Griffiths has created a book that will be useful to anyone who wants to explore Macintosh OS X v10.2’s possibilities, productivity tools, gimmicks, and more. Based on hints published on the Web site run by Griffiths, www.masosxhints.com, this is an extremely useful book, but its ideal audience is the tinkerer.

This book is intended to be used as a reference, rather than to be read from cover to cover. An OS X user could spend days, or weeks, experimenting with all the settings and options described here. The hints are presented in a style that ranges from wordy and humorous to almost terse.

A detailed table of contents and an excellent index are contained in the book, both of which make it easy to find useful information on a given topic. This is one of the book’s most redeeming features, since the documentation included with Mac OS X is spotty, and, even when there is online help, the help viewer utility is hard to use.

Griffiths shows OS X users how to accomplish a number of useful tasks, with which they might otherwise struggle. For example, a search in Mac help for “multisession” turns up nothing about burning multisession CD-ROMs. The entry for CD-RW discs simply says that they “can be erased and reused multiple times,” but gives no indication of how to do it. Griffiths provides easy, step-by-step instructions on multisession burning, though the book’s index hides this under the heading “CDs.”

The book was edited by noted Macintosh guru David Pogue of The New York Times. There is some amount of overlap with Pogue’s own Mac OS X: The Missing Manual. For example, both works contain a discussion of Snapz Pro, the screen-shot utility, and a fair amount of the information on iTunes. This said, there is not enough overlap to concern readers, and those who have read Pogue will find much new material here.

Griffiths’ introduction states that “[t]his book assumes that you already know the basics of Mac OS X.” This holds true in most cases, as intermediate steps or instructions are often omitted. At times, however, some basic steps and techniques are explained, including an entire hint devoted to the undo function in the finder. Hints range from basic and documented (such as setting the system time), to obscure hacks (like eliminating the OS X dock entirely).

Not all of Griffiths’ hints and solutions are for the faint of heart, since they sometimes require direct editing of Mac OS X configuration files or use of the terminal. The preliminary chapters talk down Unix elements and the terminal, in order to remove readers’ trepidation. Unfortunately, Griffiths often prompts users to edit settings files manually, but rarely suggests making a backup in case of problems.

The book is not without its flaws. Some tips do not seem to work, such as hint 1-13, “Maximizing Windows.” Another problem is that some headings are confusing. For example, the hint titled “Restart, Shut Down, or Sleep Keystrokes” only mentions shut down, restart, and log out. Sleep is actually in the next hint, “Restart/Sleep/Shut Down Dialog Box.”

Some tips appear to be only half-finished or half-checked. Griffiths mentions an “Easter Egg” involving pictures of the development team behind OS X’s mail application. The book states which folder holds the photos, but doesn’t mention which of the 129 cryptically-named items in the folder is the file with the photos.

In a world full of Windows-centric download sites, finding obscure software for the Mac OS can be time-consuming. Griffiths provides terrific examples of freeware and shareware to accomplish useful tasks. Among the many mentioned are “A Better Finder Rename” (for batch renaming), “MacJanitor” (for system tasks), and “PDF Browser Plugin” (for viewing PDFs within many browsers, rather than downloading them).

This hints book is useful for learning how to complete tasks that are not so intuitive in this most-intuitive operating system. One gem is a technique for resizing just a single column in the finder’s new column view. The problem of changing column sizes had, to this point, driven me away from using column view.

As mentioned above, this book does have its flaws. It also appears to have been rushed to press. There are many typos, and the typesetting is poor in places. Even with its deficiencies, however, this book is worth reading, if only because of the depth of its content.