If you've ever had to teach someone how to use the Mac OS, you know how daunting a task that can be regardless as to how simple and intuitive it may seem to you. This is especially true for elder people who may have had limited or no exposure to a computer during their lifetime. While books are often a good place to start, the hundreds of pages of information they present can be a bit too much for some users. The MacInterface CD is tutorial of the Mac OS designed to teach users who are unfamiliar or new to the Macintosh.
MacInterface uses the MovieWorks Player application to present its lessons. Unfortunately, the interaction within that application is limited to choosing and pausing what lesson you would like to learn. Having taught the Mac OS to dozens of individuals, I have found that the best teaching method involves not only explaining how to do something, but then having them perform that task until they become familiar with what it does, when they would want to use it, and how to execute it. While the CD does suggest switching to the Finder (and explains how) to try out the new skills you learn after each lesson, it's easy to forget a step and switching back and forth between the Finder and MacInterface can quickly grow tiring. Ideally, MacInterface should be interactive within its application, as Apple's basic tutorial is.
MacInterface also assumes that you have completed Apple's own tutorial and are proficient with using the mouse and much of the terminology that is used with your Mac, yet the first two lessons that give a general overview of the OS cover everything that the Apple tutorial did. Beyond those first two lessons, however, there is no instruction regarding the general use of the Mac OS. Instead, ten feature-specific lessons follow including "creating and using folder tabs" and "using the control strip."
General topics, such as what the menu bar does and what the items in the Finder menus do, go uncovered. Instead, some of the more general aspects of the OS are carelessly tossed in as side notes in other lessons. The clipboard, for example, gets its three seconds of fame during the Contextual Menu lesson when the narrator mentions the world "clipboard" for the first time and quickly follows it up with, "The clipboard, by the way, is a temporary buffer, that holds anything that you copy or cut until you replace it with anything else that you copy or cut." I can assure you that anyone new or relatively new to computers or the Mac OS would be lost as to what the clipboard, one of the most basic and useful functions of the OS, exactly does.
The narrator on MacInterface also frequently mentions or uses commercial applications to demonstrate a lesson that aren't installed with the OS, something that could throw off some users, especially when he uses an application that can "be found on your hard drive," referring generally to any application but making it seem like he is referring to Tex Edit Plus.
The lessons contained within MacInteface aren't exactly poor, by any means, they simply move too quickly and skip too many fundamentals to do anything more than overwhelm and confuse a new user. The CD is best suited for someone who has a solid, proficient knowledge of the fundamentals and understanding but may not be aware of "Folder navigation tips" or how to "Customize the Apple menu." In that case, though, it would be far more cost effective to simply pick up a book on Mac OS 8.6 or 9.0, depending on which you're using, and skip to the areas where you're a little fuzzy.
Addendum:
In light of an apparent misunderstanding regarding the intention of the MacInterface CD, I have decided to add this to addendum to the review. Contrary to the impressions you may get from the description at the MacInterface web site, the CD is not intended as a tutorial for new users or, in this author's eyes, even beginners. Instead, it is intended to teach a user who has a fairly solid grasp of the OS how to use ten specific features that they may or may not be familiar with. These features are: using the appearance controls, creating and using folder tabs, customizing the Apple menu, using the application switcher, using the control strip, using contextual menus, using Sherlock, finding your lost files, folder navigation, and using the Mac OS help menu. MacInterface also briefly touches on some of the basics of the OS, such as creating a folder, saving documents, and a handful of other features. If a user is unfamiliar with these features then the MacInterface CD should be able to do more than an acceptable job of teaching them how to use these features provided, again, that they understand a good deal of the basics of the OS and are familiar with the terminology. However, if tutorial books don't pose a problem for you, we recommend the use of such a resource instead since they are usually less expensive and cover far more topics than the MacInterface CD. For novices to intermediate users, we recommend Bob Levitus' "Mac OS 9 for Dummies," which carries a list price of $19.99.
We have increased the rating of the MacInterface CD to 3 stars, from 2.5.
