AppleSauce, December 2009 - South Australian Apple Users' Club

Review...
New from Macworld
Total Snow Leopard Superguide
Peter Carter
Every now and then the editors of US magazine
Macworld put together a Superguide
on some Mac-related topic. The latest is
Total Snow Leopard Superguide, which you
can download from the TidBITS Take Control
site for $US 9.06 (after the 30% MUG
discount):
Many of the authors will already be familiar:
Christopher Breen, Glenn Fleishman, Dan
Frakes, Joe Kissell, Ted Landau, Sharon Zardetto...
Editorial Director, Jason Snell, writes
in his foreword:
‘In this book, you’ll find a collection of the
best information about Mac OS X — not
just the new features and tweaks that
arrived with Snow Leopard, but also the
hundreds of features Apple has added
to the operating system in the past few
years. We hope you’ll find this book an
indispensable resource for exploring and
learning about Mac OS X in general and
Snow Leopard in particular.’
In producing an ‘indispensable resource’ I
think the Macworld team has largely succeeded.
As the table of contents (next page) shows,
the book begins with the installation process,
and then examines the key Mac OS X features
in their Snow Leopard form, with worthwhile
advice all the way through.
I found part of the section on ‘X’s Hidden
Tools’ useful. With Adobe CS3 and BBEdit I
have no real use for Preview and TextEdit, but
Image Capture now turns out to be the best
way to extract images from the Canon SX1IS
after the failure of Canon’s own software. But
for reading about it in the Superguide I would
not have considered it, but it’s certainly more
convenient than iPhoto.
Someone recently asked on the Google
Groups list for a presentation on Preview: it’s
all here in these pages.
Subsequent sections cover browsing with
Safari 4, searching with Spotlight, security
and accounts, and troubleshooting. The final
section deals with Terminal. If you’ve never
used the Unix command line before, this is a
good introduction.
As befits a Macworld product, the layout and
typography are of a high standard, with appropriate
screen captures and other images.
Some may find the typeface small, but that’s
easily fixed by zooming. There are sidebars
and tables through the book with additional
information: definitions, hints, and so on.
Navigation is via Bookmarks and links in the
table of contents, and Web URLs through the
book are live.
The Total Snow Leopard Superguide is as
good an introduction to Snow Leopard as you
are likely to find, and if you’re new to the Mac
this should definitely be on your reading list.
November 2009
AppleSauce Page 10
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