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Mac OS X Power Tools
Here's the thing about book reviews: They're a lot easier to write when you either absolutely hated or absolutely adored the book in question. Once you've decided how you feel about it, it's easy to find a dozen examples of its mediocrity or excellence, as the case may be. However, I've been sitting on this particular review for a few weeks now, unable to finish it because I can't say that I feel very strongly at all about Power Tools. I recently decided, however, that being unable to form a definite opinion of it one way or another is itself a kind of opinion. There's nothing glaringly wrong with it or missing from it, but when it comes down to whether I'd choose to buy it over a different Mac book, I can't say that I would. I realize that this isn't a work of fiction -- its goal isn't exactly to suck me in with thrilling plot twists so that I read the whole thing cover to cover in one sitting. Nevertheless, there are some other books out there that do exactly that (I'll get to them later), and I think I've been spoiled by reading them.
What I Liked
Power Tools covers its bases in a thorough, informative way. It's a solid OS X book, intended for anyone who understands the very basics involved in using a Mac. The author makes very clear early on that he's not intending to show you how to log in, or how to launch an application, but that's about the extent of the proficiency required, I think. Frakes seems to understand his audience and to address it consistently, which is rare enough to be refreshing. One of my pet peeves in technical writing concerns authors who can't decide who they're talking to -- sidebars for beginners and power users are great, but when the body of the text itself waffles back and forth between skill levels, it can be both frustrating and confusing. This is a trap that Power Tools sidesteps completely: At the beginning of each section, you'll find a couple of lines telling you whether an Admin account is required for the techniques described, and whether the changes being made are system-wide or will affect only your own account. Mac OS X Hacks (which is, incidentally and confusingly enough, the Mac equivalent of O'Reilly's classic Unix Power Tools) uses a similar system to introduce each of the hacks in the book, and it's a practice that I'd like to see used more widely.
Favorite sections: Although certainly not the meatiest bits of the book, I thought the quick-reference keyboard shortcut and third-party utility lists were great, and I've used them fairly frequency since Power Tools took up residency on the shelf over my desk. As far as the more substantial content is concerned, I'd have to say Frakes's coverage of Classic is probably one of my favorite chapters -- oddly enough, since I never use Classic myself. That's part of the reason I liked his section on it, though: it does a good job of explaining why you'll want to avoid Classic whenever you can, while also pointing out some ways to make the best of it if it can't be avoided. The list of startup files necessary to use Classic is a good reference for folks who'd like to clean out their old System Folders without crippling anything. And of course Frakes's experience managing and troubleshooting OS 9 comes in useful here -- he points out classics like Conflict Catcher that users shouldn't be without if Classic is used with any degree of regularity.
Chapter 14, covering maintainence and administration of a Mac running OS X, is also full of sound, reasonable advice. Disk care and repair as well as how to recover lost data and prevent such mishaps to begin with are all covered thoroughly and intelligently in this section, as well the whys and wherefores of backups. Nothing surprising, perhaps, but nothing that should be left out of a decent Mac book, either.
What I Didn't Like
Although this is purely a matter of taste and I'm aware that there are many people who disagree with me, I just don't like Frakes's writing style. I have enjoyed some of his columns in the past, but it seems like his humor falls more than a little flat when stretched out over the course of a book. The alliterative titles were amusing for the first one or two chapters, but "Apple-ication Aptitude" is pushing it just a bit, I think. Although I realize that the first priority of a technical book is not to entertain its readers, exactly, is it too much to ask that it enthuse us? I was already interested in OS X before reading Power Tools, but I didn't find anything to excite me -- how would a new Mac user fare?
My least favorite chapter was probably Chapter 6, "Developing a Dynamite Dock." Despite Frakes's promise to assume that the reader is familiar with the basics, there's still the inevitable trot through the relevant Preference panel. Some good third-party software like Tinker Tool is discussed, but there wasn't anything that surprised me in this chapter.
The Bottom Line
This is a perfectly adequate OS X book, and you wouldn't be wasting your money by buying it. Indeed, if you're already a fan of the author, you should probably do exactly that. For me, though, while it does a decent job of accomplishing the tasks it sets for itself, the book just never quite cuts it for me. The bottom line is really that if I had enough money to buy only a single Mac book, this wouldn't be it. I'd spend my forty dollars (or so) instead on either Mac OS X Unleashed or Mac OS X: The Missing Manual. Frakes actually recommends the latter as an alternative for absolute beginners who would be lost in his own book, but don't make the mistake of thinking it's just for novices. It really is a complete OS X manual, covering topics for users at every skill level. As for Unleashed, I've reviewed this book already (more recently than I have the Missing Manual) so I'll just say that if you want a Mac book so complete that it will introduce you to web programming so you can use that default Apache installation, then that's a book you should consider. While I would prefer either one of these books to Power Tools if I were only able to buy one, it's also true that I'm not sorry to have added it to my collection (since, like most people, I'm not limited to one book per subject).
