By Charles W. Moore cwmoore@applelinks.com

Yes, yet another OS X book. The field is getting crowded, but there is certainly room for Scott Kelby's "the Mac OS X Conversion Kit." For one thing, it's definitely the prettiest Mac OS X book among the dozen or so I have reviewed. This is to be expected in a tome by an author who is the editor-in-chief and cofounder of Mac Design magazine, editor-in-chief of Photoshop User magazine, and president of Photoshop Professionals, the trade association of Adobe Photoshop users.

Aesthetically, this book is drop-dead gorgeous. It is as close of being an illustrated guide to OS X as I've encountered, with pictorial content on every page rendered in vivid color on high-quality paper stock. As is customary with software books, most of the illustrations are screenshots, but they are either in OS 9 Platinum or OS X Aqua. As an added classy touch, the page headers contain a solid bar of either OS 9 Orange or OS X blue (more on that motif in a moment), and an image of the horizontal window scroll bar for the respective OS at the bottom. Each chapter also opens with a full color, full-page image of a tool in clever OS X motif.

The overall effect is tremendously attractive, and it even makes me second-guess my long-standing contention that computer books should be printed on cheap paper because their content is so ephemerally relevant.

But speaking of content, the Mac OS X Conversion Kit isn't just a pretty face. This is a highly functional reference manual for folks making the transition from OS 9 to OS X who don't have time to read a more comprehensive and prolix OS X book like David Pogue's "Mac OS X: The Missing Manual," which "Conversion Kit" author Kelby agrees is "the best book out there for learning Mac OS X." However, the Pogue book is a hefty 700 pages, and while David's conversational prose style makes for easy, entertaining reading, not everyone has the time or inclination to wade into a volume that formidable just to find out why their favorite keystroke shortcut for OS 9 no longer works in OS X.

"Conversion Kit" also has the advantage of being funny. David Pogue is witty and droll; Scott Kelby is flat out hilarious. For example, his answer to the rhetorical question: "Does the world really need another Mac OS X book?:

"I had to ask myself the exact same question. After days of careful research and hours of intense and personal soul searching, I came to the conclusion that yes, the world does need at least one more Mac OS X book. This book. However, after this book is written, it will then be OK for federal officials to close the Mac OS X book market, allowing no more Mac OS X books to be written (unless it is determined by an unbiased board, made up of myself and a hand-picked group of my closest friends and family members, that indeed another Mac OS X book is necessary)."

All kidding aside, this book really does have a specific target market, that is: people switching from OS 9 to OS X who just want to get up and running in the new operating system without bending their minds around a lot of theory and detail; who just want to know how to do the stuff they are used to doing in OS 9 now that they're working in the terra incognita of OS X. As Scott Kelby affirms, "this is the definitive get up and running right away Mac OS X book for Mac OS 8/9 users."

Consequently, this is not a book for folks who are new to Macs and have no ingrained familiarity with the Classic Mac operating system, nor is it for people switching to the Mac platform from the Windows world. There are happily plenty of books available for those demographics, the aforementioned "Mac OS X: The Missing Manual" being an excellent one.

Another thing this book isn't is a guide to the Unix underpinnings of OS X. Since there is no Unix underlying the Classic Mac OS, that wouldn't fit in with the book's theme even if the target audience was interested in mucking around with command lines, and I'm confident that the vast majority of said audience isn't.

Speaking of the book's theme, it is, like the Mac itself, simple and elegant; essentially, throughout most of the book, the left facing page shows you how you did things in good ol' OS 9, while the right page opposite shows you how to do these things, or the closest facsimile thereof, in Mac OS X. It's very effective, and what it lacks in verbosity (the text descriptions are brief and to the point, albeit funny), it more than makes up in "a picture is worth a thousand words" clarity.

This theme is deviated from in the final three of 12 chapters, which deal with Mac OS X-only issues and topics, although the OS 9 way of doing things he is referenced where appropriate.

The chapters are titled and subtitled:
Chapter One - The Apple Menu; There Is One, Just Not The One You Remember
Chapter Two - Windows, Icons, And Stuff; Does This Really Need A Description?
Chapter Three - Customizing Your Mac; Setting Up Your System To Your Taste
Chapter Four - Crank Up The Jams; Music, Photos, And Video
Chapter Five - Monitors; They're Called Displays In Mac OS X
Chapter Six - Fonts And Printing; Perhaps Not The Most Fun Chapter
Chapters Seven - Networking And The Internet; How Could This Be Anything But A Party?
Chapter Eight - Other Stuff; The Land Of Little Lost Commands
Chapter Nine - Troubleshooting; It's Not Good A Good Sign If You're Reading This
Chapter Ten - Don't Freak Out; Installing Mac OS X, And Other Scary Stuff
Chapter Eleven -20 Cool Little Things You Couldn't Do In Mac OS 9
Chapter Twelve - 20 Little Things Apple Changed Just To Mess With Your Head; Actually There's A Method Behind Their Madness, At Least That's What We've Been Led To Believe

There are also an index and a single appendix, although it's not called an appendix, containing Scott Kelby's "Top Ten troubleshooting Tips For Jaguar," and there's a handy "Where Is It Now?" reference card/cheat sheet inside the back cover.

This is a great little book. It's a bit on the pricey side for a lean, 300 page volume, but I expect that has something to do with all those pretty pictures and the nice matte finish page stock. However, you can get it from Amazon.com for a mere US $20.95. See the link below.

My only notable negative criticism of the Mac OS X Conversion Kit is that I don't think Scott holds Apple's proverbial feet close enough to the fire over some of the more egregious changes and omissions in OS X vis a vis OS 9. For example, he notes: "Window shading is no longer available in Mac OS X but it's been replaced by something better - - minimizing to the Dock." Er, hrrrrm, not all of us agree about the "something better" part, and that goes for all the other familiar and beloved OS 9 Finder functions that have been "collapsed" so to speak, into the Dock, a feature for which "Jack of all trades and master of none " might have been invented. However, perhaps Scott genuinely likes the Dock. Some folks actually do. Go figure. I've learned to tolerate it somewhat grudgingly.

That point aside, I find most of Scott's comments, observations, and advice in the OS X Conversion Kit quite agreeable.

I should perhaps also mentioned here that I wrote for Scott Kelby back in the late 90s, in his Mac Today magazine, which IMHO was the best general interest Mac magazine ever, before it morphed into the more specifically targeted (and probably more profitable) Mac Design magazine. The editor who handled my Mac today contributions was Richard Theriault, who is one of the best editors I've ever worked with, and who also is the editor of the Mac OS X Conversion Kit." Nice job, Dick.

I guess that pretty much well sums up my take on this book. Like Mac Design, it's specifically targeted. If you fit in the target category, you won't go wrong with this one.

The Mac OS X Conversion Kit
by Scott Kelby
ISBN: 073571147X
Published by PeachPit Press
Paperback: 304 pages
List Price: US $29.99

For more information, visit http://www.scottkelbybooks.com/
The Mac OS X Conversion Kit is available for US $20.95 from Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0735713545/qid=1049499223/sr=1-9/ref=sr_1_9/104-4174010-5965538?v=glance&s=books

http://www.applelinks.com/mooresv iews/osxconv.shtml

MACinations November 03