Mac help files are worse than...

[Hadit]

I used to think that the manuals and help files for my PC were terrible, but I just added a G3 PowerBook to my museum of computers (I never throw anything out), and the help files are actually misleading. I'm shocked, just shocked

[fryke]

What's misleading about them? Can you quote something and your experience with that point?

[Hadit]

Hi, Fryke:

What's misleading about them? Can you quote something and your experience with that point?

I'm not sure I can remember exactly what it was. I'm on my PC now. I bought a powerbook that crashed a lot; I knew that when I bought it on ebay. I'm not familiar with Macs, but I thought the first thing I should do was to try reinstalling the OS. I was pleased to see that there was a recovery program on the disk; I figured that would make things easier. I followed the directions, and was told to click "quit" at the end, which I did. But the computer wouldn't eject the disk. There was something about it being the startup disk. All new to me. When I finally found a help file with some mention of the startup disk, all it said was that it was the icon at the top of the screen that was highlighted. There was no info about how to change it. Even some of the help files weren't available. I tried the key combination supposed to get one out of problem situations, but that didn't work. I tried restarting, and got an error message (about the startup disk again, I think). I don't remember all of it, just that after unplugging the computer, and manually removing the disk, which led to the same message when I tried to boot up again, then re-installing the recovery program, I finally somehow got access to a help file that told me how to get the hard disk back as the startup disk. Why it should change, especially when the CD doesn't work as a startup disk, I don't understand. As I said, it's all new to me, so I need to learn about the Mac OS. Right now, with menu items and options and help file contents appearing and disappearing apparently at random, it's frustrating. I know that nothing's random, of course, but until I know the rules, it can seem that way. So, as to a specific thing that made me feel misled, I'm not sure whether there was one. It's just that the whole experience seemed like someone saying "trust me", then leading me, blindfolded, to the center of a maze, and abandoning me.