anyone who has spent some time with a Mac, but instead, it’s aimed at a demographic that sorely needs the help and has no idea where to start. It walks you through purchasing the proper mac for your needs, setting it up, connecting it to the internet, using some of the basic features in the iLife package, and it even talks about switching your entire business office to OS X. It essentially takes the entire operating system, simplifies it, and then gives you a quick step by step on how to set it up.
It fills in all the blanks for someone making the switch, and it does it in a concise manner with a minimal amount of fanboisms, something I’m sure would be appreciated by new users.
If you or someone you know has recently made the switch to a Mac and need a little bit of help then this book is a great resource. You should probably start here, and if you need some additional help feel free to drop us an email or comment and we’ll do our best to make sure you get back on track.
