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Rating: 
Summary: A Lot in One Book
Review: Billed as 17 manuals in one book, this book contains what are effectively stant alone manuals for:
iLife: iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, and iDVDOS X: Mail, Address Book, iCal, iChat and Rendezvous, and Safari
Mac: iDisk, HomePage, WebMail, Backup, iSync, Slides Publisher, and Virex
More: AppleWorks Word Processing, Database, Spreadsheet, Painting, Drawing, and Presentation, plus OmiGraffle, FAXstf, and Inkwell.
The nice thing about an overall book like this one is that you get a quick overview, enough to get started on any of these applications. It may turn out that you want individual books on some of them, but if you don't know what they do you won't know if you need that application or not.
The book is written with a nice mix of technical with commentary that explains what that particular application is trying to do. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Cool Mac Apps
Review: If you are familiar with other books by Robin Williams then you know how useful and valuable they are to the Mac user. And if you have recently purchased a new Mac with OS X installed, then this book should be a tremendous asset in helping you to learn the many applications that are installed or available. Cool Mac Apps is an easy to follow, step-by-step instructional book with a vast amount of illustrations that are displayed just the way you see them on your monitor. Every button or control in the illustration is fully explained and the material is presented with the novice in mind. Each application that Mac OS X installed is covered in detail in a chapter of its own, making it easy to skip around to the areas of greatest interest. The first section covers the iLife 04 applications - iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, and Garage Band. The how to instructions are covered in such a manner that they are easy and fun to follow and will teach you how to get the most out of your photos and music and will help you get connected to the digital world. The second section of the book is devoted to the applications that are available if you subscribe to a .Mac Account. These include iDisk, iCards, Home Page, iMac Web Mail, iSync, .Mac Slides Publisher, Virex, and Backup. That is a lot of applications for $99 and this book does a great job of explaining how to use each and every one. The last section covers the other Mac OS X applications - iCal, Safari, Mail & Address Book, and iChat & Rendezvous. This section is devoted to helping you get the most out of the World Wide Web. As stated on the front cover, this is indeed 17 manuals in one book! This is the book I would like to have had included with my new iMac.
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Summary: This book ought to come in the box with every new Mac!
Review: This book is 'hot off the presses,' having been published on April 10, 2003. I guess I was thinking about iLife, because I expected it to cover only iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto and iDVD. But to my surprise, it covers them and much more. It also covers Mail, Address Book, iCal, iChat and Rendezvous, Safari, Appleworks, Omnigraffle, FaxSTF, Inkwell and all of the .Mac features, including iDisk, iCards, HomePage, WebMail, Backup, iSync, Slides Publisher and Virex. Phew! I'm glad I don't have to say that - I'd run out of breath. I get a lot of questions from people who are converting from other e-mail apps to Mail, so I looked through Chapter 5 (Mail and Address Book) to see if the most common questions were covered. They were. The AppleWorks Chapter (17) is divided into six sections: Word Processing, Database, Spreadsheet, Painting, Drawing, and Presentation. They cover all the basics you need to get started with these tools. Tollett and Williams tell us how to rip CDs, import and edit movies, work with iPhoto, create a chat room in iChat, edit, publish and subscribe to calendars using iCal, make a web location from any link in Safari, publish a slide show on your .Mac account, customize the button bar in AppleWorks, and so much more. the information is presented in simple, logical, straight-forward steps. This book ought to come in the box with every new iMac, eMac and iBook. It covers everything the beginning user of these apps needs to know.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: Very easy to follow, not overly techie. RW & JT have a good writing style and aptitude for clear explanations. The book's illustrations (screen dumps) are well chosen and relevant to the text instructions and explanations. A good teaching tool for IT's to provide for staff or clients. Luckily I read most of the chapters before my co-worker's permanently "borrowed" it. Now I need to buy another copy. Hope RW & JT are busy writing the next edition for the recent upgrades to some of the iLife apps announced at '04 MacWorld. I'll buy that book also as soon as it's available. Howevery, most iApps have have had only minor changes to them with Panther (and the new iLife), so this current book is still very useful and well worth purchasing.
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Summary: The Little Mac iApps Book to get you using iApps
Review: When you buy a computer, you get an operating system with it. When you buy a Macintosh, you get an operating system and an impressive set of most useful applications with it. You should have a book about using the Mac OS X operating system. You also need a guide for using the applications that came with it. The Little Mac iApps Book is about the separate applications that come with Mac OS X that were not covered in Robin Williams' The Robin Williams Mac OS X Book, Jaguar Edition. In this one book you will find a helpful guide to:
• iLife applications -iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, and iDVD
• OS X apps - Mail, Address Book, iCal, iChat and Rendezvous, and Safari
• .Mac apps - iDisk, HomePage, WebMail, Backup, iSync, Slides Publisher, and Virex
• More Cool apps - AppleWorks Word Processing, Database, Spreadsheet, Painting, Drawing, and Presentation, plus OmiGraffle, FAXstf, and Inkwell. More complete coverage of the iLife applications is available elsewhere, but this first section is enough to get you using these applications. If you want more information or to see a demonstration you might consider The Macintosh iLife with a DVD by Jim Heid. The section on Mac OS X apps is, I believe, the only source that covers all of these applications and it does so with enough information to really use them. It is presented so that it is easy reading and the beginner can understand it. Safari is still in Beta but is quite stable and has already become the favorite Internet browser for many of us. This is the only book I know of with Safari information like these two examples: To save or e-mail a link, drag the icon that is immediately to the left of the URL. To open a link in a new window behind the current window shift-Command click on it. "I can go to a search results page and open a dozen windows in five seconds." The section on .Mac apps may be enough to get you to sign up to become a .Mac user. The section on AppleWorks applications is presented as a tutorial. For example the chapter on the AppleWorks database compares records to recipe cards and tells you how to construct an address book which you can easily modify to fit other collections. There is a minor error where it advises you to use a character field for a telephone number and a number field for a ZIP code. The ZIP code should also be in a character field so that leading zeros display. This is a well written and clearly presented book which should appeal to most Mac OS X users because you really should have a guide to all of the applications that come with Mac OS X.
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