iTunes Match book delivers useful guidance in minutes

Writer Lex Friedman has covered Apple's iTunes Match cloud music service for Macworld, his home base, but if you want all your Match instruction in one convenient ebook, you're in luck. Friedman has written Sams Teach Yourself iTunes Match in 10 Minutes, a full guide that provides all the instruction any Match user could need.

The ebook ($7.99 in the Kindle store, $9.99 in the iBookstore) might cover some familiar ground in the basics of how the service works and what it does. It's definitely adding value, though, when it comes to the details of forcing your low-bitrate tracks to upgrade, tracking down sync errors or controlling which playlists download to your iOS devices. If you have a friend or relative just jumping onto the Match bandwagon, it might make a thoughtful gift (and one that will cut down on the support calls).

One tip from the book that was new to me was how to use the Settings app on the iPhone to reset local music storage and start fresh with iTunes Match. Open Settings, tap General, then Usage. Once the space allocations get calculated, you can simply wipe all the music from your device with a single click -- best to do it when you've got WiFi and time to spare, though.