Brad Miser’s new “Teach Yourself Visually MacBook Pro” is something a bit different from the mainstream, and in a good way. Instead of following the usual formula of mainly descriptive text supported by screenshots, photos, and graphics, the book’s central theme is its pictorial and graphic material, with just a short, descriptive paragraph or two introducing each topic, then letting the pictures tell the story supported by bulleted point captioning.

Based on recent precedent, we can reasonably anticipate Apple will be releasing OS X v10.9 sometime in 2013, probably before fall, with beta builds likely to begin surfacing soon. Apple has already used pretty much all of the major big cat names for the first eight full version revisions of OS X, so 10.9 will be called poses a conundrum for those of us who care about such matters.

With tips on an eclectic array of OS X topics ranging from organizing your workspace to strengthening your computer’s security, Master Your Mac will show you how to tweak, customize, and control your Mac. And since many of the best tools for unlocking your Mac’s potential don’t come with OS X, as noted above, Cone gives you the skinny on the best third-party apps to fix those everyday Apple annoyances and make your computer do things your way.

NetMarketShare’s desktop Operating System Market Share metrics for December 2012 show Windows’ overall market share gaining a quarter point, with OS X and Linux logging modest share losses on the month. Over in the mobile/tablet category, the iOS lost a point in December, despite the successful iPad mini and 4th Generation iPad releases, and iPhone 5 shipment volumes picking up.

If you’re looking for a hard copy manual that covers OS X v10.8 Mountain Lion in depth, Galen Gruman’s latest edition 826-page OS X Mountain Lion Bible is for you. But Mountain Lion Bible isn’t dull reading. A veteran tech journalist and magazine editor, Galen Gruman is a skilled writer who knows how to keep narrative flowing in a way that engages readers.

Apple has released a new developer beta for OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.3 to registered Mac Dev Center members. The new build was identified as 12D43. Apple has stated the new software contains no known issues and is advising developers to focus on AirPlay, AirPort, Game Center, graphics drivers, and Safari.

Stellar Data Recovery has launched Stellar Drive Defrag, a Free Edition of its advanced drive defragmenting software to optimize Mac hard drives and volumes, but Apple insists that you don’t need to defragment or optimize your disk when you use OS X.

NetMarketShare’s desktop Operating System Market Share metrics for November 2012 show Windows’ overall market share dropping a fifth of a point despite the Windows 8 launch, with both OS X and Linux logging modest share gains on the month. Over in the Mobile/Tablet category, the iOS gained more than a point in November, presumably on the strength of the successful iPad mini and 4th Generation iPad releases, and iPhone 5 shipment volumes picking up.

I’m experiencing the first major OS X function failure in a decade of using Apple’s Unix-based OS. The “Find” function of the Finder and Spotlight has quit working in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Basic Spotlight searches work, but clicking “Show All In Finder” brings up a blank window. Find searches in the Finder likewise. Happily there are third-party local search alternatives available.

Brad Miser’s MacBook Pro Portable Genius can fairly be described as a very good, modestly-priced OS X manual and reference with a bit of a tilt toward use with the MacBook Pro. I would estimate that more than 90 percent or more of its content is just as relevant and applicable to any Mac running OS X—portable or desktop—as it is to the Macbook Pro.