News
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Get the Last Word on Mac OS X Terminology
by Adam Engst, Publisher of TidBITS and the ‘Take Control’ series of eBooks.
We Mac users sling technical jargon around every day, but if you’ve ever felt uncertain about what a term actually means, help is here in “Take Control: The Mac OS X Lexicon.” The ebook is a mad romp through over 500 Macintosh- and Internet-related terms. You’ll learn how to figure out if your optical drive can write to a double-layer DVD, why 404 and 501 are interesting numbers, how to work with the three main types of dashes that you can type on a Mac, and much more. We’re not talking about some dry old dictionary here - these definitions are loaded with useful tips, practical advice, humor, and empathy. If you enjoy the serendipity of discovering useful tips in unexpected places, you’ll love this ebook.
Order Here:
Take Control: The Mac OS X Lexicon
Written by veteran Macintosh authors Andy Baird and Sharon Zardetto, the 191-page ebook extends the familiar Take Control design with handy alphabetic navigation tabs on every page, oodles of custom graphics, and over 2,000 internal links. Want to learn more about a particular entry? Margin icons link to hand-picked external Web sites, TidBITS articles, and other Take Control titles. Save 10% off the $15 list price right now with the MUG discount embedded in the link above.
Still not sure? Check out the free 39-page sample to see what we mean!
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Five new Take Control eBooks Launch You into Leopard: Save 30%!
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is finally here, and we can now share with you the fruits of an incredible amount of work over the last few months: five of our most popular ebooks completely updated for Leopard, and they’re all available right now, led by Joe Kissell’s essential ”Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard.” Once you’ve installed, our other ebooks will help you customize all of Leopard’s new features, share files much more elegantly than in the past, and manage your fonts with Leopard’s new font activation capabilities.
To the thousands of you who pre-ordered our Leopard ebooks, thanks!
You can now click the Check for Updates link (or red starburst) on your pre-order PDFs to download the full versions. If you haven’t yet ordered, we have three options for you:
1. Buy just the ebooks you want individually. They’re all $10, except for the 217-page “Take Control of Fonts in Leopard,” which is $15. If you’ve bought the Tiger or Panther versions of any of these ebooks,
click the Check for Updates button in your copy to save 20%. MUG members can - as always - save 10% with the links in this message, but the bundles are a better deal.
2. Buy our core “Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard” and “Take Control of Customizing Leopard” titles for $15, saving 25%. This bundle is linked on the left side of these books’ pages on our Web site.
3. Buy our “I Love Leopard” bundle of all five ebooks - over 650 pages in all! - for only $38.50, saving 30% off the cover price. Again, the bundle is accessible from the left side of each book’s Web page.
You can read more about each of the ebooks on our Web site, but if you really want to know…
Monday, November 19, 2007
Install and Run Windows on an Intel-based Mac with Ease
by Adam Engst, Publisher of TidBITS and the ‘Take Control’ series of eBooks.
If you want to install Windows on your Intel-based Mac soon, or if you’ve installed Windows but aren’t happy with how it’s working, you can find up-to-date help in the 148-page “Take Control of Running Windows on a Mac,” by Joe Kissell. The ebook is completely up-to-date and loaded with all the details you need to run Windows on a Mac successfully with Apple’s Boot Camp 1.3 beta, Parallels Desktop 3.0, the release candidate of VMware Fusion, and the free public beta of
VirtualBox. It also now covers both Windows XP and Vista and includes real-world advice about installing Windows, dealing with tricky peripherals, sharing files between Windows and Mac OS X, backing up a Windows installation, avoiding Windows malware, and more.
Still not sure? Check out the free 29-page sample to see what we mean!
Read this book to learn the answers to questions such as:
- How can I get a copy of Windows XP or Vista that will work on a Mac?
- What can I expect and how can I avoid problems with Windows activation?
- Should I run Parallels Desktop, VMware Fusion, or VirtualBox?
- How can I best right-click in Boot Camp?
- How can I make my Bluetooth device work with Boot Camp?
- What are my options for sharing files between Windows and Mac OS X?
- What is a smart way to back up my Windows installation?
- How can I print from my Windows software?
- What techniques can I use to avoid viruses and spyware in Windows?
- How do I use one installation of Windows for Boot Camp and my virtualization software?
