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TUAW Bookshelf: Markdown by David Sparks & Eddie Smith
Markdown (US$9.99, iPad only) by David Sparks and Eddie Smith, offers a terrific introduction to the Markdown plain text-to-HTML conversion spec. Originally created to provide an easier way to produce web content, Markdown is now an indispensable tool for developers and bloggers. This intro text surveys Markdown and offers a reference and tutorial for both those who are new to the technology and those who want to improve their Markdown skills. The core subject is actually quite small, so the authors have wisely focused on the bigger picture -- how do you use Markdown on various platforms and tools. The book consists of text (130 pages) and screen casts (with over an hour and a half of video and an hour of audio interviews). Yes, the download is enormous -- 850 MB. The book is well-organized and clearly written. The videos were pertinent and helpful -- they felt as if I had taken home my own little personal tech conference. Markdown is not, in and of itself, a big topic. You can easily search for and find cheat sheets. If you're that kind of person, this isn't the book for you. What this field guide offers is a really pleasant introduction from experienced experts, who give you a warm and knowledgeable overview of the topic with a lot of depth. I don't think anyone will regret the purchase price of 10 bucks. The book is available in both OS X and PDF formats from the author website. I reviewed only the iBooks version.
TUAW Bookshelf: Mac Hacks
Mac Hacks ($19.99 e-book, $24.99 print, $27.49 combo) by Chris Seibold is packed with fun and useful OS X-themed tips for anyone looking for non-obvious ways to get more from their Mac. Like Seibold's earlier Big Book of Apple Hacks, Mac Hacks offers ways that technically savvy readers can better take charge of their system. This volume is current, and its tips are specifically compatible with OS X Mountain Lion. From nondestructively partitioning drives to building Mountain Lion installers on flash drives, Seibold has collected a lot of useful information into his book. When you buy a book like this, you're essentially purchasing a condensed collection of ideas. I encourage you to stop by the O'Reilly site and look at the Table of Contents for the book, which is packed with "Oh, I didn't know you could do that!" ideas. The book is a great gift for any Apple geek in your life. Just remember that the content tends to skew more "experienced" and less "noob."
TUAW Bookshelf: The Apple Revolution
On occasion, I will get a request to review a product, and based on the initial description sent to me by a PR flack, I just know that I am going to hate it. That was my initial impression of the book The Apple Revolution by Luke Dormehl. Fortunately, I ultimately found the book to be much more enjoyable to read than I originally anticipated. The book is yet another retelling of the Apple / Silicon Valley story with a focus on Steve Jobs. The Apple Revolution is subtitled "Steve Jobs, the counter culture, and how the crazy ones took over the world,"; which describes the book's premise very well. Dormehl had to write the book within the confines of history, so he travels down the well-trodden path of Steve Jobs as stinky hippie founder, genius behind the Macintosh, pariah who founded NeXT as revenge for being ousted from Apple, deep-pocketed visionary who bought Pixar and triumphant leader of Apple after his return in 1997. Despite the fact that this is a story that has been told many times, Dormehl uses a combination of literate writing and a profuse number of personal interviews with many of the original characters to bring a fresh perspective to The Apple Revolution. Ultimately, the book is not a deep dive into the personal life of Steve Jobs like Walter Isaacson's classic biography of the man, but a well-reasoned treatise on how the times helped to shape Jobs and eventually resulted in him being the person whose vision and singleminded pursuit of perfection shaped our culture today. Dormehl's prose reads like the script of a good documentary, not surprising as he has a background in both journalism and documentary filmmaking. Since his specialty is pop culture, he was the perfect author to explore the connection between the counter culture of the '60s and '70s and the eventual rise of Apple to its dominance in the personal electronics industry. The fruits of Dormehl's interviews are apparent not in pages-long descriptions of something that Jobs or his contemporaries may have done, but in short, to-the-point statements that help to bolster an argument or prove a point. TUAW's Michael Grothaus is quoted twice in the book, primarily for his perspective as an Apple employee during five years in the 2000s when the company was riding the success of the iMac and iPod to create the new computing paradigms -- the iPhone and iPad -- that are feeding the company's bottom line today. Unlike Isaacson's biography of Jobs, The Apple Revolution has no photos of the many players who have helped to shape our current cyberculture. And there's no reason to include those images; anyone with access to the Web and a bit of curiosity can easily search for any number of pictures or wiki entries about those who became heroes of The Apple Revolution. At 532 pages, The Apple Revolution is not a quick afternoon's read. Dormehl turns a story that we already know the outcome of -- that of Steve Jobs and Apple -- into a compelling page-turner that includes just enough unique details to keep even the discerning Apple historian happy. For example, at one point Steve Jobs was being considered for NASA's ill-fated civilian astronaut program and was turned down in favor of teacher Christa McAuliffe, who perished in the 1986 explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. That's something I had never known until reading this book. I won't ruin the book for other potential readers, but there are other little gems to be found in the pages of The Apple Revolution. It's a great read, and a must for the bookshelf of anyone who has found their life to have been benefited by the many fruits of the Apple tree.
