Beyond keeping track of what’s new in the latest operating system is the larger problem facing most of us—how to work effectively in today’s ecosystem of devices, servers, and collaborators. Frankly, sharing with other people and devices is messy, because everyone wants something different. That’s why this may be our most important book, and why we are so grateful to Joe Kissell for taking on the challenge of describing how to share nearly everything you can think of in nearly every imaginable situation.
Here are just a few of the gems in this book:
- How iCloud Photo Sharing and My Photo Stream are entirely different
- How to share photos fleetingly, privately, permanently, or with your fridge
- The best ways to sync a project’s worth of files with others
- Services to provide ubiquitous access to your own files across devices
- Quick ways to make a file available for download by anyone
- How to share calendars with others, whether or not they use iCloud
- A tutorial on enabling Family Sharing
- Tweaky workarounds for contact sharing, which is surprisingly difficult
- How to rip a DVD to your MacBook Air using an older Mac’s SuperDrive
- How to turn your iPhone or Mac into a Wi-Fi hotspot
- Ways of watching your uncle work remotely, as you help him with iTunes
- Approaches to syncing Web browser bookmarks and tabs with multiple devices
- How to securely share a collection of passwords with someone else
The list of essential but often frustrating tasks goes on and on, and the solutions go way beyond what Apple offers, so the book does too.
Non-Apple products mentioned include 1Password, AirFoil, Air Login, BitTorrent Sync, CargoLifter, CloudyTabs, Dropbox, Exchange, Facebook, Firefox, Flickr, Google+, Google Calendar, Google Chrome, Google Docs, handyPrint, Instagram, LastPass, Outlook, Pandora, PhotoCard, PowerPhotos, Printopia, Reflector, ScreenFlow, Spotify, SyncMate, Transporter, Twitter, Xmarks, and more.
And, thanks to the Take Control Crash Course format, you can jump right to the chapter that answers your question, without having to read through lots of other information — as part of our Crash Course series, this book provides the first-rate content you expect from us in short chunks so you can dip in and read quickly. Because so many Take Control readers give tech support to others, each concise chapter has sharing buttons and practical tweet-tips, making it easy to share a few pages with Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and others who need the info. Crash Courses have a modern, magazine-like layout in PDF while retaining a reflowable design in the EPUB and Mobipocket versions.
About Joe Kissell
Take Control publisher Joe Kissell has written more than 60 books about technology, including many popular Take Control books. He formerly wrote for publications such as Macworld, Wirecutter, and TidBITS. He lives in Saskatoon with his wife, his two children, and his cat.
