Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Lion Edition

by David Pogue

Ready to move to the Mac? This incomparable guide helps you make a smooth transition. "New York Times" columnist and Missing Manuals creator David Pogue gets you past three challenges: transferring your stuff, assembling Mac programs so you can do what you did with Windows, and learning your way around Mac OS X.

Learning to use a Mac is not a piece of cake, but once you do, the rewards are oh-so-much better. No viruses, worms, or spyware. No questionable firewalls or inefficient permissions. Just a beautiful machine with a thoroughly reliable system. Whether you're using Windows XP or Windows 7, we've got you covered. Transfer your stuff. Moving files from a PC to a Mac is the easy part. This guide gets you through the tricky things: extracting your email, address book, calendar, Web bookmarks, buddy list, desktop pictures, and MP3 files. Re-create your software suite. Big-name programs from Microsoft, Adobe, and others are available in both Mac and Windows versions. But hundreds of other programs are Windows-only. Learn the Macintosh equivalents and how to move data to them. Learn Mac OS X Lion. Once you've moved into the Macintosh mansion, it's time to learn your way around. You're in good hands with the author of "Mac OS X: The Missing Manual," the #1 bestselling guide to Mac OS X.

712 pages, ebook

First published November 22, 2011

About the author

David Pogue, Yale '85, is the weekly personal-technology columnist for the New York Times and an Emmy award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News. His funny tech videos appear weekly on CNBC. And with 3 million books in print, he is also one of the world's bestselling how- to authors. He wrote or co-wrote seven books in the "For Dummies" series (including Macs, Magic, Opera, and Classical Music). In 1999, he launched his own series of amusing, practical, and user-friendly computer books called Missing Manuals, which now includes 100 titles.

David and his wife, Jennifer Pogue, MD, live in Connecticut with their three young children.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

First let me set the background for this review: since my childhood, I've always been a PC guy. I grew up on Windows 3.0, 3.1, 95, NT, 2000, XP, and 7. I've worked my whole professional life in the IT field. So, in short, we're talking a decades-long intimate history of Windows on a PC.

As added background, I will confess to having done my fair share of bashing Apple and its products.

So, it was with quite a hearty share of hesitation and introspection that I took upon myself to switch to a Mac. A couple of years of exposure to an iPhone and iPad, combined with the new innovations in the recent versions of OS X (especially the move towards integrating it with iOS, as well as the unmatched beauty of the Magic Mouse) all together provided the last few straws to break the proverbial camel's back.

Naturally, as a lifelong PC guy, I was lost on a Mac. I have a good knowledge of Unix and Linux, and that was my small shred of comfort, but not nearly enough to make the transition easy enough to keep from turning back.

This book, though, was the perfect aid. I read it cover to cover, following along with my new Mac Pro, learning the intricacies of OS X Lion. In fact, by the time I was done with this book, I even had lifelong Mac users interrupting me at times with "wait--how did you do that?!" From keyboard shortcuts, to really useful tips, to step-by-step instructions, this book covers virtually everything you need to know to get up and running on a Mac. It's especially geared towards Windows users, but I can see this working equally well for any new computer user with minimal technological intuition.

I can honestly say that without this book, I'm not even all that sure if I would've had the patience to see the PC-to-Mac transition through to the end... not to mention that the transition probably took only a fraction of the time because of it.

I highly recommend this book for anyone switching from a PC to a Mac. Not only that, but having made the transition and now seeing the advantages of a Mac with OS X Lion for myself, I can also highly recommend that even the most stalwart of PC people should at least give it a fair, objective, and serious look at some point. You might just be as pleasantly surprised as I was.

(Added tip: Parallels Desktop is the final missing piece to make that transition smooth for lifelong-PC users who worry about some of their PC-only apps; I have yet to encounter a single PC-only program that doesn't work just fine with it!)

My only gripe is that there are references in this book to web-available addenda, but some of them are still listed on the site as "coming soon". The book has been out for quite a while already and if those addenda are not there yet, I can't imagine what the author is waiting for!

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overly detailed at times. For example, a whole chapter on how to use ICalc. I don't think its necessary to have a whole chapter on how to use a calculator. But, the chapters that mattered were excellent: How to switch over from a Windows to a Mac and I loved the Troubleshooting Chapter at the end of the book. I wished it could have been a little more.

[Dara · Rating 3 out of 5]

No, I didn't read the whole thing, but it was useful...