Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Lion Edition [Paperback]

Holy cow- What a Book! The subtitle is "The book that should have been in the box". Perhaps it should have but this over 700 page wonder weights only 4 ounces less than my Mac Air. It is worth every dollar it cost and tree that had to be sacrificed to make it. I can only attack it a charter at a time but I walk away with valuable insights, tricks and a deeper understanding each time. Pogue is through and organized while not being ponderous. His wit and humor shine through. My Mac and I will be great collaborators by the time I finish this. Consider this a necessity as you make the move to Mac. I have purchased and attended Apple's One-to-One classes and find this to be equally valuable.

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!

I just made the switch to a Mac and was really questioning my decision because it is so different from my old PC. When I bought this book, I was skeptical that I would be able to understand it. Nothing could be further from the truth. This book is invaluable. I also bought Mac for dummies and while it is good, this book is better.