And Furthermore
Dan Frakes is a generally beloved Mac writer and developer and, my ambivalence about this book aside, his stuff is worth looking into. He contributes to the "Mac OS X Secrets" column in Macworld and is also involved in the 9th edition of the Mac Bible. His personal site is danfrakes.com, and the site for this book is at macosxpowertools.com.
You can purchase Mac OS X Power Tools 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 have read several os x books and find that all have had little patch ideas or a vauge introduction. This disapoints me as someone who wants to get to the meat of the OS. Personally, I think this is a big hinderance of why people have not switched to powerbooks from their *nix workstation. If you want to learn about the OS, buy a freeBSD book and understand that there are a few differences
It might be worth the price for the keyboard shortcuts stuff alone. It seems like every other OSX search gives me another shortcut or so to add to my respository of marginally useful knowledge.
It sounds like something that is worth checking out at the local bookstore anyway.
How many here us OSX everyday?
What are the things that you like about OSX?
Most of all pertinent to the above review what is your favorite OS X tool?
ACK
X11 runs fine on macs and combined with fink, I have not found a linux app that did not have a suitable replacement.
As soon as someone ports all of the iLife apps, and the windowing to linux we will be set for buisness.
Ha! That is good enough for me too. I found ls, df, ps, ssh, mkdir, rmdir, find and everything else I needed. As a long time UNIX CLI person I found I was right at home.
For any MS/Linux apps I fire up RDP or the X server to get to them. But as I found when I moved from Windows to Linux years ao, I'm needing less of Linux as I adapt to OSX.
As for day in day out usage it is perfect. So was Linux, but in a less polished way.
M.B.
Apple can continue to hide on their PPC platform, charge exorbant prices for their products and remain the yuppy can only afford a MAC.
Dude... that wasn't even a sentence.
Otherwise I guess those people at Apple just dont like money.
Apple is the most consistently profitable computer company in the world.
I have a couple comments about the review, and a couple comments in response to posts in this discussion.
First, a comment about the review's recommendation that really has little to do with my book, and more to do with recommending books in general. Writing style is a very personal thing, and unless you're David Pogue, it's impossible to write a book everyone will love ;-) So I have no problem with the reviewer preferring a different "style." However, I do disagree somewhat with the overall recommendation made in the review ("Get The Missing Manual or Mac OS X Unleashed instead"), and not because I wrote one of the books in question.
When recommending a book, the most important things to know are the reader's level of expertise and the reader's goals in reading the book. The three books mentioned here are aimed at very different levels:
There is undoubtedly a bit of overlap in these three books, but for the most part they are written for different audiences. In other words, it's difficult to simply say "get Book A over Book B" without knowing more about the reader. All three books are, in my humble opinion, great books -- I wrote one and own the other two -- and I recommend them frequently. However, I've rarely recommended one over the other two, simply because they aren't comparable substitutes, IMO.
I guess what I'm saying is to make sure you're buying, or recommending, the right book for the reader. I'd rather see you buy someone else's book than buy mine if it's not appropriate for you.
A few quick comments on messages in this thread:
jcsehak wrote:
Sorry you didn't like that joke ;-) Using alliteration in chapter titles is a bit of fun when you're writing 600+ pages on an operating system, and, from a pedagogical standpoint, a useful approach. However, it can admittedly get a bit cheezy after a while, and I was actually trying to make fun of that fact with the chapter title in question. The original title was "Application Aptitude" -- which probably wouldn't have generated any comments -- but as a joke I changed it to "Apple-ication," basically parodying the approach. OK, it was a very bad pun, I admit it. Maybe my brain was a bit fried after writing 600+ pages, but I thought it was funny at the time. Maybe it wasn't so funny after all -- you're not the first person to criticize it ;-)
mr_luc wrote:
The book belongs to a series of books from the same publisher called "Power Tools" that includes books on Unix, Linux, Windows, etc.; I didn't have much say in the title. In some ways I agree with you that it doesn't properly indicate what the book is about. On the other hand, as I mention in the book's introduction, hard