OS X Mavericks: The Missing Manual

After recently purchasing our Apple computers, we were searching for some kind of manual. In researching the Amazon site comments/review sections on another book, we found out about the David Pogue series of Missing Manuals. That certainly was our lucky day. So we purchased the OS X Mavericks: The Missing Manual and have found it to be fantastic. David Pogue's writing style is so user friendly, with his signature humor included, whether you are very experienced in computer technology (my husband's category) or not so much, which is the category I fall into. The manual covers all aspects of using the OS X Maverick and the topics are very easy to locate, with an extensive Table of Contents and Index. Included in the book is a section called The Master OS X Secret Keystroke List arranged by menu items. Fantastic. On the last page of the book, David Pogue gives us a website to visit to access every "Web address, practice file, and piece of downloadable software mentioned in this book" in a "tidy list of links, organized by chapter". There is also the option, on the website, to sign up for emails regarding updates, new release titles and available articles. So now, whenever we have a computer question or problem, our reply is "get the book!" Using this manual is like having our own personal technician in the room and on call at all times. What a great find!

First a word about my tech creds: Basically, I don't have any -- at least not from any intense formal schooling. From a practical standpoint, I have owned a personal computer since the days of the first Compaq "portable" (door stop, more like!). My first Mac was the SE, and I have never looked back. Yes, I'm a real live Mac bigot, although I have also used Windows in a business setting. All of the Missing Manual books I have used have been about Apple products. I have yet to meet a Missing Manual offering that I didn't like. Mr. Pogue has the enviable talent of writing clearly and wittily on technical subjects. The MM books are organized in such a way that the reader can skim the surface for an answer to a passing question or, if desired, dive into the mosh pit of delicious detail. I have read other tech books that give detail but not much useful content. This book excels in both areas.

What’s new? As a long-term Macintosh user it would be convenient for me if the sections concerning what’s new were appropriately marked as such to be able to concentrate on what is most useful. Not as convenient Pogue has a what’s new in Mavericks listing on page 860 in the index, which allows you to find the new areas in Mavericks that you’re most interested in. This is a great timesaver for those who are fairly familiar with the Mac operating system and primarily want to know what is new. This is an excellent, very well written book for beginners on the Mac operating system, and a handy way for experienced users to check what is new and most useful, and to learn new tricks. I rate it 5 stars for beginners and 4 stars for experienced users, but there are a few places using this book or Apple manuals, where Mavericks just doesn’t work as explained. The Mavericks operating system is an attempt to bring the most popular features of iOS, used on the iPad and iPhone, to the Mac operating system. Many of the gestures you use on the iPad screen can be used on the pad on your Mac or the little portable pad that can be bought separately. A nice surprise is that iBooks and maps are now available on your Macintosh computer. You can choose whatever you want to put into iBooks, which is basically any document, and to have iCloud syncing. This allows you to pick up reading on any of your devices right where you left off. The iBooks bookstore is very similar to the app store that allows you to look at most popular books including free ones from a number of different sources. When you’re actually reading a book or document you can turn the pages by using a two finger swipe. If you want to go back a page use two finger swipe with the option key. The usual Arrow keys also work. You can easily adjust the size of the text and background color. Making a selection you can highlight it, put boxes around them, have them read to you, or annotate with a sticky note. Since your devices use the same copy any changes made on one are made on all devices. This is a very powerful technique since you can use it for virtually any document of interest. Maps is now available on all devices, and is also wired into the programs, calendar, contacts, and Safari. Your Mac doesn’t have a GPS chip, but it can use Wi-Fi base stations to find your location when you click on the arrow in the upper left of the screen. You can drop a pushpin at anyplace on the map, type gas station, pharmacies, food stores, etc., and get a number of red pushpins, click on one and get a detail screen, which is frequently connected to the Yelp database. This could provide you quite a bit of access to information about restaurants, local attractions, contacts, bookmarks, recent addresses you looked up, and can be used to mark locations to get information about the location. You can use it to find restaurants by the ZIP Code you’re interested in and get the restaurants at that location. In areas I’m familiar with the lists of restaurants are incomplete. Dictation can now be off-line using the Enhanced Dictation package that you can download. I’m using it right now to dictate this review. You no longer need to share all your contacts and other information with Apple to use it. I’m trying this with a plugged in microphone to see if it works better then my typing and it does mostly. I’m not sure whether it is better to correct mistakes as they occur or to do them all at once. It is fun to play with, and for us poor typists, more efficient since it makes fewer typing mistakes than we do. AirDrop makes sharing files between computers quite easy providing the computers are within 30 feet of each other. No connection of any type is needed. If you’re in the finder click the AirDrop icon, which should be listed on the left of the Finder window. Anyone nearby who is running AirDrop will have their icon appear on your screen. Now drag the file or folder you want to send onto the icon of the Mac you’re transferring to. When asked if you want to send, click yes. The receiving Mac now sees a message asking if they want to save, decline, or save and open. If the save button is clicked the file winds up in the download folder of the receiving Macintosh computer. Great! AirPlay can be used with the Apple TV box and your computer to create their own Wi-Fi network. It’s not necessary to be connected to the Internet. You can choose to mirror exactly what’s on your computer display on your TV screen, or use the TV as a second display. Safari has a number of improvements, if you right click a selection on a Web page, a popup window will give you five options to manipulate your selection, each of which have additional options depending on the selection. If you move the cursor to Google, a Google page immediately pops-up with your search selection. Once you are finished just click on the original webpage for the popup disappears-the only click you need. This is a great timesaver. The auto fill function is improved and can use information from your contact card. Often if you’re filling in an Internet form just start typing and auto fill will come up, one click and most of the form is filled in. It’ll also memorize passwords, if you go to Safari preferences you can check over the passwords you saved and remove selected passwords for security. The system will also make up safe website passwords for use anywhere and synchronize them among all your Apple gadgets. You can include all your credit card information and have the convenience of having all this information available on the Internet for your use. There is a big danger of being hacked or losing the main password to get you into the system. If you want to save an article you’re reading for later and not just the link to it press shift, command D and the entire article and attachments are stored in the reading list. If you want just material you’re reading without advertisements you can press shift command and all the extraneous material disappears(sometimes). If you buy something online you can choose print and choose the PDF pop up button, then choose save PDF to web receipts folder. All your receipts will be in the same folder documents called web receipts. For greater security you can erase all or part of your history. You can also switch to private browsing which is directly under Safari tab so nothing is recorded at the links that you visit. You can look at your preferences under the privacy tab and delete any cookies that are not companies that you usually want to have your data. Finder tags can be applied to any icon, and once created you can do many file management tasks like searching using the tags. The tags come with a name of a color, but you can change colors and the tag name. To apply a tag, just move the icon onto the tag in the sidebar of the finder window, or right-click and the correct menu appears. Click on one of the tags you’ve set up and you immediately get all the icons with that tag. Using spotlight you can combine searches using these tags. Finder tabs are similar to the tabs in browsers like Safari. The same folder can be opened in adjacent tabs, using different views. It will take some experimenting to find the most useful tasks. You can have your own iTunes Radio stations. ITunes radio is inside iTunes, click on music and you are ready to make your own radio station. In my case I had half a dozen Radio station set up from Pandora, iTunes radio imported these. One of things I noticed was iTunes radio would not just play the type of music on my station but could combine types of music and singers from other stations to get very satisfying selections of music. Once a selection is playing you can click on the button and get a pop-up menu with five choices ranging from don’t play this type of music anymore, to set up a new station with this type of music. Once you’re in the selection there is no way to back up a bit or to jump forward a bit. There’s also a number of prefab Radio stations. In iTunes the settings to automatically delete podcasts seem quite inconsistent, and mostly don’t work. There is lots and lots more.

