Review

Inside .Mac

Inside .Mac
By Chuck Toporek
May 2004 
ISBN: 0-596-00501-6
384 pages, $19.95

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/indotmac/index.html

Inside .Mac by Chuck Toporek is written for new users of Apple’s .Mac service, which icludes Virex virus protection, backup software, 100MB space on Apple’s server, and many more benefits. The book covers just about every question that a user could have. Which is just as well because Apple does not provide a manual. Apple provides online help on the DotMac site, but for some people reading a book first is the preferred method of learning. (I am more of the dive in, play around, and only refer to the manual in case of dire necessity persuasion). The book not only covers OS X, it shows how to access your iDisk from OS 9 and yes, Windows!

Apple’s $99/year DotMac service is often confused by customers with an ISP account. Since it offers email services, that’s not surprising. (In fact, you need an ISP account to make use of DotMac’s email!) Toporek takes the reader through the methods of using DotMac as web-mail, or accessing it using Apple’s mail program built into OS X.

DotMac is pitched as an automated, offsite backup solution; the basic service offers 100MB of space, enough for your word processing documents, spread-sheets and presentations, but probably not enough if you have a large photo or music library. You can use Apple’s Backup software included with DotMac to back up to local media and the book offers a comparison of costs and benefits of using DotMac’s iDisk vs. a CD-ROM or DVD, and also makes other suggestions for people with larger backup storage space needs. The book helps the user with backup strategies, what files to back up, and where they are located, and how to setup backup schedules.

Inside DotMac provides a chapter on iBlog, a simple program that allows you to create a blog on your Mac.com homepage. For a while, iBlog was free to DotMac users, but is no longer free or available on the DotMac site, so read-ers might find this confusing. As I had already downloaded iBlog during the free giveaway period, I used the book to guide me as I created a simple blog. On occasions the book is very pedantic in explaining the steps to install software in excruciating detail. In the case of iBlog, I simply dragged the icon to my Applications folder, but Toporek took almost two pages to explain his installation method. Obviously a new user would be more appreciate of the detail, while I hopped ahead.

Integration with the iLife suite of apps is another reason to have DotMac, and Toporek explains building a Mac Home page using DotMac’s simple tools, uploading images from iPhoto, and movies from iMovie. One of the tidbits I picked up was how to create a “Favi-con”. If you use Safari, you may have noticed that some web pages display a logo in the Address bar to the left of the URL. These are actually 16x16 pixel images that you can create for your own website. You need to embed a little HTML code in the web page to make them appear. (See http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/indotmac/ for an example.) I was glad to have found this little gem in in the book. Another unrelated gem I noted was to check spelling as you type with Safari. If you use webmail, or are typing an email into a form on a website, being able to spell check is something I’ve always wanted to do. Just choose Spelling, Check as You Type from the Safari Edit menu.

In general I found the book to be readable, well organized and easy to use, with a decent index, and info that’s hard to find elsewhere. If you are a new Mac user and DotMac subscriber and have $20 to spend, I recommend this book.