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Prepare for Yosemite Now with Take Control Books

The public beta of OS X 10.10 Yosemite has been out for a bit now, but with no word on when Apple plans to release the final version apart from “this fall,” which could mean anywhere from now through November. For those who don’t want to mess with the beta but are looking forward to Yosemite, we have an early-bird version of Joe Kissell’s “Take Control of Upgrading to Yosemite” to smooth your transition. It’s for sale now, along with three other Yosemite and iOS 8 books available for pre-order in discounted bundles. They include:

  • “Yosemite: A Take Control Crash Course,” by Scholle McFarland
  • “iOS 8: A Take Control Crash Course,” by Josh Centers
  • “Digital Sharing for Apple Users: A Take Control Crash Course,” by Joe Kissell

I’ll explain what a Take Control Crash Course is below, but to cut to the chase, you can save 33 percent on all four books ($45 list, you pay $30), take 25 percent off the two-book bundle of “Take Control of Upgrading to Yosemite” and “Yosemite: A Take Control Crash Course” ($25 list, you pay $18.75), or just save $5 on “Take Control of Upgrading to Yosemite” ($15 list, you pay $10). These offers will expire once we publish the final books.

(Pre-order books come as one-page PDFs; once a final book is out, you can get it from links on the PDF or from your Take Control library, and we’ll send you direct download links in email.)

Joe Kissell’s “Take Control of Upgrading to Yosemite” is the 8th installment in his classic series, which has helped tens of thousands of Mac users upgrade with confidence since 2003. With “Take Control of Upgrading to Yosemite,” you’ll stay in control as Joe explains how to ensure that your hardware and software are ready for Yosemite, prevent problems by making a bootable duplicate of your main drive, eliminate digital clutter, prepare your Mac, and decide on the best installation method for your particular situation, no matter what version of Mac OS X you’re upgrading from,
all the way back to 10.4 Tiger.

Because you may want to start preparing now, we’ve published the 73-page “Take Control of Upgrading to Yosemite” before Yosemite is available. Once Apple releases Yosemite — and our non-disclosure agreement is lifted — we will publish a version 1.1 update with full installation steps, post-installation advice, troubleshooting help, and all the good stuff we can’t talk about yet. Look for “Meet Me Back Here on Upgrade Day” in the ebook to learn how to get the free 1.1 update, or just watch for our email notification with direct download links.

The other three books are in our new Crash Course series, which splits the first-rate content you expect from Take Control into shorter, more digestible chunks of information so you can dip in and read more quickly, picking just those topics that interest you. Crash Courses have a modern, magazine-like layout in PDF while retaining an elegant, reflowable design for the EPUB and Mobipocket versions. Not all topics lend themselves to the Crash Course approach; process-based subjects like upgrading to Yosemite, where we recommend reading the bulk of the book from front to back, are best handled by our traditional Take Control style.

These books can be pre-ordered individually for $10 each, or at a discount in a bundle (either one of the bundles mentioned above or our standard 30 percent discount for three or more books in an order). We anticipate releasing them at some point in September or October, and that they’ll be in the 90- to 100-page range, give or take.

  • Yosemite: A Take Control Crash Course” explains interface changes in Yosemite’s Finder and focuses on new features such as Handoff and iCloud Drive. Former Macworld editor Scholle McFarland also discusses the key Apple apps that are the most changed in Yosemite: Safari, Mail, Messages, and Calendar. Plus, she covers features recently added to OS X, such as notifications, Finder tags, and tabbed Finder windows, along with basic info about under-the-hood topics such as Recovery mode, setting up a new user account, and working with Activity Monitor.

  • iOS 8: A Take Control Crash Course” helps you quickly master new features in iOS 8. Guided by TidBITS Managing Editor Josh Centers, you’ll get an overview of iOS 8’s new capabilities, along with directions for putting them to use right away. In addition to system features like Siri, Spotlight, and Notification Center, Josh explores the new Health app, and takes you through what’s different in iOS 8’s most changed apps: Camera, Phone, Photos, Mail, Messages, and Safari. Additional special topics cover accessibility, privacy, important apps to try, managing data usage, and improving battery life.

  • Digital Sharing for Apple Users: A Take Control Crash Course” offers quick, easy-to-understand lessons for sharing your data, documents, and devices in over three dozen scenarios. With author Joe Kissell as your teacher, you’ll soon be sharing photos, files, contacts, calendars, reminders, videos, printers, scanners, iTunes Store media, passwords, and quite a bit more. Joe also focuses on Apple’s new Continuity features in Yosemite and iOS 8, including sharing tasks via Handoff, getting phone calls and SMS messages from your iPhone on your Mac, setting up Instant Hotspot on your iPhone, and using AirDrop between Macs and iOS devices. The book goes well
    beyond Apple’s built-in sharing options with details about helpful non-Apple products, including 1Password, BitTorrent Sync, Cargo Lifter, CloudyTabs, Dropbox, Exchange, Google Calendar, Google Chrome, Google Docs, Pandora, PhotoCard, Reflector, Spotify, and Xmarks, among others.

Thank you for your support of Take Control! It’s going to be a crazy few months while we keep working with the still-incomplete betas of Yosemite and iOS 8, but we’ll publish as soon as we can once Apple finalizes the features and pushes these operating systems out to users.

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