Mac OS X Help Line

by Ted Landau and Dan Frakes

MacFixIt.com founder is back with more common-sense advice for maintaining and troubleshooting Apple's latest OS, Mac OS X Tiger.; Best-selling author and Mac guru Ted Landau turns his diagnostician's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0321334299
• ISBN13: 9780321334299
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Peachpit Press
• Length: 1177 Pages
• Weight: 4.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.4" x 7.6" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive How-To Guide for Mac OS X

This book is packed with useful how-to and background information about Mac OS X 10.4. It is especially strong on Unix -- it has the best description of Unix on Macintosh I've ever read. The book covers the Mac OS X itself and the iLife applications, but not any third-party applications. It has been updated for Tiger but most of the information is applicable to Panther (Mac OS X 10.3). It is sold as a troubleshooting book, and it does have a lot of information about solving specific problems, but that's not really where the emphasis is. Most of the information is "how to" do various things, such as installing, updating, configuring, turning features on or off, and where things are stored in Mac OS X. It is written as a narrative rather than a book where you primarily look up things. The authors did this deliberately because they believe "the best way to effectively troubleshoot is to understand what is going on, rather than blindly following a set of steps that fix the problem." There is not an emphasis on error messages or tables of symptoms. The book does have a good index and a detailed table of contents, so I think most problems would be easy to look up. The book is clearly written and explains each topic from the beginning, but it is a fairly advanced book, oriented towards less-common tasks and situations rather than everyday activities. Techies will get the most benefit from it. A good book for beginners is David Pogue's Mac OS X Tiger: Missing Manual.

Paid For Itself In One Sitdown

I was a late bloomer when it came to OS X. I don't like change for change's sake, but recently work forced my upgrade from OS 9. Well, I did it, but I didn't have to like it! It wasn't long before I started getting mauled by the Tiger. This time, however, I had no lifelines... either my own long experience or a "Sad Macs" book... of which I dog eared a couple copies over the years. When Landau recently published his Mac OS X Help Line- Tiger Edition debuted, I was pretty sure it was time to start dog earing another of his books. Well, just today in fact, I wrote "Paid In Full" on the jacket of that book! It helped me through a permissions problem that had me about to rack a round into a shotgun and put my computer to sleep the hard way. Whew, the book was lots cheaper than a G4! Landau saved the day again!

Best Mac Book Ever

Ted Landau is one of the most credible and thorough Mac troubleshooters ever. His MacFixit web site is the most potent tool that any Mac user can put in his arsenel. Now, you have all of his collective years of experience and know-how gathered in one place. The topics covered are almost endless, with everybody from novices to seasoned pros benefitting immensely from Ted's expertise. This boook should be included with every Mac as standard issue from Apple.

This is the consummate book for technicians and users alike

Help Line Tiger edition is formatted very nicely with graphics, screenshots, sidebar sections called Take note and Technically speaking. Take note explains the application being discussed and it's uses and the Technically speaking sections that get into what the application, hardware or service is doing that you don't see. There is a lot of "how do I do this" types of information. I have been a computer technician for many years and have used a lot of technical books and while I have only had this one a short time it is the first book that I go to as was Help Line X Panther. This is a real go to book for troubleshooting hardware, software, system networking and user profile issues. This book will help you diagnose a problem, tell you how to fix it and where to get the tool to fix it if need be. It will walk you through creating bootable hard drives and DVD's, configuring firewalls, installing 3rd party applications, configuring permissions. System preferences and recovering from application and system crashes. The book also covers the iApps, iCal, iChat, iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, iPod, iSync and iTunes applications, networking, user profiles, hardware, UNIX commands and so much more. Help Line Tiger covers all the differences between Tiger and Panther in detail. It covers just about any issue you could come across in depth but concisely which every user and technician can appreciate. It is very skillfully written and presented. This book will be very helpful for everyone from the beginner to the most advanced user and technician. As far as OS X Tiger goes this is the one size fits all desktop reference book. I can't think of a single short coming with this book. This book is worth every penny. This is another outstanding example of great technical writing and another example of why Peachpit press press puts out the best books consistently.

A must for Mac users

Once again, Ted Landau has come to the rescue for Mac users- this time with input by Dan Frakes. Both are well known in Mac circles as true experts. Ted created the MacFixit website, which deserves daily visits, and Dan's columns for Macworld are educational and enjoyable. Each edition of the book has out done its predecessor, and the Tiger edition is no exception. Tiger is an elegant OS, but nothing is perfect, and there are times When great advice is vital for data protection and ones sanity. "Help Line" is the answer, and its advice is easily understood, and solves your issue without long phone calls to tech support. The chapters also have "Technically Speaking" sections that will delight the geek in you if you want to "go under the hood" of the topic. Every Mac owner should have a copy of this book- it is a must! I can't think of any book that comes close to this book. It truly is in a league of its own.