BKEVRMAC.RVW  940719
 
Hayden Books
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Indianapolis, IN   46290
317-581-3718
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"Everything you wanted to know about the Mac", Hanson, 1993, 1-56830-058-1,
U$29.95/C$37.95
 
This book is an enthusiastic, well-written, broadly based, well-informed
overview of the Macintosh and its uses, users and culture.  It is useful both
as an introduction for the novice and as a resource for the intermediate user. 
Unfortunately, the content is also subjectively chosen, repetitive and poorly
organized.
 
Part one is a general introduction.  Chapter one is an interesting but highly
biased history of Apple and the Mac which obviously buys into the hype that the
Mac changed everything.  Chapters two, three and four all basically introduce
the operations and operating system albeit from slightly different angles. 
Hardware is covered in chapter five and printing in six.  Parts two, three and
four look at both general types of applications and at specific applications. 
These introductions, for reasons of space, must be kept quite short, and it
would be difficult to say that they would be of much help to the average user. 
Part five looks at management and maintenance.  Part six looks at
communications and community.  Part seven has two brief chapters on
troubleshooting and programming.
 
Eleven authors and six more "commentators" were involved with the production of
the book.  With that number of contributors, it is surprising to find that the
quality of the writing is consistently good throughout.  The choice of content,
however, has not been managed as well.  Some topics are covered multiple times,
while other issues are missed.
 
For the beginning and intermediate user, not everything, but a wealth of
information.
 
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994   BKEVRMAC.RVW  940719
 
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