Inside .Mac

Rating:
Summary: Quick reference to the entire program and its modules
Review: Apple created .Mac (dot Mac) as a suite of services to let subscribers share information online, yet it hasn't received half the notoriety of its I-cousins, despite features range from an online contact management system and storage space to a customizable personal web site and more. Chuck Toporek's Inside .Mac is the first and only manual to prove the riches of this new suite, providing a quick reference to the entire program and its modules. If you own .MAC, you owe it to yourself to include this essential desk reference in your collection: .MAC is too valuable to miss.



Rating:
Summary: An excellent book for .Mac members
Review: From setting up your .Mac account to blogging with iBlog, this book will help you get the most out of your .Mac membership. There are a lot of screenshots which make it easy to follow as it covers each of the .Mac services. If you are new to .Mac, this is worth a read. If you have some family or friends who have recently been convinced to make the switch to the Mac, this is a great way to introduce just how cool and easy to use Mac apps are. Publishing a professional-looking homepage with one click will always get a "Wow!".

There is a nice description of the Backup utility and I also liked the appendix, which has a list of the keyboard shortcuts for the apps you'll use with .Mac, common iDisk errors and the descriptions of those errors, and how to set up the Window's iDisk Utility.

If I were to add anything to this book, it would be to distinguish between tips for beginners and tips for the advanced users. While I think launching Terminal is enough to scare my mom away from trying to set up the Virex scanner to run as a cron job, it would have been nice if this info was under some kind of "For Advanced Users" heading.

Rating:
Summary: Great .Mac Companion
Review: From setting up your .Mac account to blogging with iBlog, this book will help you get the most out of your .Mac membership. There are a lot of screenshots which make it easy to follow as it covers each of the .Mac services. If you are new to .Mac, this is worth a read. If you have some family or friends who have recently been convinced to make the switch to the Mac, this is a great way to introduce just how cool and easy to use Mac apps are. Publishing a professional-looking homepage with one click will always get a "Wow!".

There is a nice description of the Backup utility and I also liked the appendix, which has a list of the keyboard shortcuts for the apps you'll use with .Mac, common iDisk errors and the descriptions of those errors, and how to set up the Window's iDisk Utility.

If I were to add anything to this book, it would be to distinguish between tips for beginners and tips for the advanced users. While I think launching Terminal is enough to scare my mom away from trying to set up the Virex scanner to run as a cron job, it would have been nice if this info was under some kind of "For Advanced Users" heading.

Rating:
Summary: Bad Teacher
Review: I do not like the way the book is written (frankly). Maybe it's just me, but I like things explained better. I understand everything he is saying and he does give you a step by step list of how to do things, but he DOES NOT tell you the purpose of each of the features of .Mac, which to me is essential. It's almost as if he thinks we already understand what to do with each of the components of membership. He gives absolutely NO examples of what you'd use these things for and all he really would have had to do would've been include a couple paragraphs about it. As I read it's hard for me to follow along because he excludes essential information relevant to .Mac and the use thereof.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book for .Mac members
Review: I've had a .Mac account for about a year now and all that I thought it was good for was email and the iDisk. This book has really opened my eyes to everything that's available to .Mac members. The book is packed with little tips on how to use the different services and applications like Backup, Virex, and even iBlog. But for me, the best part of the whole book was the HomePage chapter. I've been posting Photo Album pages to my .Mac HomePage for a few months, but never really knew how to tie all of those pages together to make my site useful to my friends and family. As I said before, this is an excellent book, and I'd highly recommend it for anyone who has a .Mac membership. Even if you've been using .Mac for some time (like me), you're bound to find some great stuff here.

Rating:
Summary: An amazing reference
Review: Inside .Mac is one of these great computer books that is at the same time detailed and simple to understand. In Inside .Mac, Chuck Toporek unveils little-known features of Apple's .Mac services, explains how to make the most of applications you may not use to their full potential (like iSync or Backup) and allows the reader to gain a solid view of all what .Mac offers -- which is far from an easy task.

