LAUG 2.0 News

A podcast from the January 2008 meeting of the Lawrence Apple Users Group. This month’s meeting revolved around users questions about the Mac.

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news, followed by users questions about Apple products.

The meeting concluded with our monthly door prize, which included a t-shirt from MacBak, as well as iPhone: The Missing Manual courtesy of O’Reily Media.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://www.laugks.org/news/.

 

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Hello Everyone. As always, I had less time then I thought to do a detailed post. Expect that later today. I did about 75% of the show on Thursday and arrived home dead tired after a great meal at a local restaurant.

Here are my photos so far. Why is it version 5.?. Well, it’s my fifth Macworld and it’s day one.

Brian’s been blogging quite a bit about Macworld: Check out his thoughts as well.

I’m writing this from the Media Center at the show, starting day 2. In general, I was unimpressed with the show so far. The fact I was able to see most everything in about six hours is evidence there wasn’t anything to write home about, figuratively and literally. I’ll reserve final judgement until I finish the show. My initial thoughts is “evolutionary” not “revolutionary”. I have a term for stuff like this: “with sprinkles”. It refers to that episode of the Simpsons in which Homer gets enticed to eat donuts because it now has sprinkles. Most of the items I saw added a few bells and whistles and called it a new product. Many vendors said “Now we are compatible with Leopard” or “Now for iPhone”. Yawn. We kind of except that, it’s been out for a while.

More later!

iPhone: The Missing manual

The “Missing Manual”, in case you didn’t already know, is the gold standard of technical publications. Heck, it’s the platinum standard at this point. Any book that has the “Missing Manual” in the title is sure to be a must have. I’ve never been disappointed and “iPhone: The Missing Manual” carries the torch for the series yet again. Some books are only edited by David Pogue, but this one was written exclusively by hi, most likely because the iPhone was a hard find for anyone.

While Pogue expertly covered all the features of the iPhone, he also helped readers work around some of the limitations such as the lack of a word processor or a instant messaging program. I learned quite a few tips even for my mere mortal Treo 650. He helps you save money on text messaging, much to the chagrin of AT&T’s accountants. I had very high hopes for the book, and Pogue exceeded every one.

Ideally, the iPhone should be straightforward and obvious for most people, but occasionally you aren’t quite sure about a feature or how to combine features together to do what you want. For example, how does one avoid SPAM on the iPhone…yuck. This is more than the typical Missing Manual in my opinion. This includes those handy tips and tricks most companies write a separate book on. The list of websites that will simulate desktop apps is worth the price of admission alone.

As always, the Mac and PC platforms are covered equally and with respect. He explains how to sync contacts on a PC and a Mac. Most important, Pogue covers all the troubleshooting steps you need to know when your iPhone stops doing what it wants. Because the iPhone is so new, there aren’t many guides to fixing problems and I’ve had to google way too much in order to fix problems. Now I’ve got all I need in one guide.

No features of the iPhone is left undiscussed! Even experts with the iPhone (can you say you are an expert when it’s been out less than a year?), will find something in this Missing Manual. I think that anyone who has a smart phone will get ideas from this guide. If you can’t have an iPhone, get the next best thing.

Of course, if the manual were hard to understand or disorganized it wouldn’t do anyone much assistance. Fortunately, Pogue’s easy to understand writing style explains things in such a way novices can understand without talking down to them or boring expert users. The index and table of contents are very easy to use to hone in the particular features you are interested in. Extensive use of full color photos helps make sure you can follow along with the book.

Pros: Amazing guide to the iPhone. I suspect Steve Jobs secretly keeps a copy on his desk.
Cons: Besides the fact it doesn’t come with an iPhone, absolutely no cons.

Five out of Five Dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave™ or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Switching to a Mac For Dummies

I have a traditional love/hate relationship with Dummies books. When I am truly a dummy in the subject, I like their broad overviews. “Switching to the Mac for Dummies” is a new title for the Dummies series and is the first Dummies book by author XXXXX Renhold. Generally Dummies books are designed to give you the information you need in a lighthearted way so that the reader doesn’t feel intimidated or overwhelmed.

I’m not sure what mark Reinhold was shooting for but he clearly missed it. The book is overwhelming yet inadequate and in some places just wrong! As an example, Reinhold said you can’t run Appleworks on newer Macs. That is simply untrue. But why would someone switching to the Mac ever care about older version of Appleworks? Based on the contents of the book, it was more akin to “New Macs for Dummies”. Reinhold covered PC to Mac issues as well as Mac to Mac issues. While that’s nice, why would a PC user need that info? It creates an information overflow that makes the book harder to read and confusing for new Mac users.

While I realized Reinhold did not intend the book to be funny, I had to laugh at some of the topics he covered. Few users switching to the Mac need to know that back in the 1980s some PCs used MicroChannel Architectures (MCA) and Macs used NuBus. This minutae reminds me of the sketch on Airplane when the air traffic controller is asked how we got into this crisis, and he starts talking about dinosaurs creating oil and people buying expensive cars. Funny on a big screen, but not for a dummies book. That’s just an example of the massive overkill of useless information. Is the author prepping people for an appearance on a trivia show?

Too much information isn’t that bad so long as critical information is included and Reinhold simply failed to deliver on critical information. In particular I am comparing his book to the Missing Manual series of the same title and the Dummies version seems like a really poor rough draft of the Missing Manual. When people switch computers from either Mac to PC or PC to Mac they are most concerned about their data (including pictures and music), their emails and address book, and their favorites. Reinhold comes up with rather elaborate Rube Goldbergesque style ways of moving the information, but way beyond the skills (or budgets) of the average switcher. He also fails to cover how to convert email from PC to Mac, which is a top question for switchers.

Those topics Reinhold covers well are horribly disorganized and hard to follow with few, if any, illustrations or screen shots. You simply have to take his word for what he’s saying and use your imagination. I asked typical “How do I?” question on the Mac and none were covered. A new PC user might be calling Microsoft after reading this book asking for reconciliation.

Sorry for such a harsh review. I’m sure Reinhold knows his stuff and was simply trying to be helpful. Switching is a relatively new topic. Apple had to make a Newton before it could make the iPhone and I’m sure version 2.0 of this book will be much better. Skip this one though.

Pros: Interesting for trivia buffs, might increase Windows sales and Apple returns.
Cons: Disorganized, inconsistent coverage. Hard to read and follow.

Two DogCows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave™ or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings