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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 It was published in October 2002, so it's not quite up to the minute, but it's certainly not outdated yet.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.
You can purchase OS X: The Missing Manual from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I hope the book is longer than your review...
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Given what OS X is, it's not surprising that it takes some getting used to, despite vaguely looking like Mac OS.
It's gotten a lot better, but the best description I've heard of Mac OS X DPs/10.0 was "it's kind of like a Mac, but a Mac built by people who've only had a Mac described to them over the phone".
There were a number of really quite spurious changes to the UI initially, which probably explains the demand for this kind of book - the change from 9 to X has been more confusing than any OS transition Apple users have ever had to do before, including the move to System 7 (when there was also plenty of grousing to start with).
If the manual is missing, it is because nobody need a manual in order to use MacOSX !
To give small minded people like you something to bitch about instead of the normal gripes of trying to figure out the config file for XFree86. It is the marvelous design of the Mac OS that requires only one mouse button to utilize the system. Also have you ever tried to do telephone tech support?
"Mam, I need you to click the right mouse button."
"I am using the RIGHT mouse button!!!"
"No mam, the one of the right side of the left mouse button!"
"Well, why didn't say that in the first place?!?!?"
(Sounds of a tech banging his head on his monitor)
I've been missing one of my Mac OS manuals for over a week! Give it back O'Reilly!
She doesn't see tech-minded people buying how-to books for the OS proper, or at least not when they first buy the computers. Personally I've never felt a need, and my 9-year-old kids were comfortable immediately in OS X, tweaked every setting they had access to without a blink.
(But "intensely thorough"? Is intensity really the quality you're looking for in a reference? I imagine cracking the binding in my haste to pore, hot-eyed, over some crucial command line syntax...)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
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.
This review told me practically nothing! What does this book have in it that is good for geeks?
Okay, so it's been updated and it's fatter and you like it and it's good for people who used pre-OSX Macs. Personally, I never used a pre-OSX Mac -- why is it good for me?
You describe it as a thorough book, but barely give me an idea of it's contents.
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.
I became a Mac user only after Apple moved to MacOS X - a modern, UNIX-based OS.
I have neither the desire, the time, nor the inclination to learn anything about Mac OS 9, 8, or earlier versions. I avoided these for many years ( because they were unstable, unpreemptive, un-interoperable, and unneccessary for an ungraphic artist like myself.) and it is even less neccessary for me to learn them now that they are legacy.
I love MacOS X. It gives me a great, pretty, powerful, easy-to-use environment that I don't have to think about 95% of the time, with the option of a CLI terminal/shell for those 5% of the times when I do. It would be fun to learn more about MacOS X, which is - as you know - a very very different OS than its predecessors.
Won't someone write an indepth book on Mac OS X that doesn't contain uneccessary and often confusing references to obsolete virgins I know little (and care less) about.
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!
I agree. I do get tired of this kind of thing. Slashdot itself is one of the worst examples of it, however. Consider how /. stories have a smart-assed commentary that is almost always anti-Microsoft, pro-Linux and Mac-snickering (to coin a term). I guess it goes over big with the intended audience - both for Pogue and for the editors of /.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
> Slashdot itself is one of the worst examples of it, however. Consider how /. stories have a smart-assed commentary that is almost always anti-Microsoft, pro-Linux and Mac-snickering (to coin a term).
Yeah, but Microsoft does suck though.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
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.
I have OS X on two boxes, one in the office and one at home, but I've been turned off by the hiding of the UNIX stuff. I use FreeBSD daily at work and at home and would like to get more out of OS X than I have so far, but it's been obfuscated beyond my willingness to dig.
Any books that approach OS X from a BSD user's perspective? I don't care for the OS X GUI interface myself (wish I still had Finder...), but it might be fun to get more out of BSD side than I have.
This book has too little technical info for knowledgable mac and unix users and for newbies... well there are just better ways to do things than the book describes. I'd skip this one on all counts. I do find Pogue amusing at times though.
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.