When I was about thirteen, my older brother, Craig, was really into cars and fixing them. I'd follow him around and watch him work on his Camaro in the garage. Like a doting little brother, I wanted to be like him and was awestruck at how much he knew about cars and engines. I can remember asking him how he knew so much about them and how I could learn what he knew. Craig handed me a huge stack of car magazines and told me to start reading. I was flabbergasted. Where do I start reading? Which do I read first? Is Car&Driver more important than SuperChevy? I can remember flipping through a few of his magazines and quickly being overwhelmed at the amount of information I'd have to know to be like Craig. I soon went back to my Garbage Pail Kids cards and DOS manuals. I gave up on being a car mechanic but learned an important lesson...the best way to start learning something is to just start learning it. It doesn't matter where you start as long as you start somewhere and keep at it long enough until the knowledge begins to gel in your mind.

Being a good Mac tech starts with knowing the Macintosh and its operating system--namely, Mac OS X. Good car mechanics are often filled with arcane knowledge about the vehicles they work on. They tend to know which parts break down first and can diagnose a problem from an extensive knowledgebase of vehicles and engines and parts. I've discovered that good Mac techs are the same way--they tend to know pretty well the insides of many different Macintosh models and the peculiarities of each. They know, for instance, that the Rev. A iMac G5 often suffers from logic board failures and "exploding capacitors". They can often diagnose a problem--or if one is happening--just by using the computer in question.