Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual – ‘Book Mystique Review

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A new edition of David Pogue’s Mac OS X: The Missing Manual is the most anticipated Mac book of any year when there’s a new Mac OS version release. From the time of the first edition’s initial publication in 2002, OS X: TMM has been the gold standard of OS X books, indeed the best-selling computer book overall since 2007, truly living up to its subtitle: “The Book That Should Have Been In The Box,” and then some. I’ve maintained throughout that this is the OS X book to have if you’re only having one, and the seventh edition, Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual, gives me no reason to alter that assessment. The formula that Pogue established nine years ago still holds up well, striking a balance between readable, conversational prose and technical thoroughness. As one reviewer put it: ‚”Pogue is a great explainer.” Not an easy achievement, although Pogue makes it look deceptively easy.

The book of course has changed a lot over a near-decade of publication. For example, the first two editions contained long sections dedicated to Mac OS 9 Classic Mode, while the fifth edition, Mac OS X Leopard TMM, addressed the transition to Intel silicon on the Mac platform. The latest addition also tackles a major Mac OS development — the (relatively) radical interface changes and overhaul of the bundled iapps in OS X 10.7 Lion, making this iteration a must-have upgrade for folks who have one or more of the older OS X: TMM editions, and who are making or have already made the leap to Lion. The book, which is appropriately dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs, also includes a new chapter on Apple’s new iCloud online service.

As Pogue astutely observes, if you could choose just one word to describe Apple’s central design objective for Mac OS X Lion, it would be ‚”iPad.” Ergo: as he puts it, ‚”in Lion, Apple has gone about as far as it could go in trying to turn the Mac into an iPad.”

Actually, I suspect that Mac OS convergence with Apple’s mobile IOS is just getting underway with Lion, but of course that remains to be seen.

Another change: Lion is also the world’s first download-only mainstream operating system. There is a costly USB thumb drive installer available, but it’s not intended for mass-market consumption. There also are several venerable OS X features that have been relegated to the dumpster, notably Front Row — Apple’s living room multimedia player, and Sync, which has been subsumed into the ICloud. Also, gone are FTP services, colored sidebar icons, a host of other small interface items, and one that is proving huge for many Mac OS veterans — termination of support for legacy applications containing PowerPC code via the now-eliminated Rosetta emulator.

Suffice to say that OS X 10.7 Lion is a substantial departure from the OS X versions that went before, and a good manual will be a virtual necessity if you want to get the best out of Apple’s latest desktop operating system.

The book’s layout and design follows the familiar TMM formula, with the green and white color theme on the cover that was introduced with OS X Leopard: TMM, and plenty of grayscale screenshot illustrations inside.

This is a big book, Tolstoyesque big at 908 pages — that’s up from an already portly 886 for OS X Snow Leopard: TMM, getting up toward doubling the page count of the relatively slim 564-page first edition back in 2002.

David Pogue says that while OS X Lion: TMM is designed to accommodate readers at any skill and experience level on the Mac platform, its primary discussions are written with the advanced beginner to intermediate veteran user in mind in particular. However, if you are a complete newbie on the Mac, one of the book’s several categories of sidebar micro-articles called ‚”Up To Speed” is provided whenever appropriate to elucidate more basic introductory information.

While the page count isn’t up radically from the preceding Mac OS X Snow Leopard: TMM, the book’s content has been modified substantially just as OS X 10.7 Lion has many substantial differences from OS X 10.6. Indeed, the first section: part One: ‚”The Mac OS X Desktop,” dives right in with the oddly designated Chapter 0: ‚”The New Lion Landscape,” and proceeds to discuss the Launchpad, Full-Screen Mode, full-screen apps, and Mission Control, which are all major new features in OS X 10.7 Lion. Mission Control is revisited in Part 2, Chapter 5, along with more new-to-lion stuff, like Autosave and Versions.

On a couple of specific notes, living in a rural area with relatively frequent power and wireless broadband service interruptions, I’m one Mac user for whom dial-up modem support is not yet irrelevant. Unhappily, Apple has arbitrarily chosen to throw support for its own external Apple USB modem under the bus (mine is less than three years old) with OS X 10.7 Lion. You can still buy a third-party dial-up modem and connect via settings that may be entered in Lion’s Network preferences panel. Instructions for doing so are not included in OS X Lion: TMM itself, but rather in an online appendix to the short section on dial-up modem connections at www.missingmanuals.com. A classy nod to users who still need a technology that, as Pogue puts it, “Apple is clearly trying to shove into the recycling bin.”

Appendix A, ‚”Installing Mac OS X Lion,” has been expanded to 12 pages, up from 9 pages in the Snow Leopard edition, and addresses upgrades that install over the Internet – an indication that the new process isn’t quite as simple as Apple makes it out to be. Hence a section called ‚”Psychological Requirements” in addition to hardware requirements. There’s also a Power User’s Clinic sidebar on the new realities associated with reinstalling Lion. The Troubleshooting appendix is also longer, up from 11 pages in the previous edition to 13 pages in Lion: TMM.

As a Canadian, I’m also happy to report that while the US price of OS X: TMM has been carried over at $34.99 for the Snow Leopard edition, the Canadian price has been cut substantially, from CAN$43.99 to Canadian $36.98 for the Lion edition. Still not quite as good as the price parity that obtained with the Leopard edition. We’ll happily take the cut, but come on, guys: the Canadian loonie has been hovering around par with, and frequently exceeded, the value of the US greenback for about a year now.

There is little OS X ground that David Pogue hasn’t covered in this volume. What’s great about Mac OS X: The Missing Manual (any edition), aside from the good writing, is its comprehensiveness. Whatever aspect of working with the operating system and the dozens of programs that come bundled with it, you’re almost certain to find it addressed in the pages of this book. And there’s still lots of time to order for Christmas.

Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual
By David Pogue
Publisher: O’Reilly Media / Pogue Press
Released: October 2011
Pages: 928
Formats: Print, Ebook, Safari Books Online
Print: October 2011
Ebook: October 2011 Pages: 928
Print ISBN:978-1-4493-9749-4 | EISBN 10:1-4493-9749-2Ebook ISBN:978-1-4493-0905-3 | ISBN 10:1-4493-0905-4

$34.99

Publisher’s store site:
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920014553.do

Available from Amazon.com ($23.09):
http://amzn.to/mQ7YAq

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