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| Author | System 7 era books on your bookshelf? (Read 25252 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Bolkonskij
Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023 
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on: May 17, 2023, 16:10
I was lucky to acquire two Macintosh software books today, for a mere 1 euro + shipping. They're for Excel 2.2 and RagTime 3 (which was wildly popular here in Germany). Here's a photo of RagTime 3. Both books appear to have been in some kind of library stock that is now being sold. Our user @cbone tended to give advice to look for stuff in library stock and he's spot on! :-) Both books are very nice ones, in good condition, giving an introduction to both programs and some cool use cases. For example, in the case of Excel, it covers stuff like creating a sheet with a cost account for your car, setting up an address book, methods of calculating declining balance depreciation and others. Back in the System 7 era was the time when we would have books with know-how on computing stuff on our shelves. That pretty much faded with the advent of wide spread tutorials on YouTube and elsewhere ("I can find all info online for free") but the truth these days is that you won't find any info on how to create stuff with RagTime 3 :-) So I'm glad I've saved to two buddies from the recycler and surely will test out of the stuff in them - just for the kicks of it :-) Anyone else still having System 7 era kind of books at home? |
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Last Edit: May 19, 2023, 08:54 by Bolkonskij
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Europa
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64 MB  Posts: 109 she/her
Reply #1 on: May 17, 2023, 16:37
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I have some manuals for Apple hardware, Aldus PageMaker 4.2 and 5.0, ClarisWorks, FileMaker Pro, and Word for Macintosh. I also have Understanding AppleTalk, Second Edition and Mac OS 7.6 for Dummies.
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #2 on: May 18, 2023, 18:04
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I am a sucker for old tech books. My most obscure find is "Cyberdog: Live Objects on the Internet". It was published by MIS Press in 1997. It is a 288 page manual on installing and using Cyberdog 1.2. I truly have trouble believing that anyone would write such a book and even more trouble believing that they found someone to publish it. It appeared to be a brand new book, when I came across it 10 years ago. I was in a pile of books being sold off that the college book store. I argued they should just give it to me, because I was probably the only person they would ever find that even knew what Cyberdog was and they would do a good deed by getting it into the hands of probably the only person in the country that would actually read it. And well they gave it me and I did read it. Early computing saw lots and lots of books published and just about every aspect of computing. I do not much of it every got read, geeks at the time seemed to pride themselves on not reading manuals, which I think goes a long way to explain how the web degraded so badly, so quickly. I think that folks that came of age before personal computing were folks that would never consider using a new tool until they had read and understood documentation, and if they found the tool useful would seek out information that would enhance their ability to use the too.
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Knezzen
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Administrator 512 MB Posts: 608 Village idiot
Reply #3 on: May 18, 2023, 18:13
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I mostly have Atari books from that era (early 90's). Not a lot of Mac books in general.
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ovalking
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128 MB Posts: 199
Reply #4 on: May 18, 2023, 21:20
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There's something nice about a good book, whatever the subject, and I can't bring myself to dispose of one. Most of my collection has come my way, like everything else, via bargain sales, or rescued from the skip. At the moment I'm reading Mac OS9 The Missing Manual. It's not exactly a thriller, but something you can pick up for a few spare minutes and maybe learn the odd snippet. I started it a couple of years ago... It's not always about direct learning though, often you can be inspired just to try something out. I totally get why printed manuals are no more, but if you've got the right book to hand, paper is still easier to use.
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MTT
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256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer
Reply #5 on: May 19, 2023, 02:09
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I have quite a few good manuals and computing books from the System 6/7 era. I like to keep them even if I don't refer to them as often as I once may have. I have several of Claris Corp's manuals, FileMaker Pro, ClarisWorks, HyperCard (when Claris had control of it), ClarisImpact, etc. The early ClarisWorks 2 tomes were comprehensive 250 - 300 page affairs, and printed on good paper stock, These shrunk in size with subsequent releases. Towards Claris Corp's demise, I purchased the "Home Page 1.0" boxed set, Its not very large manual was printed on what appears to be shoddy newspaper wood-pulp stock. Awful, its pages are now brown and brittle to touch. In my manuals collection, a favorite is Microsoft's 1991, Word 4.0 for Macintosh Reference, which is beautifully printed on good stock, 456 pages long, very comprehensive. It was created in Word and shows off its huge (at the time) potential as a great word processor. Another favorite of mine is a full set of AppleScript manuals, produced for AppleScript version 1.1, just before AppleScript became bundled free in with Mac OSs 7.5 and on. I found this as a shrink-wrapped boxed set in a Apple store bargain bin (mid 1990's). The set comprised of 5 user's manuals, AppleScript 1.1 and FaceSpan 1.0 (An AppleScript interface creation software). I did upload the AppleScript software to the Mac Garden a while back. Since then 3 of the 5 manuals from this set (as high quality PDF) have been located and added to the page. Screenshots on that page are scans of the included disks and scans of the 3 manuals front covers. RagTime 3? Are we any closer to sourcing an English language version? It has proved to be impossible to find a copy, so far.
