Apple Launches Documentation Site for Manuals, Specs, and Downloads

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Originally published at: Apple Launches Documentation Site for Manuals, Specs, and Downloads - TidBITS

Apple has unveiled a new Documentation site that lets users browse for information about Apple hardware and (older) software. It’s a big win, especially considering the sorry state of the Apple website’s search engine, but some parts of it still need work.

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Thanks for this article, @ace. I don’t go to Apple’s documentation enough.

The rest of this is off-topic, except to make Apple’s search engine look good.

At Amazon, I can type the manufacturer and the start of a product, get a dropdown menu with the exact product I want, choose that item, and have it appear nowhere on the search results page.

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Over the past five years or so, Apple’s user-facing documentation has drastically improved. I don’t know exactly why that is, but I’d attribute it partly to the demise of Macworld magazine

My guess would be growing pressure along the lines of Right to Repair could also have something to do with this improvement to the display of user-facing documentation. Good Apple.

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If you have the old support dot apple dot com slash manuals link bookmarked, it now takes you to the new site.
Unfortunately, if you are looking for fairly old products you’re out of luck. I tried to find documentation for my Newton 2100, Apple 2c, iMac G3, Macintosh LC without success, but I DID find some for my Macintosh Quadra 605 and PowerBook 145b!

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A tip: You can force Google to only search the Documentation site by writing “site:” in the Google search field.

To find @ace example in the article MacBook Air (M2, 2022). You write:

site:support.apple.com/en-us/docs MacBook Air M2 2022

I tried this:
site:support.apple.com/en-us/docs quadra 950

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:+1: That also works on DDG. I use it all the time.

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This is mostly window dressing AFAICT, unfortunately.

Apart from the search being bad and info often being irrelevant (eg. iLife?), when it comes to deeper information on the specs for software and services, it’s simply non-existent. Will that ever improve? Who knows.

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Thanks for the tip. I haven’t followed TidBits closely enough recently even though I’ve been a member for years. This is very useful information!

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“I search Apple’s support documentation by adding “Apple support” to my search terms” works really well. I’ve been doing that for a long time.

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I think that works with most or all search engines. It’s very useful to know.

site:[url] [search term]

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‘In short, always search for information on Apple’s websites using an independent search engine.’

I figured that out years ago. It looks like you’re referring to Apple’s own search function on its own websites. What’s been abysmal for years — decades! —is the Apple help associated with Apple apps. Almost completely worthless, both the search function and the actual documentation. Doing a general Internet search is almost always the best way to find an answer to a question or problem.

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Oregon has just declared parts pairing illegal.

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One can also search for specific file types by adding filetype (e.g. filetype:pdf).

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