yay or nay on the "missing manual"

[Kishan]

I am finally making the switch at the end of this month. It has been at least 15 years since I have owned/used a Mac and I am very excited to be going back. Chalk me up to the iPod "halo" effect.

During my years of using Windows machines, I made it a point to learn as much about the OS's inner workings as I could. As a result, my windows experience has been very good.

I would like to start down the same path with my new Mac machines. I have heard that the missing manual (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596009410/ref=ord_cart_shr/102-0818596-5967301?%5Fencoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glance) series of books is good reading for those who want to get to know more about OSX. There is a new version for Tiger out now. Can anyone comment on if this is a useful book towards my goal?

[Gene Clean]

When a book tries to explain how to use Safari, and takes pages to do that, you know that it's full of boring, already-in-the-face type of 'manuals'.

[Cake]

The Tiger Edition of The Missing Manual is very good - especially since you've been away from Macs for a while.

At 840+ pages it has very detailed information about OS X.
It'll give you a good foundation to build your knowledge of OS X upon.

[reg]

I tend only to get the books after a major change os 9 to os 10. The missing manuals are very good and I also get Gene Stienberg's (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1576107019/ref%3Dnosim/absolutsearch05/102-3146312-0766514) Little Black Book. As for general tips on apps I scan web sites to find things I never thought about Macosxhints (http://www.macosxhints.com/tigertips.php) for tips and OS X Apps (http://osx.hyperjeff.net/Apps/) or VersionTracker (http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/) for apps that I might want.
Good luck on your reading. If you get iLife you might want to get a book on that because there is so much in those apps.

reg

[ThinkingDifferent]

Originally posted by Kishan
During my years of using Windows machines, I made it a point to learn as much about the OS's inner workings as I could. As a result, my windows experience has been very good.

For inner workings check out the documentation on the Apple Developer site.

http://developer.apple.com/referencelibrary/