Complete instruction and training, but O'Reilly offers a better deal

An iPhone problem led me into my library of O’Reilly Missing Manuals, an ever-growing sheaf of pages that’s approaching one full foot of dandy advice and training. A Missing Manual for Apple products is often likely to have the crack advice of David Pogue among its authors, making them a pleasure to read and a complete resource. (Pogue created the Missing Manual series.)

But a Missing Manual book is also bound up by the Curse of the Index. Nobody can reference every entry for every word in a book made of paper. The index would run longer than the content. You can spend awhile searching a handful of entries in a paper book, and even if the advice is inside, locating it among 600-odd pages takes time. You might be at deadline on a project and wish there was a faster method to solving a problem — so you can avoid the line at the Apple Genius Bar at the retail stores (if that’s even an option.)

O’Reilly’s got a shortcut for your fixit dilemma. Today the solution is e-books, editions of these Manuals you download and read on a Mac, an iPhone, a Kindle or yes, even the new iPad. Today, all e-book purchases are half-off, in celebration of Earth Day.

I already had the iPhone Missing Manual in my library last weekend, when my iPhone refused to sync up and cough up its photos. I wanted to push a new album onto the phone to show some images to a client. The new iPad was in use elsewhere at Bites HQ. The solution to the iPhone problem was inside the Missing Manual. I might have found it faster if I owned an e-book version instead.

The knock on e-books, if there is one, is that an online manual makes it less easy to browse. That used to be true before readers like the Kindle or the iPad. By now it’s just a memory, so long as the publisher can give you the e-book format you need.

O’Reilly is thorough about this selection. You purchase an e-book and get download rights to the .mobi, PDF, Android and ePub versions of your book. Two of these can be viewed on an iPad, and the PDF is viewable anywhere.

My problem needed an iPhone “restore to factory settings” solution. I take a deep breath when I do something like reset any device. You worry about losing your contacts for the iPhone, or apps you may have purchased, even things like the Marketplace podcasts or my favorite, On the Media. Nobody wants to reorder or reload such stuff.

Guess what word does not appear in the iPhone Missing Manual index? Yes, it’s “restore.” You can track it down under “resetting,” which leads you to saying aloud, “page 375″ while you turn to the page and start scanning it.

This whole process is so direct with an e-book. You type “restore” in the e-book viewer of your choice — Preview or Adobe Reader on the Mac, iBooks on the iPad or the ultra-fine PDF Reader Pro ($3.99), or GoodReader on the iPhone (99 cents) — and all those references pop up.

So I learned that a restore is not as scary as it might seem, because even if your iPhone has been acting up awhile — and backing up troubled files — you can go to the location of your last good backup and replace it with what iTunes offers you as a backup.

(If you’re wondering, those backups live in the user/library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup folder. So you just go to your daily or weekly backups from Time Machine, because you back up every day, and swap in a clean backup. Before you restore.)

Although I love paper and the browsing of it, I find it harder than ever to justify a purchase of a training book (that’s what I call manuals) that takes up space on my sagging shelves or cherrywood desk. Pogue’s iPhone book is a great resource, complete and written so even a beginner to the Apple product can extend the phone’s use as a mobile computer.

This third edition is the latest, having been printed right as Apple brought out the 3GS phones last summer. Until the rumored 4G phones emerge this year, it’s the best you can buy for a complete lesson on the iPhone’s power.

I just don’t know if I need to make any more space for the paper here at HQ anymore. At least not if the publisher keeps offering e-books at discounts. O’Reilly even has a print+e-book offer at its own store. And the e-book versions are not sold at Amazon.

Today I bought a CSS Missing Manual (for WordPress blog designs) and the Photoshop CS4 Missing Manual, both as e-books. Total cost under $34. They’d be twice that as paper books. Get your discount before tonight and help out the Earth and reduce your recycling load.