I suppose it is book week here on iPhone J.D. After yesterday’s review of iPad in One Hour for Lawyers, today I am reviewing another great book for beginning iPad owners, iPad for Dummies (2d ed.) by Edward Baig and Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus. I suspect that all of you are at least somewhat familiar with the For Dummies series of books — 1,600 titles that try to make just about any subject easy to understand. The book’s two authors are perfect for a subject like this. Ed Baig writes about personal technology for USA TODAY, Bob LeVitus has written the “Dr. Mac” column for the Houston Chronicle for 15 years and has authored dozens of books. Both men are experts at making complicated technology easy to understand.
The book is organized in five parts, each of which has multiple chapters. Here is a list of all of the chapters. The playful nature of many of the chapter titles gives you a sense of how this book was written to be a very approachable for all levels of users:
- Unveiling the iPad
- iPad Basic Training
- The Kitchen Sync: Getting Stuff to and from Your iPad
- Going on a Mobile Safari
- The E-Mail Must Get Through
- Surfin’ the Web without a Board (or at Least without Safari)
- Apply Here (to Find Out about iPad Apps)
- Get in Tune(s): Audio on Your iPad
- iPad Video: Seeing is Believing
- You Oughta Be in Pictures
- Curling Up with a Good iBook
- The iPad at Work
- Setting You Straight on Settings
- When Good iPads Go Bad
- Accessorizing Your iPad
- Ten Appetizing (and Free) Apps
- Ten Apps Worth Paying For
- Ten Hints, Tips and Shortcuts
As you can tell from this list, unlike the book that I reviewed yesterday which is designed to be consumed in about an hour, this book is comprehensive. It will take a while to read it straight though, and because of the way that the book is organized you can skip around — and this makes it a great resource. Even if you don’t read every page of this book, you’ll still like having it so that when you are trying to figure out how to do something specific — such as get pictures on your iPad or use the Map app to get directions — you can find those topics in the table of contents or index and jump right to that section. The text is easy to understand and presented in a straightforward format, plus the book is full of color pictures that help to walk you through exactly what you need to do.
In some ways, this book is like an owner’s manual for the iPad because it tells you how to do everything, what buttons to press, etc. The iPad is easy enough to use that there are surely many things that you can figure out on your own, but this book takes the guesswork out of those tasks, telling you for example exactly where you need to go in the Settings or Photos or Safari app to do a particular task and everything you need to tap to do so. As you do so, you’ll probably find yourself saying “oh yeah, this makes sense,” but the book leads you down those paths that you might not discover on your own.
Note that while this is the second edition of this book, this version came out in May of 2011. I was just sent a free review copy of the book a few weeks ago, and I find that even four months later, this book remains a great and timely resource for all of the basics. Having said that, when iOS 5 (the next version of the iPad operating system) comes out — which could be this month or next month — there may be some parts of this book that seem a little dated, but I suspect that the large majority of it will remain quite relevant.
You can purchase this book in either a hard copy or an electronic copy. I think this book is more useful in the hard copy format so that you can keep the book open to a page while you follow the steps on the iPad itself. (Plus, when someone else in your life gets their iPad, you can loan them your book to get them started.) Having said that, if you want to get more of a sense of this book before you buy it, take a look at the electronic version of this book in the iBookstore (link at the end of this review). You can download a free sample of the book which includes the full table of contents and the first five pages of Chapter 1 (which in total is 14 pages).
iPad for Dummies is a great manual for new iPad users. It covers tons of topics, it is easy to understand, and the writing style is casual and fun. The retail price is $25 but you can get it for less than that through these links:
Click here to get iPad for Dummies on Amazon ($14.68).
Click here to get iPad for Dummies on the Apple iBookstore ($16.99): 