PC World Business

There aren’t many digital audio players on the market that warrant having a book written about them, and after reading through How to Do Everything with Your iPod & iPod mini Second Edition, I am convinced that even the iPod is not worthy of its own book. At least, not this one.

If you expect to pick this book up and immediately benefit from tips, tricks and how-to guides on how to perform unique and little-known functions on your iPod, then you will be thoroughly disappointed. Half the book is dedicated to digital music formats, loading the iPod with music and the differences between the iPod products themselves. The author dwells on topics such as burning CDs, downloading music and its legalities, and this gets very boring, very quickly.

In addition, the structure of the book is hard to follow, as Mac and Windows instructions are interspersed. It makes you wonder why they didn’t publish separate Mac and Windows versions of this book, or at least section the book properly so that readers can easily find the information for their particular platform.

After reading this book I did not come away with any greater knowledge than I already had about the iPod, nor did it give me information that I could not attain from an AppleCentre catalogue. As such, if you are already familiar with the iPod or iPod mini products, this book shouldn’t be anywhere near your shopping list.