Example Review Mac OS X Hints
Reviewed by Brian Redman,
Lower East Side Mac Unix Users Group

I knew from his macosxhints web site Rob Griffiths was an honest, hard working, modest and generous guy with an eye for quality and esthetics. No doubt he's also loyal, obedient, brave, thrifty, clean and reverent. I didn't know until I read Mac OS X Hints, the book, that he was a literary genius. Clearly, the Pogue vibes energized Rob's creativity. The writing is entertaining while the hints are novel and valuable. Ignoring the author's suggestion I read the book from cover to cover. It's really nice to read paragraph after paragraph of geek gook and enjoy the text. I frequently got the "what's so hilarious now?" look from wife as I giggled and laughed out loud. I also found myself talking to the book -- "cool, I knew that", "hmm... interesting. I'll have to keep that in mind", "wow!", "OMG! that's how you do that!", etc. The entire range of nerd emotions.

Full Review
I knew from his macosxhints web site Rob Griffiths was an honest, hard working, modest and generous guy with an eye for quality and esthetics. No doubt he's also loyal, obedient, brave, thrifty, clean and reverent. I didn't know until I read Mac OS X Hints, the book, that he was a literary genius. Clearly, the Pogue vibes energized Rob's creativity. The writing is entertaining while the hints are novel and valuable. Ignoring the author's suggestion I read the book from cover to cover. It's really nice to read paragraph after paragraph of geek gook and enjoy the text. I frequently got the "what's so hilarious now?" look from the wife as I giggled and laughed out loud. I also found myself talking to the book -- "cool, I knew that", "hmm... interesting. I'll have to keep that in mind", "wow!", "OMG! that's how you do that!", etc. The entire range of nerd emotions.
It was clear the book was a winner after reading the preface; The Missing Credits. A clean, honest list of who's responsible, complete with email addresses. The quality is evident before you get to the introduction -- even the blurb "About Pogue Press" was amusing and encouraging. There's no explanation that a paragraph labeled "Tip" is a "Tip" or courier font means it's supposed to look like teletype output. That's refreshing. A book that assumes I can read a book. The cover boasts 500 hints. Leave it to Griffiths to be modest on the cover. There are 563 hints -- any other book would say "Over 500 Hints" or "almost 600 Hints". There's no animal on the cover. More points. This book was so obviously going to be good I wanted to write the review before I finished the introduction. But I wanted to read the book too, so I held off. Of course my impression was not only justified, but enhanced.
Mac OS X Hints is a motivator that familiarizes you with things you might have figured you can accomplish somehow but never took the time to work out. Here, so many gems are in one place, the time you take will reward you with useful techniques you'll pick up immediately and use continually. The hints go into effect as soon as you touch your computer.
As someone who's been using Unix for 25 years, Mac OS X since it was made public, and lives and breathes sites and forums like macosxhints I didn't think I would learn a lot. I was wrong. I picked up a ton of new stuff. In fact, I noted the number of hints in each chapter I found new and interesting (as opposed the ones I already knew about, could easily have looked up, or simply didn't care about -- for instance I skipped the section on OS 9 Classic). A third of the hints (190 of 563) were winners for me. Most of the other two thirds were fun to read anyway and many of them were useful micro refreshers. (I'm using perhaps my favorite new hint while writing this. Why didn't I notice before that highlighting a misspelled word and right-clicking revealed the suggested spelling at the top of the contextual menu, and selecting it replaces the misspelling? Now I use that constantly.)
Mac OS X Hints only gets 5 of 5 stars. Why not 6? Having about 10 times more experience with Unix than Mac OS X and being extraordinarily picky about facts and presentation I wasn't as delighted with the Unix chapters as I was with the rest of the book. They were alright, most of the content even good, but I would quibble with a couple of the facts and some of the wording. Nevertheless I noted 20 hints in those two chapters that tickled my fancy.
There is a lot of information in Mac OS X Hints and you're not going to remember it all but you probably will remember that you read something about a way to do this or that. The book so far has served as an excellent reference volume. The index has lead me to an answer every time, first time and he table of contents lists each hint as well. I wish all the URLs mentioned had been listed in an appendix. But then, I always do.
I've just placed an Amazon order of a dozen copies for my family and closest (geographically) friends. If you're not among them get your own copy. You won't be disappointed.