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Three Take Control Books Prepare You for Mountain Lion

Now that Apple’s OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion has left its cage and is prowling toward the hard drives and SSDs of millions of Mac users, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve kept up the tradition we started with 10.3 Panther and maintained through every subsequent big cat: releasing essential ebooks simultaneously with the new operating system.

This year we have three Take Control ebooks to help Mac users make Mountain Lion purr: Joe Kissell’s “Take Control of Upgrading to Mountain Lion,” Matt Neuburg’s “Take Control of Using Mountain Lion,” and Joe’s “Take Control of Apple Mail in Mountain Lion.” Available individually and in various discounted bundles, these three books provide Mac users with the essential information they need to install Mountain Lion, master its new and revised features, and make use of the latest refinements in what is probably Mac OS X’s most-used
application, Apple Mail.

Upgrade to Mountain Lion — The latest entry in Joe Kissell’s long-running Upgrading series, “Take Control of Upgrading to Mountain Lion,” takes users through the steps that will result in the optimal installation of Mountain Lion for them, whether they are upgrading from Leopard, Snow Leopard, or Lion. Nor are those migrating from older, incompatible Macs left out: Joe provides the best methods for moving from an old Mac to a new Mountain Lion Mac. The $15, 168-page ebook provides up-to-the-minute guidance for those who are impatient to take the upgrade plunge, and is a free upgrade for those who bought
the 1.0 version (look for email from us, or click the “access extras related to this ebook” link in the “About This Book” chapter).

Use Mountain Lion — Once they’ve upgraded or migrated to Mountain Lion, Mac users can turn to Matt Neuburg’s “Take Control of Using Mountain Lion,” which takes them on an insightful journey through Mountain Lion’s features and idiosyncrasies. Matt helps users decide what they want out of Mountain Lion and then explains how they can get it. As he has for the other books in his Customizing/Using Mac OS X series, Matt brings a keen eye and a razor wit to his exploration of Mountain Lion’s capabilities, whether they are important system-wide additions, such as Notifications, Gatekeeper, Voice Dictation,
and AirPlay Mirroring, or fundamental changes, such as Mountain Lion’s new “modern document model” and how it gives you three ways to save documents: the old way, the new way, and the new way with iCloud. The $15, 204-page ebook (free to those who purchased the pre-order 1.0 version) compiles key information about Mountain Lion that will help both those familiar with Lion and those making the jump from a pre-Lion system.

Master Mountain Lion Mail — Rounding out the trio of Mountain Lion releases is Joe’s “Take Control of Apple Mail in Mountain Lion.” This title, the latest in a series that stretches back to 10.3 Panther, gives users a thorough guide to Apple Mail’s sometimes hidden and occasionally surprising features. Drawing upon his extensive knowledge of Mail, Joe shows users how to adapt Mail to their needs, whether they are integrating Mail with Gmail, using search tokens and Boolean searches, exploiting the new VIP mailboxes, constructing powerful smart mailboxes, using encryption, canning spam, or managing
Mail notifications. Available for $15, the 143-page ebook is by far the most comprehensive resource about Apple Mail available.

Each of these books stands on its own, of course, but we’ve also designed them to work together, and because of that, we’re offering two discounted bundles: a $5-off “Two to Tango” bundle that brings together Joe’s “Upgrading” and Matt’s “Using” ebooks for only $25, and a 30-percent-off “Ménage à Mountain Lion” bundle that provides all three Mountain Lion ebooks for $31.50 instead of $45 (save $13.50).

Finally, remember that owners of either “Take Control of Upgrading to Mountain Lion” or “Take Control of Using Mountain Lion” and TidBITS members are invited to join us live for an upcoming online TidBITS Presents session about Mountain Lion. If you miss the live event, you can still watch later. For details, see “TidBITS Presents “Upgrading to and Using Mountain Lion”” (16 July 2012), and check your email, since we’ve already sent schedule details to invitees once and will do so again on the day of
the presentation.

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