Last Edit: May 19, 2023, 02:12 by MTT
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #6 on: May 21, 2023, 12:50
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That's some mighty nice collections some of you guys have! Mine pales by comparison :-) Quote from: Europa Mac OS 7.6 for Dummies How is it? The "for Dummies" books I've read were often much better than their title would let me anticipate. Is it a general rundown of how the OS works? Does it highlight specific new stuff (comparing to 7.5)? Quote from: wove My most obscure find is "Cyberdog: Live Objects on the Internet"... Lovely story! This is probably as much a niche product as it can get. :-) What is "Live objects" in Cyberdog terms? Quote from: wove Early computing saw lots and lots of books published and just about every aspect of computing. I do not much of it every got read, geeks at the time seemed to pride themselves on not reading manuals, which I think goes a long way to explain how the web degraded so badly, so quickly. Good points. I do think, however, that there was a discrepancy between how people tended to "pose" and how they really worked with stuff. Here's an example: Back in the 80's and 90's, if you wanted to program, there was no way around reading programming literature. This image of someone sitting there and suddenly function declarations popping up in his head is utter nonsense. In fact, most of the work was probably preparation and "investigation" and boils down to what you wrote. Reading manuals / documentation, making notes etc. and THEN going to work. This behavior extends to this day - you can tell the difference between "old-style programers" and "new-style programers". The old ones will sit down before a project, dissect it into smaller parts, think of the functions they'll require to write, come up with names for the routines etc. The new-style programers will rather start browsing GitHub for code written by some third-party. They'll take it, try it and if they like it, they'll cobble it together with what they have, change two parameters and tell everyone in the world how hard they are coding  Also, I find a correlation between the rise of the internet and the quality of books much in the way MTT has described above with his Home Page 1.0 experience. It appears that during the late 90's / early 2000's emphasis was solely on getting a book out to reap some profits as long as there was a market left while not investing too much money. Which often resulted in rather bad letter / paper quality, lots of spelling mistakes due to a missing lectorate, misprints and such. Quote from: MTT RagTime 3? Are we any closer to sourcing an English language version? It has proved to be impossible to find a copy, so far. Unfortunately, no English version came included with the book :-) I don't know really how successful it was outside of Germany but I have a hard time believing that there is any commercial Macintosh software that was never published for the gigantic (by comparison) English-language Mac market, unless it was very market-specific. (tax declaration software comes to mind)
Last Edit: May 23, 2023, 11:47 by Bolkonskij
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MTT
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256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer
Reply #7 on: May 22, 2023, 06:38
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Re: RagTime 3 Yes I do find it hard to believe that an English version 3 wasn't produced. The MG has various 3.x copies, mainly German, but also French (Mediafire link) and Dutch. So, maybe an English copy is out there somewhere too. I do keep a watch out for it and maybe it will surface one day... Although themacmeister's 2013 comment in that page is a tad poignant 
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MTT
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256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer
Reply #8 on: May 23, 2023, 06:16
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Quote from: Bolkonskij "Quote from: EuropaYou can grab a copy here and find out for yourself This and many other cool early Mac books scanned to PDF at vintageapple.org Note: https links and a slightly modern PDF reader required.
Last Edit: May 23, 2023, 06:25 by MTT
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #9 on: May 23, 2023, 21:00
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That is a very nice link, thanks for posting it. I really took to ebook reading, and do enjoy having a nice collection of old tech books that take up very little space. It makes for interesting bed time reading. I still do enjoy a good real book, but for just sitting about and reading, an ebook reader is very nice. ePubs are the easiest reading, but pdfs are very flexible for editing (chopping into useful pieces) and easiest to annotate and save the annotations. I would never write in a real book, or fold over a page, but it is nice to have a working collection that can be marked up. My wife has an extensive collection of old children's books (+100years) that look exceptionally nice on the books shelves with the glass doors, but they are almost to sacred to touch. It is nice that they are now public domain books, so they can be found as epubs and pdfs and remains easily readable.
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mac-cellar
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128 MB Posts: 176 Gotta love System 7
Reply #10 on: May 27, 2023, 18:13
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"The Mac Almanac" by Sharon Zardetto Aker : Found this in a used bookshop some months ago. Mine is a 1994 edition which says "Covers System 7.5" on the cover. Covers the Mac from top to bottom, a great resource and is entertaining at the same time. "HyperCard Power" by Carol Kaehler - great introduction to Hypercard and putting together either a first stack or something more sophisticated. "Applescript for Dummies" - I think the version I have was released in the late OS 9 days, but good information for a novice like me anyway.
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #11 on: May 27, 2023, 21:38
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I scanned all my books from that era - destroying most of them in the process. And naturally they were either about programming or Amiga stuff. Now I've got a library of vintage electronic Apple titles I purchased during the last two years. Can't allow paper to weigh me down.
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ovalking
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128 MB Posts: 199
Reply #12 on: July 12, 2023, 10:54
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>At the moment I'm reading Mac OS9 The Missing Manual. Finished! Next up is 900+ pages of The Macintosh Bible...
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #13 on: July 12, 2023, 13:38
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Good ones! I had lots of "ah, that's handy. I need to remember it" moments when reading the Macintosh Bible. What edition is it? I think they went through several ones, each being updated for the respective Mac OS of the time.
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