Hah! Back then, Apple was entirely clueless about the Internet, so there was nothing for them to document. The closest they had to an Internet app was MacTCP, the low-level TCP driver necessary for graphical Internet software like Fetch to work. Apple mostly site-licensed it to universities and companies, and the package didn’t explain how to use it with anything else to access the Internet (of which there wasn’t much at the time anyway). Theoretically, you could also buy MacTCP for $60 from Apple directly, although it was unclear how one would actually do that. I’ve never seen a physical MacTCP box. In contrast, my Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh cost $30. Talk about a marketing win!
Amusingly, when Karen Whitehouse at Hayden asked me what software I wanted for the book’s disk, I said MacTCP, not expecting to get it. She somehow convinced Apple to license it to us, but a few months later, when we had sold 20,000 copies, we got a cease and desist letter from Apple Legal claiming that they hadn’t meant that license to allow distribution with a book. I was scared silly, but it was right before Macworld Expo, and at the show, I talked with Garry Hornbuckle, who was in charge of MacTCP at the time. He was over the moon with the book’s success, noting that we had sold more copies of MacTCP in three months than Apple ever had, and he told Apple Legal to back off.
To bring things back to documentation, I was confident with the first edition of ISKM that I knew and had documented literally everything there was for a Mac user to know about the Internet. Since then, first the book and then my knowledge as a percentage of what could be known shrank precipitously. Within a few years, there were entire degrees and careers around topics that warranted little more than a paragraph in the book.
I fear that added complexity is inevitable. The world changes constantly, and Apple needs to both react to some changes and drive others. To do otherwise would be to sink into a slide into irrelevance.
I said MacTCP, not expecting to get it. She somehow convinced Apple to license it to us, but a few months later, when we had sold 20,000 copies, we got a cease and desist letter from Apple Legal claiming that they hadn’t meant that license to allow distribution with a book. I was scared silly, but it was right before Macworld Expo, and at the show, I talked with Garry Hornbuckle, who was in charge of MacTCP at the time.
This discussion is sort of funny because it points out that as Apple hardware became more and more minimalist, Apple software became more and more baroque. Sort of like the extravagantly decorated and furnished Diplomatic Reception Rooms housed in the bland, utilitarian headquarters of the State Department in Washington, DC.
My first Mac was an SE/30 (upgrading from an Apple IIe). It came with six (maybe seven) spiral-bound manuals. I took them (but not the Mac) on vacation with me. I don’t recall anyone in the family making fun of me.
Apple’s documentaion mostly pales compared to the Take Control books. This is in part because the way Take Control books are organized means that a reader can usually find just what they want in the moment, very easily.
I learned to write technical documentation in large part by using Apple’s user guides, Human Interface Guides, and Style Guide. For me, Take Control has really helped make sense of a much more complicated eco system.
Do you think that’s true of MacOS, or just the mobile OSes?
I think it may be true of the mobile OSes simply because so many people have only a single computing device, and it is their iPhone, and many others are forgoing general-purpose computers like Macs and using an iPad if they need something larger, with more battery, etc.
So the original plan of an iPhone being an additional device for most people has been turned instead to a device so powerful that it is the only, or primary, computing device for a majority of people. And this device must be easy to use for those who desire only simple functionality to extremely powerful for those few who need and/or want all of that power.
And when you think that Apple sells about a quarter billion iPhones every year, and that the iPhone User Guide on the support web site is probably about 100 pages if it was printed, it is probably a very good thing that Apple does not print any of them anymore.
We really need books explaining technology at different levels. The first Macs were amazingly successful. I took my then-six-year old daughter to the now-defunct Computer Museum and she sat down and started using it adeptly, which helped convince me to buy a Mac. Now we have other layers. The strength of the Take Control books is that they explain things about Mac software, which I find very helpful because I’m not a software expert. I don’t read books for software experts because they are written in “software geek speak,” which is written for software professionals. People with different expertise and training need different level books.
That’s an interesting observation. I find the tiny screens of phones and tablets so limiting that they are useless for most things I do. That’s partly because of my vision problems, but more importantly reflects that I need a large screen for writing and editing, and for other complex jobs where I need a variety of information in front of me. I can’t imagine doing a complex income tax return on a phone, but some people probably have very simple returns.
My problem is that I can’t find that option. Where is it?
Seriously: don’t you hate it when there’s a reference to a setting, but doesn’t say exactly where it is? Or that it the documentation is in fact referencing a different version of macOS, and that option no longer exists, doesn’t exist yet, was moved, or is now changed to Retro Encabulate Affines? Or, it only appears with certain hardware configurations?
I’d say yes, especially since the UI of macOS is becoming more and more like iOS/iPadOS.
Next, I don’t want to initiate a sustainability discussion here but I’d say that an unused or returned-for-refund Apple device due to a new user becoming frustrated with setup or basic tasks is more wasteful than including printed materials.
250 million iPhones sold x 100 page user guide = 25 billion printed pages. Johannes Googleberg tells me that a typical tree has about 80,000 pages each, so that’s 312,000 trees cut down per year for printed docs.
As a long-time instructional designer, I can say with confidence that no modern software company considers it their responsibility to educate you about why or what you’d like to do. Computers are no longer novel, so those days are long gone.
Software documentation is about HOW to do something. So if you want to Reticulate Spines, this is perfectly adequate. If you want know to WHY you’d do that, or WHAT that means, well, you’re on your own. Go find a third-party resource. (And rightly so, in my opinion.)
I’ve been told multiple times that they googled the info. Each time, since I found that hard to believe, I’ve asked if they meant searching an Apple database or using Google on the internet. I’ve always been told that the first thing they do is use Google on the internet.
Thanks for the tip about the tips! I had no idea it had all those manuals. I am so used to nagging “Help” apps that never have an answer to my questions, so I just ignored it.
Reticulate Splines