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Mac OS X in a Nutshell
The Gist The book is quite well structured, and organized into into 5 parts. The first is a quick overview of the Macintosh GUI. The second part, "System Configuration," is mainly devoted to getting the system running well (covering preferences, networking, the file system and Java). The third section, "System and Network Administration," is a good guide to several lower-level tasks, including an excellent chapter on directory services and NetInfo. The fourth is about development, including Apple's IDE "Project Builder" and CVS. The final part covers the Unix underpinnings of OS X and X Windows. This includes a Unix command reference of over 200 pages.
The Good The book is also well written, with light, easily understood prose and some good screen dumps, tables and diagrams to make some of the more complex points easily understood. I appreciate the detailed contents section, good quality index and black chapter tabs at the side of each page for finding the information I need.
Everything seems to be covered, though you may sometimes find yourself needing to go elsewhere for more depth, but this is really only to expected in a book that is trying more for breadth across an entire operating system than depth in one particular area.
Despite having used and developed on a Mac for over 15 years and OS X since the late beta stage I still found myself discovering something new and useful every few pages in the book.
The Bad The section of the book I appreciated least was the Unix Command Reference. 200 pages, most of which are adequately covered by the online man pages or a quick 'command --help'. Not that it isn't useful having this information on paper, and not that this section isn't more complete than the man pages and less error-ridden. It's just that my favourite operating system has a large number of commands that are hard to find by name alone. Online, I tend to rely on apropos to find what I need. Back when you paid a large amount of money for a Unix license they came with hard copy manuals that included a permuted word index of the same top slug that apropos searches, which made them infinitely more useful. O'Reilly could improve the heck out of this book by giving us the same thing for what I felt was otherwise an almost totally wasted 200 pages (though I admit that the combination of the chapter on NetInfo and the command references for nicl and niutil etc. actually have me now understanding and using NetInfo well.)
Once again O'Reilly have provided a web page for the book that is mostly marketing material -- though in this case the Errata page is useful. At the bottom of the page they have a number of links to "Related O'Reilly Articles" but have only listed three by the authors of the book, leaving out, for example, X11 and Open Office on Mac OS X by Wei-Meng Lee and Configuring sendmail On Jaguar by James Duncan Davidson to name two MacDevCenter articles I've found incredibly helpful.
Conclusion
This book is not quite in the "must buy" category. If you do want a book to help you with the more technical aspects of OS X or to help you move to OS X from Unix or Windows hacking then this one is worth a serious look. It certainly better covers the technical aspects than OS X Bible and others of that style (such as the Missing Manual or Robin Williams' Little Mac OS X Book.) The only other volume that really compares is OS X Unleashed and it has way too much coverage of the simple stuff and the various applications, is not as well structured and has a wordier, less terse and technical style. It's also more expensive and twice the size and weight.
You can purchase Mac OS X in a Nutshell from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The problem with many of these books, though, is that they aren't where the masses will find them. I go into my local B&N and there may be a dozen or two titles tops that relate to the Mac, compared with the hundreds for Windows and other stuff.
And probably, the only people going to O'Reillys are people that probably don't need the book.
I think the Apple Store needs to go into the book-selling business as well and promote books like this on their site, or on the Switch site to that the masses who could use this type of information will know that it is out there.
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
You can't have a business model based on supporting old hardware. That's what linux is for. It doesn't mean you're forced to upgrade. If you bought a G3, you should have bought it because you found it useful, not on the promise of future support. If after all these years of Apple ditching legacy hardware you haven't yet figured out the pattern, then spelling it out to you is probably a waste of time.
If you want a new system buy a new system. If you don't want one, stick with what you've got.
"I think the Apple Store needs to go into the book-selling business as well and promote books like this on their site, or on the Switch site to that the masses who could use this type of information will know that it is out there."
Yes, but. Will that not destroy the "Ease of use" illusion? Here's your computer, and here's this thick book to read.
I'm usually in agreement - I find that google is nearly always the best reference for everthing...except computer how-to. Usually, what I find, is my searches turn up 1000 people with the same/related question as me, but usually, either no one answered, or the advice sucked. It takes me usually a lot of searching through google to find someone who had the exact problem adequately answered.