Save 10% off the $10 list price right now with the MUG discount embedded in the link above.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Get a Grip on Your iPhone with eBooks from Take Control
by Adam Engst, Publisher of TidBITS and the ‘Take Control’ series of eBooks.
Once the novelty of your new iPhone wears off, you may have serious questions about how to get the most out of this snazzy new device from Apple. The folks from Take Control are here to help with two new titles:
- ”The Macworld iPhone Superguide,” created by the folks at Macworld, examines every facet of the iPhone, from setup and activation all the way to choosing the best accessories. Macworld’s writers look in depth at the iPhone’s email and text message capabilities, using Safari and other iPhone applications, converting and watching video, and syncing photos. It’s 93 pages and costs $12.95.
- “Take Control of Troubleshooting Your iPhone,” written by well-known Mac troubleshooting guru Ted Landau, teaches you to deal with activation problems, sync failures and conflicts, keyboard and gesture quirks, application crashes, iPhone freezes, and handset security. This book is currently in draft-release form, so you can read and comment on the first 71 pages. It costs $10.
Click the links above to save 10% off the list price on any one ebook, or look on either title’s Web page (in the left margin) to find a 20% discount for buying both.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
FlexBuilder for the Macintosh Ships
by Brian Duck, Product Review Coordinator
Adobe Systems Incorporated announced the delivery of Adobe® Flex™ Builder™ 2 for Macintosh, an extension of its powerful toolset for designing and deploying a new class of rich Internet applications. The release of Flex Builder 2 for the Macintosh helps developers and designers build engaging Web applications that combine the benefits of desktop software with the reach of the Web.
I’ve been working with AJAX application framework call BackBase for the past few months, and this looks much more productive. It seemed like a worthwhile effort to let some of our FordMug members who are developers know about this development environment. Adobe is currently working on a product, codename Apollo, which will turn Flex in to a full-fledged desktop application development environment. It’s worth taking a look: labs.adobe.com
“The response to Flex Builder from the Mac developer community has been overwhelming and positive,” said Jeff Whatcott, vice president marketing and business development for Adobe’s Enterprise and Developer Business Unit.... With Flex Builder for the Mac more exciting and more engaging experiences will be in reach for greater numbers of people, regardless of their development platform.”
The Adobe Flex 2 product line provides developers with a comprehensive, integrated set of tools and technology for fast, end-to-end development of rich and innovative Web applications. With the free license version of the Flex 2 SDK, developers have everything they need to build and deploy complete rich Internet applications with no software licensing costs. Flex Builder 2, a powerful Eclipse® based integrated development environment (IDE), combines powerful ActionScript and MXML editors, a visual UI designer, and integrated debugging, to help developers build applications faster.
“Many developers build engaging web applications leveraging the combination of Flex and our flagship product WebLogic,” said Bill Roth, vice president of the Workshop business unit at BEA. “The release of Flex Builder for the Macintosh helps ensure that our customers have a complete cross-platform, rich Internet application experience on top of the WebLogic Server.”
Flex Builder enables Macintosh community to quickly develop rich internet applications
“The response to Flex Builder from the Mac developer community has been overwhelming and positive,” said Jeff Whatcott, vice president marketing and business development for Adobe’s Enterprise and Developer Business Unit. “More and more, the Web is about experiences. With Flex Builder for the Mac more exciting and more engaging experiences will be in reach for greater numbers of people, regardless of their development platform.”
Pricing and Availability
Flex Builder 2 for the Macintosh and the Flex Builder 2 Eclipse® Plug-in for the Macintosh are now publicly available for trial and purchase at http://www.adobe.com/flex . The Mac OS X version of Flex is a Universal Binary that will install on Intel®- and PowerPC®-based Macintosh systems. In addition to the new Flex Builder for the Macintosh offering, Adobe is also making available updates to the Windows version of Flex Builder 2, and the Windows and Linux® version of the Flex 2 SDK and Flex Data Services 2. Customers can download these free updates from the Adobe Flex support center (http://www.adobe.com/support/flex ).
The Adobe Flex 2 SDK, which includes the Flex framework and command line compiler, is available free of charge. Adobe Flex Builder 2 is available for an estimated street price of US$499. Adobe Flex Builder 2 with Charting is available for an estimated street price of US$749. Volume discounts and custom pricing structures for ISV/OEM customers also are available.*