The manual was very helpful and had a lot of information that I was unaware of. With what was in the book and other info I found, I was not only able to learn quickly, but upgraded the iMac from Mavericks OSX 10.9.5 to MacOS Catalina 10.15.7. Thanks. Well worth the price and wait to get it.

I have several books by David Pogue, all of the missing manual variety. As he usually does, the material is presented in an informative and efficient manner. If you purchase the Kindle version of this book it has a major problem when used on a Android device. The fonts in the Android Kindle reader don't include the special characters Apple uses for keyboard commands. This is very problematic since OS X has keyboard commands for a lot of its functionality. As an example, to "Minimize" a window you press the "command" key and the "M" key at the same time. The "command" key is the key just to the left of the "space" bar with the little "cloverleaf". On an iPad and a true Kindle product the "cloverleaf" is shown but on an Android device it shows as a little square or a square with a question mark in it. If this book was to be read only on an Android reader you would not know what the character was.

As always, David Pogue's manuals are the best. I don't even bother looking at any others. If you are having problems with Mavericks, you will find the solutions in this book. I look forward to Yosemite and a new Missing Manual!

Ich bin sehr zufrieden mit diesem Buch (in englischer Sprache). I shall continue in English (meine Muttersprache ist holländisch). I am happily using my iMac since I bought it six years ago. The Missing Manual I bought at the same time turned out to be a very useful reference book. Recently, it helped me to start up a reluctant apparatus. Now I am considering replacing it by a new one, so I bought the Mavericks version of the manual. Studying it carefully convinced me that buying new iMac is worthwhile. Besides, I found some useful features I had not noticed before, which were already present six years ago! This well written book, spiced with witty remarks, is thoroughly recommended.

Explica con claridad las principales características del sistema. Una buena panorámica general del funcionamiento y los procedimientos básicos. Algo esquemático, sin embargo. Nostalgia de manuales como "La Biblia del Macintosh" de Sharon Zardetto Aker y Nayman, más atentos a las operaciones y los trucos.

credo sia l'unico manuale realmente completo ed esaustivo sul sistema Apple, descrive tutto in maniera minuziosa ma semplice, a partire da cose più banali, utili ai principianti, fino ai dettagli per gli utenti più smaliziati, il prezzo poi è ottimo l'unico ostacolo può essere rappresentato dalla lingua, certo è scritto in un Inglese piuttosto semplice, ma chi non lo sa ...

This book is great I am finding it very useful indeed - information is easy to understand and is very interesting. I would recommend this book to anyone who has recently changed to Apple MacBook - I am not a complete novice on computing but the operating system is slightly different from Microsoft and this book goes into great detail and well worth the money.