The Macintosh Digital Hub. An interactive guide to iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD. [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Well, I found out that I knew how to use them less, rather than more! Jim Heid's excellent book and video is great for the novice, but it also has plenty to teach the experienced user. In this age of "no printed manual" many of us just jump into an application and figure out how to use it. In doing so, we miss out on a lot of little tricks and capabilities that really save time, improve usability, and make using these great programs even more fun! Heid brings us up-to-speed while teaching all of these small, often undocumented features that really make using the applications even smoother and easier.

This book/video combo is a great value and recommended for any Mac user who wants their computer to be the center of their "digital life."

In the book, Jim says the picture quality is a bit better if you play the DVD on a TV set instead of on your computer. The book tells you how to use the DVD remote choose the topic you want.

I popped the DVD into my iBook. It started displaying the DVD full screen in a better picture than I get from our TV set.

Soon I was watching moving close-ups of Jim Heid's monitor as he showed me how to create and name an iTunes playlist. I watched his cursor as he clicked one selection and then shift clicked another to select contiguous tunes. Then Jim command clicked individual tunes to add them to the selected list, and dragged the whole selected list to the new playlist. Next I watched Jim explain that there is another way. The view shifted back to the action on his computer as he used the same methods to select another set of tunes, and then went to the file menu and choose New Playlist from Selection.

That is the advantage of the DVD. In about 90 minutes Jim actually shows you how to do practically everything with iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD. I was particularly impressed Jim Heid used the iPhoto Retouch tool to rub over a dirty spot on a little girl's face, scrubbing the picture of the face clean as if it had been done with a washcloth. And, when I saw it working, I found the way the iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD work together was more impressive, more elegant than when just reading about it.

My first impression when I looked at the book was one of disappointment only 173 pages not counting the index, and in large type. As expected book is laid out with iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD sections. Within each section, topics are covered in two page illustrated spreads without the hundreds of densely packed words that I had expected. But once I looked into the two page spreads covering topics such as Improving Sound Quality with the Equalizer, Tuning into Internet Radio, and Analog to Digital: Converting Tapes and Albums, I found that they covered the subject, did it clearly, and contained information that I had not remembered seeing in those more densely packed books.

The DVD and the book are designed to work together, and they reference each other where appropriate. You do not have to have the book open and watch the DVD at the same time, but the two need each other for a complete package. In my opinion, the two together will teach you more in less time than you could possibly get from either a book or a DVD alone.

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