Apple Training Series: Desktop and Portable Systems [With CD for Mac]

My old G4 desktop suddenly died, with some weird patterns on the screen and, though the power and fan kept going, there were none of the usual sounds from the harddrive. I live in a town with no Apple repairs and being short on money, didn't have funds to ship it off and potentially write a blank check to some repair guy I would never see. I didn't even know if it would be worth doing at all. Peachpit has a good trackrecord for Mac stuff, so I gambled and ordered this book to figure out what to do next, to see if it would even be worth fixing. Well, the book helped a lot, and narrowed things down to a motherboard problem, with either a replacement of the motherboard battery ($15) or the motherboard itself (ouch, over $700 from what I could find). I replaced the battery and that wasn't it, so this book saved me from shipping off my computer and paying for the shipping and then with that money already gone, trying to figure out what to do about a motherboard + repair cost I wouldn't have had the money to cover. So my computer is still dead, but at least I didn't throw a lot of good money after bad money. It is a nice book, attractive design, etc. Worth its weight in gold for those folks stuck in rural areas without Apple repair places nearby. I would have given it 5 stars but I still needed to check some stuff online at Mac FAQ that had some better diagrams and photos of battery replacement.

I have relied on this book a few times now when repairing the older clamshell style ibooks and also some of the newer G3 and G4 white ibooks. It's got a pretty helpful guide for taking them apart and putting them back together. I have also used this book as a reference tool to determine what configurations various Macs I am selling or working on had when they were first introduced. For example I sold my G4 powermac sawtooth and wanted to know exactly what specifications it had, so I looked in the book and found the 500 mhz powermac G4 (gigabit ethernet) and found it was released in 2000, it also showed the cache, number of memory slots, expansion slots, basic stuff like that for a quick reference. And it covers all models of ibooks and powermacs, imacs, but not all powerbooks unfortunately. It does not have any info on the pismos, lombards or wallstreets powerbooks or any older macs. That would be the only draw-back, I wish it had some information on the G3 powerbooks. It also has chapter tests at the end of each chapter, that are unfortunately pretty basic simple questions. Great big useful book for any mac tech or just plain apple computer users who want a little more info on their computer.

This book is part of the AppleCare training curriculum, designed to be a training manual for people who want to get certified by Apple to be an AppleCare-certified technician. As such, each chapter in the book is a Lesson. Early lessons cover topices such as "General Troubleshooting Theory," and "Safe Working Procedures and General Maintenance." Lessons 5 through 10 cover common hardware and technologies, including basic computer theory , underlying technologies, liquid crystal displays (LCDs), cathode-ray tubes (CRTs), wired networking and wireless networking. If you are a person who likes to do your own upgrading and maintenance of your Mac, you'll find this book very helpful. Likewise, if you want to make your living taking apart Macs and replacing parts as repair or upgrade. This book does not cover Operating Systems. If you want to solve a problem in OS 9 or OS X, you need a different book. But, if you want to see the "Take-Aparts" for certain Mac models, including iMacs, iBooks, mini-towers and PowerBooks, this is for you. Both CRT-based and Flat-Panel based computers are covered. There is a good section on how to search the AppleCare knowledge base, and doing advanced searches. They recommend you bookmark Apple Knowledge Base document 75178, as it gives good info on how to use keywords to search the Knowledge Base. And another section on locating Apple replacement parts. The main reason this book has over 800 pages is the copious amount of photos. They support the step-by -step instructions for installing or replacing hard drives, optical drives, RAM, Airport Cards, etc. I'm glad I got this book, as it will be useful when I want to upgrade the hard drive on our G4 flat-panel iMac and add a second hard drive to my G5 desktop. Apple states in the beginning of the book, "Whether you are an experienced technician or someone who just wants to dig deep into a Macintosh, you'll find in-depth technical service information as well as a comprenhensive overview of the service tools and procedures used by AppleCare-certified technicians to diagnose, upgrade and maintain Macintosh computers."

Apple makes it very simple. If you are not certified by Apple and you do almost anything inside of an Apple computer and the warranty is void. This is the book that Apple uses in their certification classes for desktop and portable systems. Apple has integrated their service effort and procedures together just as well as they did their hardware. So part of this manual is how to use their on-line service aids as well as the software tools that they have produced to aid the service technician. There are some distinct advantages to Apple's approach of having one vendor for the whole system. The motherboards, for instance, are all designed around common design criteria, common interface structure, and specialized to operate with common software. Common service techniques are another advantage. Here in one book everything can be covered from wireless lan to displays to motherboards. Compared with the PC where everything might be from a different vendor, you only need one book. And for service, this is it.

This book (along with books for Apple Certified Help Desk Specialist, Apple Certified Technical Coordinator, and Apple Certified Systems Administrator) has been sorely needed for the past few years. The book is a big one -- chock full of well written information and excellent illustrations. I suggest purchasing the $299 technical training kit from Apple as well as this book (the web materials, available through the kit, are referrenced often and are helpful during many exercises). All in all, good book if you want to become ACDT and/or ACPT.Peachpit is releasing a book for the ACHDS at the end of July... and hopefully books for the ACTC and ACSA as well.