Mastering Mac OS X (2nd Ed.)

honestpuck writes "I've seen a fair number of books for OS X and they range in target audience from the raw beginner such as Mac OS X for Dummies and Robin William's Mac OS X Book through to those for technical readers such as Mac OS X In A Nutshell (IAN)." Read on for honestpucks' review of the new edition of Todd Stauffer's Mastering OS X. Mastering Mac OS X (2nd Ed.) author Todd Stauffer pages 804 publisher Sybex rating 7 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0782141188 summary Good guide to OS X for intermediate beginners to intermediate users

Mastering Mac OS X falls firmly in the middle. Unlike IAN it spends a fair amount of time on the GUI and a major section is devoted to QuickTime and the iApps. Unlike Robin William's volume it covers high end topics such as AppleScript and the terminal and has a good section on troubleshooting. One thing lacking that I applaud is that it does not have IAN's large chapter summing up Unix commands.

The Good

The book is well structured, divided into 7 sections, 5 of increasing complexity, 'The Mac OS X Basics', 'On The Internet', 'Multimedia: Images Sound, Video', 'Networking, Coonectivity and Portables' and 'Advanced Mac OS X topics' - which covers AppleScript, the Terminal, and various servers including QuickTime, Samba and Sendmail. These are followed by a hardware and troubleshooting section and finally the appendices. The index is good and it has the by now traditional two level table of contents, the first listing just the chapter heads and the second listing all the sub sections as well.

Given that structure, the book touches all the bases and covers all the required topics well.

The writing is not bad, I think a stronger hand with the editing would have done wonders as it tends to the wordy.

The Bad

Once again a certain amount of the early stuff is either below the needs of the target audience or not really required. Oh, and Sybex do have a page for the book which includes a Table of Contents, sample chapter, index and errata but get a load of that URL and the author has a web page for the book but he hasn't touched it in over a year, since before this second edition was published.

Conclusion

It should be said that among all the books in this genre none are badly written, or badly structured. Personally I don't like the style of the 'Dummies' books and so I put it at the bottom of my list but others may not have the same feeling. That said, how do you choose among them? The choice boils down to two things, how close you are to the target audience for a particular book and how well it addresses the target audience. Mastering Mac OS X is targeted at "intermediate beginners (those who have some experience with a graphical operating system) and solidly intermediate to advanced users" according to the Introduction. I think that it covers the needs of the first group well but will probably fall short if you are already an "advanced user." For these people I'd recommend Mac OS X In A Nutshell. If you are a total newbie, then I'd recommend Robin William's Mac OS X Book.

You can purchase Mastering OS X from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

I doubt

[ike6116]

anyone in the slashdot audiance would need this kind of book. OS X is intuitive enough, most would benefit from Mac OS X for Unix Geeks (which even then is a very quick skim).

Or get two ORA books instead...

[Dub Kat]

David Pouge's Mac OS X: The Missing Manual is a well-respected book for showing both converts from OS 9 and the Unix/Windows world how things are done in OS X.

To get into the gritty Unix stuff, you can also pick up Mac OS X for Unix Geeks.

The combination of these two books might better server you rather than one "everything and the kitchen sink" Mac OS X book.

Colocated Linux Servers - From $60/mo

Re:book

[Anonymous Coward]

why is it so, grub, that all you do is past lame crap in an attempt to get +5, Funny? Take a look at his user page. it's the truth. it's all you do

inadequate review

[uncadonna]

I go along with those who think this review showed almost no insight or even attention and should not have passed muster for posting. I also think that discussing other members of this class of book without mentioning the hardly obscure OSX: The Missing Manual is practically negligent.

TMM plus OSX for Unix Geeks, both from O'Reilly, have served me well.

Programming

[Ann Coulter]

Cocoa Programming is a very detailed book about the Cocoa environment. It gives you a very in-depth look into Apple's technology and even pulls you into the design philosophies behind Cocoa and Mac OS X. An excellent read.

There can be only one

[ProfKyne]

The combination of these two books might better server you rather than one "everything and the kitchen sink" Mac OS X book.

Hang on to your pennies. It would seem that Running MacOS X, a book for MacOS X power users in the vein of Running Linux, is in development right now.