TUAW Bookshelf: Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki
Guy Kawasaki, for those of you who don't know, was an original Macintosh evangelist and when the Mac debuted, he went to software developers, advocating that they write software for the new platform. Over the years Guy has been a loyal devotee of Apple and heard numerous startup pitches (and invested in a few). He's written some fantastic books on creating startups, beating the competition, selling others on your idea and more. Guy's latest book "Enchantment" is available starting today (find a seller on this page) and I have to say, if you're starting a company or wanting to reinvigorate an established business, it is worth a look. I've read a few "business" books in my day, plus a few "self-help" books with a business angle. Enchantment is sort of a redux of the best and brightest of those books, including the classic Dale Carnegie "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and Robert Cialdini's "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion." Enchantment, as you might imagine, refers to bringing customers under your spell. It sounds a little sketchy, but as Kawasaki points out, winning customers through cheap tricks and deception will end badly in the long run. Integrity is key. Perhaps those of us who take for granted how Apple just "gets" the needs of customers and pushes features that make sense will read this book and say "well, DUH" -- but these things are not self-evident. Far too many businesses think that by cramming a million bullet points down the throats of investors and customers via PowerPoint and social networks, they too can become a success. Enchantment is the antidote to this thinking. Instead of a bunch of parlor tricks, Enchantment is full of case studies, scientific research and Guy's experience with enchanting potential customers. It's not a dry book by any means, as Guy's personality and positivity shines through in the writing. It's a very personal book as well, as there are frequent nods to Apple, Guy's own passions and proclivities, plus some very engaging personal stories from guests at the end of each chapter. The subtitle for the book is "The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions," and I have to say that the book delivers.
TUAW Bookshelf: Apple II Reference Manual
TUAW BOOKSHELF Apple was kind enough to include a veritable encyclopedia of information with my Apple ][. Inside the big, red manual, you'll find complete step-by-step instructions for setting up the machine, adjusting a tape recorder for optimal use, plenty of programs to get you started, and a handy reference for the hardware inside.I found the manual easy to read, although given the constraints of typing programs by hand using a typewriter, some code was printed using a dot matrix printer. Mr. Wozniak includes excellent code to help you build your own programs, however, and code for interfacing with the likes of a teletype, should you need printed output. There are critical routines for floating point calculations, which I'm sure some will appreciate.Apple introduces a little design philosophy in the manual, which is a welcome break from the volumes used to learn the 5100, for example. Rumors on our sister site Engadget say Tandy is working on a consumer machine with BASIC and a human-readable manual as well, but I'll believe that when I see it. Anyway, the Apple ][ manual has some sample code for making actual audio tones using the built-in speaker (a novel idea, by the way). Why use audio in a program? Here's the design philosophy I found interesting:"Computers can perform marvelous feats of mathematical computation at well beyond the speed capable of most human minds. They are fast, cold and accurate; man on the other hand is slower, has emotion, and makes errors. These differences create problems when the two interact with one another. So to reduce this problem humanizing of the computer is needed. Humanizing means incorporating within the computer procedures that aid in a computer's usage. One such technique is the addition of a tone subroutine."It's like they want to make the computer more *personal*, somehow.Once you've seen how to make graphics, sounds and even interaction and I/O in code, the manual wraps up with a thorough examination of the included hardware. This is a hobbyists' machine, after all. The schematics and diagrams will have you fully understanding how the computer addresses memory and controls video, plus many other miracles I can't believe they crammed into such a small package.This valuable red book of data comes free with your Apple ][, but I wouldn't part with it! You'll find yourself referring to it time and again. Check out the photostat gallery below for a few sample pages.%Gallery-49007%
