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OS X Hacks
The book is split into 9 chapters; 'Files', 'Startup", 'Multimedia and the iApps', 'The User Interface', 'Unix and the Terminal', 'Networking', 'Email', 'The Web' and 'Databases'.
For my money the last chapter is a complete waste of space since it only covers installing MySQL and PostgresSQL, and if you can't figure out how to install them from the documentation then you aren't smart enough to use them. A number of the other tips would come close to that level, I feel their only use may be to encourage people who would otherwise stay away to make some use of the terminal and similar tools.
Over a dozen people have contributed 'hacks' to the book, among them some major geeks such as James Duncan Davidson (Tomcat author) and Jon Udell (well respected O'Reilly blogger.) This accounts for the wide number of areas covered by the hacks.
When I first started reviewing the book I would have complained about a large number of the tips being too application specific, too general or too low in skill level. Since then I've had a friend who wanted to edit a movie and we both found the chapter on iApps useful, one with a brand new Bluetooth phone who liked the couple of tips on Bluetooth and another who found the cross platform Windows-Mac stuff useful. so I have to say that while some of the tips might seem useless now you may come to appreciate them later.
Overall the book is well written, well laid out and well cross-referenced and covers a wide range of information. My one major beef is still that there are too many 'tips' that are well covered by other material. Since you shouldn't really get this book until you are at least Mac proficient and probably own a basic Mac book or two then perhaps a tenth of the hundred tips will be covered in most Mac books and perhaps another five to ten you will have discovered on your own.
While O'Reilly doesn't offer a sample chapter of this book online they do have a page at Hacks that lists all the hacks and allows you to read eight of them. There is also a page in the catalog with the Table of Contents, Index and Errata.
Reading over my notes I feel split between raving about how good the book is - well written with a bunch of useful tips and tricks for any Mac user - and complaining about the useless nature of some of the tips. After taking another look at 'Google Hacks' and my review I realised where the conflict lies -- in my level of experience on the Mac. If you already feel comfortable with getting your hands dirty on your Mac then this book may well not satisfy you. If, on the other hand, you still have some trepidation about hacking at your OS X Macintosh then you'll probably love this book.
You can purchase OS X Hacks from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Heh-heh. And they also wonder why the majority of people out there just don't 'get it'. I've always said the computer industry should really follow Apple's lead and make the computer more of an appliance for the dolts and a super machine for the experts. Amazingly Apple has managed to do this with Mac OS X. A 5 year old can use the GUI, and the crudgy old smelly *nix hacker can go hog wild on the command line. Now that's something I'm waiting for Windows to copy...
Don't Ask Questions. I don't know the answers and even if I did I wouldn't tell you.
yes, there is a ~$200 price difference for a similar dell. but the differences from quality hardware to softeare is more than worth it. everything really just works. i have an ibook, and wouldn't trade it for anything. i plug in my dv camera, zip drive, anything. plus, i can keep it on my lap for hours and not have roasted chestnuts.
it's not like you can hose the hard drive of a dell and install os x like you can with linux. macs cost more, but it's not apples to apples. if price is that big a deal, get a dell, hose the drive and take one for the team, courtesy of billy g.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Are you sure XP supports this? The last time I used XP's built in burning program, it was just like using Apple's DiscBurner. Basically, you copy the files you want to a cache (on your hard drive), but it looks like you're copying it to the CD (you go through a CD icon). When you're ready to burn, you select the burn option and then it records from the hard drive cache to the CD. Granted, it's been at least 4 months since I've used XP's burning program (I prefer Nero myself).
I have had trouble mounting CD-R discs made by DirectCD (or Drag to CD as it's called in Roxio 6) that weren't closed in OS X, but not with UDF formatted CD-RW discs (or UDF formatted DVD-RAM and -RW discs for that matter).