This Book Breaks the Sacred Rule of Computer Books

Really?

Absolutely. It’s a time-honored tradition that all computer books make you (the reader) wait until everything has been explained fully, in great detail, before you’re allowed to do anything.

In fact, many books make you start by reading chapters on the history of computing, followed by in-depth looks at how computers work, and what a “bit” and a “byte” are, and blah, blah, blah—all before they let you do anything. I call these “tell-me-all-about-it” books.

But this book breaks that mold. It’s a “show-me-how-to-do-it” book, so instead of explaining all that junk that most people don’t really care about, I show you, right from the beginning, step-by-step how to do the things you bought your Mac for in the first place.

The whole book is tutorial-based, so you’ll be learning to do the things you really want to do, right off the bat: stuff like getting on the Internet, sending email, working with photos from your digital camera, downloading and importing music. You know, the fun stuff.

So where should you start?

If you’ve never used a computer before (and therefore, you probably don’t know how to use a mouse), turn to Lesson 0, where I take just a few moments to taunt and ridicule you (kidding). Lesson 0 isn’t really a lesson—it’s just four pages—but if you don’t know how to use a mouse or double-click, they may be the most important four pages in the book.

So, if you know how to use a mouse, you can jump straight to Lesson 1. However, it will help you along your path to Macintosh enlightenment if you go through the book in order: Lesson 1, Lesson 2, Lesson 6 (just seeing if you were paying attention), etc. That’s because later lessons build on what you’ve learned in previous lessons. Now, do you have to go in that order? Absolutely not, because I’m pretty careful about spelling everything out, so if you really want to download some songs, connect your iPod, and go, you can do just that by turning to the music lesson (Lesson 3) and following my step-by-step instructions.

So I get to start doing fun stuff now?

Yup. Now, Lesson 1 is about setting up your Address Book, which may not sound like that much fun at first, but when you compare it to a chapter on the history of personal computing, it’s absolutely riveting. Actually, what makes it fun is how brilliantly Apple has designed even simple things like the Address Book, so I thought it would be a great place to start—so turn the page, and start using your Mac now!