For a company that promised to "put a pause on new features," Apple sure has been busy-there's barely a feature left untouched in Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard." There's more speed, more polish, more refinement-but still no manual. Fortunately, David Pogue is back, with the humor and expertise that have made this the #1 bestselling Mac book for eight years straight. You get all the answers with jargon-free introductions to:

• Big-ticket changes. A 64-bit overhaul. Faster everything. A rewritten Finder. Microsoft Exchange compatibility. All-new QuickTime Player. If Apple wrote it, this book covers it.

• Snow Leopard Spots. This book demystifies the hundreds of smaller enhancements, too, in all 50 programs that come with the Mac: Safari, Mail, iChat, Preview, Time Machine.

• Shortcuts. This must be the tippiest, trickiest Mac book ever written. Undocumented surprises await on every page.

• Power usage. Security, networking, build-your-own Services, file sharing with Windows, even Mac OS X's Unix chassis-this one witty, expert guide makes it all crystal clear.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 12 Ratings

A complete and comprehensive guide to Snow Leopard - 2009-11-02
Reviewer Rating:
What we have here is another book in the Missing manual Mac OS X series. Pogue continues to write these books with humor making what would other wise be fairly dry reading easier to read. Mac OSX Snow Leopard The missing manual is easy to read and understand, A combination that can be hard to come by in technical manuals written for everyone from the average user to the Mac geek..

As with all of the other books in the Mac OS Missing manual series Pogue covers iDVD, iMovie, Garage band, Spot light, iCal, iChat, Dashboard, iTunes, iPhoto, iSync and all of the more then 40 other applications that come with Snow Leopard in complete but concise detail.. Pogue also goes into great detail about the functions and utilities of the operating system.

What the reader also gets with this book is a good understanding of how the operating system works. The reader gets a lot of screen shots the assist them in following the tutorials and will assist the reader in doing things like installing printers, putting your Mac on a network as well as figuring out how to work each application. Pogue goes into some detail about how to use these applications that might not be immediately apparent to the user.

There are some informative side bars in the book. One is called "gems in the rough" that walks the user through using keyboard shortcuts as an alternate to using the mouse. "Up to speed" walks the user through finding things faster. FAQ's. "Power Users clinic" This side bar walks the users through things like creating their own icons to how to more effectively search and run queries based on specific criteria and doing more granular searches then using Spotlight by it's self. "Troubleshooting moment" fairly self explanatory it details how to recover lost files, passwords etc..

Pogue also covers running Windows on Mac since you can now do that on the Intel based Macs. Pogue covers how to complete a task on the Mac environment and then how to complete that same task on in the Windows environment. The users gets a little bit of an idea on how to create web pages using cascading style sheet using TextEdit.

Using security settings Pogue does a good job of describing how to customize your Mac based un user profiles and user groups i.e. parental controls, access to the web, access to applications ( this works nicely if your trying to keep your kid off of iChat.. Pogue walks the reader through creating these and then modifying them to suit the users needs. Pogue give the reader and idea how to setup a firewall to allow or dis-allow certain types on network traffic access to your computer.

All in all a very comprehensive book. Everyone from first time Mac users to Mac pros will find this book of great value.

Great book - 2009-11-06
Reviewer Rating:
This is a great book with a ton of info on most of Snow Leopard. I'm an experienced Mac user, and was initially worried that the book might be a little too introductory for me, but it's not. I jumped to SL from Tiger so I was looking for something to give details on the new features. In that respect, the book delivers. It also gives all sorts of tips for almost every program included in OS X. I was a little disappointed that it didn't include coverage of iPhoto (IMO because he wants to sell iPhoto Missing Manual books), but beyond that it's pretty comprehensive. Perhaps a little too comprehensive actually; he includes a Unix crash course chapter that IMO is likely to give users just enough rope to hang themselves. But overall it's a solid title that I'm glad to have on my shelf.

Just In Time - 2009-11-12
Reviewer Rating:

Another great book, but this time it has been especially helpful for me.

First I solved a vexing printer problem caused by the loss of the AppleTalk software. It
was as if David Pogue had me in mind when he wrote the "troubleshooting moment" on page
548. Within five minutes I was again using my rock solid LaserJet 5M. So huge and so easy once
you read his clear explanations.

Then on to my Mail Utility problem. And sure enough, there was an initial discussion which lead
me to an unexpected section of the book that solved that issue.

Now I'm about to tackle my Safari 4.0.3 dissatisfactions, but want to let others know just how much
this book returns an element of FUN to the whole Mac experience.

It seems this has become a bipolar experience - first Apple releases a new OS with little support and
then Pogue provides the missing manual explaining what it is all about. This works for me.

mac is the best - 2009-11-09
Reviewer Rating:
Excellent edition to your Mac. Has everything. Condenses some things and you have extra gbites. Just try it and the book is very clear.

waste - 2009-11-06
Reviewer Rating:
This book is a waste of money. Look up cache in index. It is not there. His method of putting back trash does not work etc.

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