Here are some notes on a couple of the technical books sent my way over the past six months or so, which I’ve read but haven’t written full-length reviews of. And don’t worry, there’s more to come.

The Mac OS X Conversion Kit: 9 to 10 Side by Side: This is a great book, though I suspect its target audience must be dwindling as OS X ages. The only people who would be interested in it are those who are just now switching from OS 9 to OS X, but while those people are becoming fewer in number, this remains a good way to ease the initial confusion of switching. Its major selling point is the abundance of full-color screenshots on each page - the left from OS 9, the right from OS X. It’s a great idea. The format isn’t suited to long-winded discussion or anything to do with the command line (you won’t even find Terminal listed in the index), but you can think of it as a beefed-up version of the Quick Start guides that Apple now favors over manuals. It’s a good way to get up and running with OS X, but if you want to really delve into the operating system, you’ll want something else to go along with it.

Mac OS 9: The Missing Manual: Speaking of diminishing audiences - for most people the best advice would probably be to upgrade your OS rather than invest in an OS 9 book. But some of us still have older Macs that won’t run OS X (like my aging first-generation iMac), and some of us still have the need to run Classic. Whatever your reason for still needing to use 9, this book is pretty much all you’ll need. Although it was one of the first (if not the first) in the Missing Manuals series, it’s every bit as good as its successors. Amazon’s got it for fourteen bucks, so you really can’t go wrong.

AppleScript in a Nutshell: While I’m sure it was great when it first came out, this edition is getting a little old and crusty. The latest edition dates from 2001, and it deals mainly with OS 9. Pick up AppleScript: The Definitive Guide instead (it just came out in November), or wait until a new edition of the Nutshell.