I earned Apple Certified Help Desk Specialist today

[wheat]

That is for OS X 10.3 Panther.

[s2kfan]

awesome!

[Swigga]

I am an avvid fan of Mac OS X (It is what I use), and I'd like to get a cert in it.  What material did you use to prep???

Thanks

[wheat]

Apple has a PDF outline of each area covered on the test.

http://train.apple.com/certification/PDF/SAG_HDE.pdf

If you go by this and use a book such as Pogue's Missing Manual for Panther, you ought to be able to figure out what you need.

The exam is $150.00.

I had a lot of on the job experience with Jaguar but was fairly new to Panther. The key for me was identifying what was DIFFERENT in Panther, and also learning the details of the boot process and the basic command line utilities--and knowing which ones are BSD and which ones are Apple only.

[Swigga]

What about this "having to renew the certifications each year" stuff.  Cisco doesn't even make you do that!!!  Is tha ttrue, or is renewal required upon a new version of OS X being released.

- Swig

[wheat]

Yup, Apple is like that. They plan on releasing a new version of their OS each year for the forseeable future, and they will release new exams at about a yearly rate as well. Panther came out long about September, and the new Panther certification came out about January. They'll do it again next year.

However, with each new yearly round, there will be a regular certification exam and a less-rigorous "renewal" exam that can be taken if you hold the previous year's cert.

If you work for an Apple service provider or a large Apple corporate client you can get discounts on the exams ($100 instead of $150).

I think this bites, but on the other hand, Apple is innovating their software AND hardware at a much faster rate than the Windows-Intel world and there really is a great deal new worth learning each year.

The only question is whether or not it's worth formally earning the certs each year--as most professional Mac tech support and networking people don't bother to earn the certifications--they just do the job.

[Swigga]

Thanks Wheat, that makes "better sense", and right now my motives are pure curiosity, none else...

Thanks again

  - Swig