A very long time iTools and .Mac user, I am still surprised by the amount of content and the power of the services Apple put online. This book sure helped me discover new features and re-discover basic principles that had faded in my memory over time. A must-have !

Rating:
Summary: A good place to start for novice .Mac (or Mac) users
Review: Most things Apple makes can be easily fgured out without a manual. That's a good thing since Apple rarely includes a manual (other than a booklet or online help) with any of its products these days. Having a .Mac membership, I thought I pretty much knew what I could do with the member benefts. Still, I decided to give trusty O'Reilly a try to see what sorts of insights their .Mac book could give me.

I am three chapters into the book and I've already come upon a few. Not only is the Inside .Mac book helpful for .Mac users, it also contains some helpful hints for those new to any of Apple's iLife products. I learned a little bit about synchronizing my iDisk as well as setting up Mail.

I have made use of my homepage space from my .Mac account to share pictures of my son. What I didn't know is that I could synchronize that site (and all the contents of my iDisk) on my local hard-drive. This will let me work offine on my site, which is a good thing because my cable modem connection is still unreliable.

I also learned how to "fake out" Mail in order to set up my .mac account as a POP account. This will download all mail to my hard-drive instead of leaving it up on Apple?s servers. If you set up your .Mac account the default way, all mail in your inbox actually resides on the Apple servers. This enables you check that inbox via the web or any other computer you've set up to access your .Mac account. I tend to save my emails, forever (like a lot of other GRC folks), so downloading and keeping was an option I wanted to use.

I'd recommend this book for folks new to the Mac and new to using Apple's online tools. If you're looking to host a webpage and put up some of your home movies or pictures, but aren't sure how to do it, this book walks you through all the steps with easy to follow instructions and accompanying graphics. I'm looking forward to learning how to use the iBlog software to put up an online blog onto my site.

Rating:
Summary: Thorough end-user guide
Review: This is a thoroughly end-user guide to the .Mac service. Engineers need not apply, but a typical Macintosh user who wants to make complete and proper use of the .Mac service will find lots to like. The presentation and organization is well thought out, but the book has more screen shots than I have seen in any O'Reilly book. And the screen shots are often used as exposition, which, from the outside, appears to be a no-no (a well appreciated no-no) in the house of O'Reilly.

I definitely recommend this for .Mac users, but not for engineers or experienced users who won't find anything they haven't seen first hand.

Rating:
Summary: Inside .mac - a worthwhile read & reference
Review: Title: Inside .Mac
Author: Chuck Toporek
Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates, 2004, $19.95
ISBN: 0-596-00501-6

Reviewed by: Curt Blanchard, Tucson Macintosh Users Group

I've had a dot-Mac account for a couple of years now and although I use it for many things, I haven't really taken advantage of it the way I could have. This is part sloth, but it's also because a dot-Mac account has features that I guarantee you'll never figure out on your own. With the new O'Reilly book, Inside .Mac by Chuck Toporek, you're going to find out how impressive dot-Mac really is! This isn't fluffy, light reading, it's 350 pages dense with information, that begin with a basic explanation, then take you straight through the dot-Mac's rich feature-set, module by module.

Toporek is quite thorough considering the amount of material there is to cover. There are lots of useful screenshots - sometimes unnecessarily too many, and in a few instances I found it frustrating to locate answers to specific questions even with help from the index. The only other nit is that it's pretty dry reading - no manual will ever be considered "light Summer reading", but other authors are a little better at keeping the reader engaged by lightening up from time to time.

This book could almost be divided in two; volume one would be a slim Getting Started guide and the second volume could deal with the deeper, more technical subjects. The two are fully blended throughout this book which may intimidate the casual user. I'm a better informed dot-Mac user after having read this book and recommend it to those who want to expand their knowledge.

If $99.00 per year for a dot-Mac account seems steep, read this book and you'll realize you get a lot for your money. It works out to only $8.25 per month.

--Curt Blanchard
Tucson Macintosh Users Group