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Mac OS X: The Missing Manual (Second Edition)
Mac OS X: The Missing Manual is exactly what you'd expect if you've read any of Pogue's other books or columns: it's clear and straightforward without seeming dumbed down. His writing tends to be fairly light and often funny, making for particularly readable technical books. That's not to say it's without substance, though -- within the first chunk of this book (which is pushing six hundred pages) I'd already had a dozen of my existing questions answered as well as plenty I hadn't even thought to wonder about.
It seems pretty definitely directed at people who've been using Mac OS for a long time and are switching to OS X. Given what OS X is, it's not surprising that it takes some getting used to, despite vaguely looking like Mac OS. If you've never used OS 8 or 9 and don't have any existing Mac habits to unlearn, you might not even need a book like this -- but I suspect it would still be pretty useful. Pogue also takes time to address issues people might have switching to OS X from Unix or Windows, but the focus is on comparisons to older versions of Mac OS. As the title implies, Apple documentation tends to be slim to non-existent, and this is by far the most thorough OS X book I've seen yet. It functions exactly as promised -- I keep my copy on the shelf over my desk, and when I have a question about something I remember from OS 9 or why something I know from BSD doesn't work under 10.2, I can just look it up.
The second edition is more of the same -- the book is bigger, fatter, and covers Jaguar. It was published in October 2002, so it's not quite up to the minute, but it's certainly not outdated yet. I shelled out another twenty bucks when I first saw it, and I don't regret it -- the only major complaint I'd had about the first edition was that its usefulness was somewhat impaired when 10.2 came out. It's possible I'll feel the same way about the second edition when faced with 10.3 -- but maybe Pogue will write another book.
I would recommend this book for just about every OS X user, regardless of how recently you switched -- people who installed it back during the public beta will probably get just as much out of the second edition as those who just bought their first-ever Mac. However, you'll probably find it more useful if you're coming from older versions of Mac OS than if you've just switched from another Unix or Windows, but that's not to say it isn't worth reading in those cases. It's relatively cheap for an O'Reilly book (712 pages, list price is $29.95) so you can't really go wrong.
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I did find it immediately useful to discover features I didn't know Mac OS X had, such as speech recognition. For that alone, I'm glad I received the book as a birthday gift.
In contrast, I absolutely adored the iMovie Missing Manual. I devoured it over a few weeks and found it fun, useful, interesting, and without all the "nudge nudge wink wink"s.
I got this when I got my imac - since I'd only used Windows for personal computing, I wasn't used to doing things the Mac Way. Well, the OSX way - I guess there are differences. It's a great book, but weak on command line stuff and not all that funny. I don't know why people who write manuals bother trying to be funny: it's almost never pulled off and is usually distracting.
I'd recommend it to anyone who is switching from Windows - Mac (OSX) stuff isn't intuitive if you're used to doing things One Microsoft Way.
the best OSX Unix book is 'Unix for Mac OX' by Matisse Enzer, If you're looking to learn Unix on the macintosh. It covers everything from commands, pipes, environment, editors, permissions, scripts... it's very thorough.
I probably wouldn't recommend it for people already comfortable with Unix, but for a beginner it's the best OSX Unix book I could find. Highly recommend it!
is Mac OS X in a Nutshell. When I finally took the plunge and bought an iBook, one of the main reasons was for the bad-ass BSD core in OS X that I kept hearing about. Unfortunately, the official Apple documentation is extremely sparse, and coming from a heavy Windows background, OS X and Aqua were very foreign to me, and sort of intimidating.
/. crowd.
So I did some research, and began looking at good books to help me make the "switch". Although the Pogue book is well written and entertaining, there is really not much in there that I didn't figure out on my own in the first two days just playing around with the OS. There is absolutely nothing in there about the BSD core. OS X In A Nutshell, on the other hand, goes through the Aqua Interface, then goes in depth into AppleScripting, the BSD core, and even has little tidbits on Perl & regular expressions and the like. It doesen't wax poetic like the Pogue book, but it's definitely a much more concisely written, useful book for the
Try the Mac OS X Unleashed book from SAMS. It is also written by Mac OS 9 users, but the authors have certainly embraced OS X (with a few gripes about springloaded folders and the like which actually do exist in Jaguar now). I assume the book has since been updated for Jaguar, so most likely this extra fluff will be gone.
The Pocket Guide is also great - just what you need when you're trying to remember a specific command. The nutshell book is superb in that it gives you the full tour and touches on all the portions of the OS that the average user AND the super-geeks will use. I also recommend it.
This illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the "maximize" button, which in MacOSX is NOT a "maximize" but a "zoom" button. It switches between the default and the user-resized sizes of the window. In specific situations (such as the Finder) it resizes the window so the most content is displayed WITHOUT HOGGING THE WHOLE SCREEN. Why you would want to waste valuable screen real estate on blank space in a "maximized" window is beyond me...
There is a fundamental tenet of interface design that says that targets on edges of the screen are "bigger", that is, quicker to reach than targets at some random location in the screen space. It is faster to reach a menu for a relevant app that is along the top of the screen than if it is off in the middle somewhere, even if the top of the screen is farther from the cursor.
Another reason for having one menubar at the top is so there is only one application's menus visible at the same time. This eliminates screen clutter and user confusion - you don't have to think about which menu to go to. Again, more efficient.
This is purely personal preference. The Apple pro keyboard and mouse are some of the nicest I've used. The older, condensed keyboard has it's problems, but types really well. As you said, any old USB kb/mouse will work if you need more buttons or some other form of keyboard.
Not to feed a troll, but these things are the way they are for a reason, and actually serve to make the UI MORE useable.