Book Description

Prepare to pounce! This book offers all the friendly, practical instruction you need to immediately take advantage of the powerfully enhanced applications that come pre-installed with Mac OS X Panther. Through tutorials, tips, and techniques you'll learn how to use each of the powerful apps--both individually and as part of an integrated, interactive suite. Robin and John also cover the features of the immensely popular .Mac account and its applications.

Whether you're a new or veteran user, you'll welcome this volume's easy approach to all that's new (and not so new) in Panther's application collection. You'll find an entire chapter on GarageBand, Apple's new consumer-level music-making software. You'll also learn everything about getting on the Internet and using email, including the greatest web browser, Safari; the way-cool iChat AV, which adds audio and video to instant messaging; an updated iTunes, which includes access to the revolutionary Apple iTunes Music Store; a powerfully updated iCal with its enhanced alarms and robust time zone support; haunting new visual effects in iMovie; updated features in the .Mac applications, including iSync, Backup, Virex, Mail, Homepage, iCards; and much more.

About the Author
Robin Williams has written more than 20 award-winning and best-selling books, including The Little Mac Book,The Non-Designer's Design Book, and the previous edition of this volume. John Tollett is a designer, art director, and illustrator, as well as the co-author of several books with Robin, including the previous edition of this popular volume.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
We recently raved about The Robin Williams Mac OS X Book, Jaguar Edition. But we mentioned that Mac OS X 10.2 offers so many goodies that Robin Williams had to move her iApps coverage to a new companion book, The Little Mac iApps Book. That book￯﾿ﾽs just arrived, and we recommend it highly.

Williams￯﾿ﾽs longtime collaborator John Tollett covers pretty much every significant application that comes with a contemporary Mac. And all the significant applications that come with your $99 .Mac membership. There are even chapters on easily downloadable third-party applications that fill key gaps in your Mac toolset.

Tollett starts with expert coverage of the four core ￯﾿ﾽiApps￯﾿ﾽ: iPhoto (everything from burning photo CDs to creating QuickTime slideshows). iTunes (play, burn, send to iPod). iMovie and iDVD (step by step through your first projects).

You￯﾿ﾽll find coverage on Mac OS X (Jaguar)￯﾿ﾽs mail and address book applications, iCal calendaring, iChat and Rendezvous. This is also one of the first Mac guides we￯﾿ﾽve seen that cover Safari, Apple￯﾿ﾽs nifty new browser.

This is the stuff you really want to know about Safari. Importing your bookmarks. Organizing them (way easier in Safari than Internet Explorer). Using Safari￯﾿ﾽs integrated Google search. Using Apple￯﾿ﾽs innovative SnapBack, which gives you a ￯﾿ﾽbreadcrumb trail￯﾿ﾽ back to the browsing path you intended to follow before you got distracted. Integrated Rendezvous-enabled features that fetch Web addresses from anywhere on your network. And -- yes! -- the pop-up exterminator. Thank you, Apple!

Apple keeps introducing more .Mac applications, and Tollett keeps writing about them. iDisk (including handy Public Folder Access). iCards (free, customizable electronic postcards for every occasion: birthday, business, and ￯﾿ﾽjust because￯﾿ﾽ). HomePage (an incredibly easy way to publish a Web site without also publishing horribly intrusive, embarrassing advertising). Mail (elegant and flexible: Think of it as a better Hotmail for Mac users). Virex antivirus protection. iSync for synchronizing with your other Mac (or iPod or Palm OS device or Bluetooth-enabled cell phone).

If you￯﾿ﾽve sprung $99 for .Mac, you can also download Apple￯﾿ﾽs elegant and quick Backup software. (You do back up, right? No? Start. Please.) Tollett walks you through retrieving and installing Backup, archiving your files online or to CD or DVD, and using QuickPicks to find the important files you might otherwise miss. Stuff like iCal calendars, Address Book contacts, Keychain passwords, and iTunes playlists.

Every AppleWorks module gets its own chapter -- and this might be enough coverage to save you from buying a separate AppleWorks book. This is the meat and potatoes stuff: formatting and editing documents, building and using databases, creating spreadsheets, drawing, and using AppleWorks￯﾿ﾽ presentation capabilities, which are all many presenters will ever need.

Need to create diagrams (especially since there￯﾿ﾽs no Mac Visio nowadays)? Tollett covers the impressive OmniGraffle. Send faxes? There￯﾿ﾽs a chapter on FaxSTF X. Use Inkwell handwriting recognition? That￯﾿ﾽs here, too. This is an impressive roundup of an equally impressive stable of Mac OS X applications. Bill Camarda

Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER