Obviously, when I make serious complaints like these, I have to check them within an inch of their lives—and I did. These are the problems with my MacBook, which I bought on March 14, 2009. Its operating system is OS X, or 10.5.7, also code named “Leopard.” These are also problems and errors in The Missing Manual (“The book that should have been in the box…”) by David Pogue, copyright 2007 and 2008, ISBN 978-0-596-52952-9, about $40. Importantest things first…
AA1. The computer refuses to “Save as Draft” if it is not connected to a server or if the link is down. I was losing important, carefully crafted documents. Very annoying. The only thing I really need my computer to do is to save what I type, and it has been failing to do that—at least twice.
AA2. The computer fails to warn you that “Save as Draft” is NOT going to save.
AA3. David Pogue’s book and five other computer books on this specific computer are unable to tell you how to turn off that “Save Drafts to Server.” They are not even aware of it.
AA4. Books do not tell you why you may want to “Save to Server.”
AA5. Books do not tell you why you may not want to “Save to Server.”
AA6. Hint: If you are on a beach, or up on a mountain, and you need to save, it probably won’t work. You couldn’t even recover information from your recent draft.
AA7. The path to turn it off is Byzantine: Mail/Preferences/Accounts/Mailbox Behavior/X Save Drafts on Server. It is way down on a sub-sub-menu.
AA8. My son did not know about this and couldn’t find it.
AA9. My wife could not find it for the longest time.
AA10. Apple’s search engine was unable to search it up.
AA11. Apple’s Spotlight was unable to spot it.
AA12. Apple’s Finder was not able to find it.
AA13. Apple’s Help was not able to help.
AA14. The computer expert I talked to in Cupertino does not know about this “Save to Server,” nor how to turn it off.
AA15. Finally my wife made a lucky guess, a lucky find, and asked me sweetly, “Is THIS what you are looking for?” I shut it off.
Now when I ask for “Save As Draft,” it saves to my hard drive. At least it seems to....
BB1. Mr. Pogue and the five other authors all omit the same information in their books, because...
BB2. They only print what Apple tells them to print. Circumstantial evidence proves this. And…
BB3. They do not check to see if their instructions work—or not! They print bad, obsolete instructions that don’t work. And all the books use the same phrases.
BB4. The books all have mediocre indexes. Even if there is good info in there, you may not be able to find it.
CC1. Apple keeps making nice improvements in its computer, but...
CC2. Apple doesn’t document these changes, and…
CC3. Apple neglects to give up-to-date information to the “authors.”
CC4. Most of the books are bad. Heck, all of them are bad because they are so deficient and wrong—wrong with the same phrases!
CC5. I wish I could tell you that Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard by Robin Williams is better, but it’s not. It’s made from the same bad advice as the others.
DD1. I tried to figure out how to use fonts. The instructions were too vague. Useless.
DD2. I kept looking for a “Just Do It” command, and there isn’t any.
DD3. The procedure is disarmingly simple: mark the desired text, go to Fonts, indicate the font you want, turn it on, and then turn it off. The marked text is converted to the new font. It’s marvelous, but utterly inobvious, undocumented, and not in the books.
DD4. I think this is different from what my son tried to tell me. Again, Apple “improved it” until the older published instructions that used to work now do not work.
EE1. I was getting .pdf files from my editors. The print was too small to read. Pogue’s book gave advice on how to zoom in, and it didn’t work.
EE2. My son tried to tell me what to do, by phone, and that didn’t work.
EE3. When my son came over, he showed me four elegant ways to zoom in, and they were all slightly different from the book’s instructions. All you have to do is double-click on the document, and then you can zoom in. But the books don’t tell you that you have to double-click.
FF1. I tried to find info on how to block the arrival (over a dialup line) of very large e-mail files, such as 2, 4, 8, 16, or 32 Mbits. The books have zero info.
FF2. My son was able to provide a good way to do this.