By then, with a good book, I have found the answer far sooner. Of course, the main advantage of google is it's free, so I end up repeating the above process a lot...
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
That being said, learning from internet searches might prove useful because you collect form a multitude of authors -- when you only have one author, you only see one part, and s/he may, for example, not give much importance to templates (back to c++ example) as another author might. Choosing a multitude of authors circumvents the "paradigm bias."
OR you could just have the cash in the first place and go out and buy 10 books ;-)
-- (Score:i, Imaginary)
Google is great, as long as your problem is not related to getting online. A real bitch when the network card in my IBM laptop is acting up, or the cable modem goes down (only happened once in 6 months). Redhat got to the point that I just used Mandrake instead (better hardware recognition for some reason)! Same would apply for OS X or Windows or whatever.
On the other hand, most UNIX power users are totally unused to working with a *good* GUI, so it's worthwhile spending time to explain the power user GUI features.
Yes, all the stuff you *need* is easily discoverable in the GUI, but lots of people will use a GUI for years and never notice that option-dragging this or that does something different and useful. A true power user knows these things too.
1) There is no 'Menu' button. I do not want to have to run an Application to get a list of programs which I then have to click through. Mouse-over opening menus is nice. It doesn't have to be called Start, or 'K', or anything fancy but a button that has menus and sub-menus listing my appications would be a start.
Quick easy way to achive this is to drag the entire 'Applications' folder to the dock. Or you can create your own unique shortcuts folder with on the applications you want and drag this to the dock. Or you can get Fruit Menu, F10 Launch Studio, or a host of other applications that do the same things. Search Version Tracker if you want them.
2) I want the windows to store my settings. If I list applications by details, rather than as naff, huge icons, unless there is an option that I can find to tell it to store my settings, I expect it to be done automatically.
MacOS X lets to set window setting either 'Globaly' for your account, or for any given window. To do this open the folder you want then click on 'View - View Options' (or hit command + j) then click the radio button next to 'This window only'. Then any changes you set for this view will stick for this folder, or if you selected 'All windows' then all folder views.
3) I want to be able to tab through all my Windows. Not just '1' of each application. If I have a terminal up and 2 Mozilla windows (not 1 window with tabs), I want the Apple key + Tab to be able to go through all 3.
'Command + Tab' cycles through Applications, 'Command + ~ (tilde)' cycles through an individual Applications windows
4) I want it to tell me -- without requiring me to search in depth, and spend about 20 minutes -- what these shortcut keys are. I can't be the only one used to Linux/Windows, surely?
The standard shortcut keys for all Mac systems dating back to the original Classic is: Cut (Command + X) / Copy (Command + C) / Paste (Command + V) / Select All (Command + A) / Undo (Command +Z). There are many others depending on the Application and the amount of time the developer put in to this. The short cuts are normal listed next to the comand in the Application's menus.
MacOS 10.2.x enables you to turn on 'Full Keyboard Access' if you want additional Shortcuts. Go to System Preferences - Keyboard - Full Keyboard Access.
Also there are a ton of third party apps which will enable you to define your own if you want.
5) I want to be able to change settings in the 'Control Centre' without having to go back to the menu of options at each stage. This is just usability. If I want to go from one option to the next, I have to click one, which redraws my window, make changes, then click the button to show all the options. I can't a) look at more than one and b) have a list of options in the background (if you're changing something in every category it's handy to see where you're upto).
Try looking at the menu options listed up there next to 'Apple / System Preferences / Edit / View / Window / Help'. Clicking on the 'View' option will give you an alphabetical listing of every option in the System Preferences.
6) I want the maximise button (the +) to fscking well maximise. I don't mean 'get bigger' - I WILL DRAG THE WINDOW IF I WANT THAT. I WANT YOU TO MAXIMISE.
Read the previous response to how the MacOS handles windows.
7) I want to be able to tell OSX what I want click events to do -- I want the double click on the title bar to MAXIMISE. NOT MINISE. I SHOULD BE ABLE TO TELL IT THIS.
Individual preferences; however, Apple is keeping the behavior consistent with MacOS 8.x+ in terms of minimize/window shade features.
8) I want the terminal to run faster than my P200 running Linux. If I run the default shell, or even more so bash, it crawls. I use the ter