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Running Mac OS X Panther
This volume assumes you know how to use your Mac, how to perform all the routine changes that are easily accomplished with the GUI. Davidson also assumes you don't want to know how to get a movie running as your desktop, or get an Exposé blob floating on the screen or any of the usual sort of 'hacks' or 'hints.' What he gives is a good guide to lifting the hood and performing serious mechanical work or tweaking the performance of your Mac with enough background information so that you can feel confident taking your own steps.
It was good after a few near misses to read an O'Reilly book that was once again well written, well edited, tight and crammed full of information pitched at just the right level. Davidson has done an excellent job with this book.
Davidson starts with a little history, and from the viewpoint he presents, this is not a waste of space; he spends his time explaining exactly how we arrived at the current version of the Mac OS.
Then we have a chapter titled "Lay of the Land" that explores the file system, including both the Finder view and the view you get from the command line. It also explains the four file system domains and the 'Library' directory. The third chapter is a quick (20 pages) look at the Terminal and shell.
Then we get 'Part II: Essentials,' which is the 120-page core of the book. This starts off, logically, with system startup and the login (and log out and shutdown). This is followed by short chapters on users and groups, files and permissions, monitoring, scheduling and preferences and defaults before a marvelous long chapter on the file system. Davidson goes into great detail and closely covers each of the topics, making sure that you get all the details not just 'recipes.'
Part III ("Advanced Topics") starts with a chapter on Open Directory that I found particularly useful. It includes coverage on Kerberos and single sign-on that explains it well, as well as the command-line Open Directory tools. The chapter on printing could have had a bit more guts. It covers the obvious but leaves out such joys as CUPS apart from a half-page sidebar; since sharing printers has caused me more than a little grief I would have appreciated more detail here. The final chapter on networking is better, and provides more useful detail.
It must be said that this section concentrates more on user level detail and leaves out real information on server level software and options. Given the target group for this book, and that a book has to draw a line somewhere, this is quite fair.
Davidson has picked his topics well, almost everyone will find all of Part II useful and educational. Part III is perfect for people wanting to run Panther in a corporate environment. He has balanced the command line and GUI well, pointing out where you can do a job with both and explaining the details.
Oreilly's page for the book has a table of contents and index but no example chapter. If you go to Davidson's page at O'Reilly there is a link to a short excerpt on scheduling tasks as well as several earlier articles Davidson has written for MacDevCenter.
I would recommend this book to any Panther user with a moderate amount of experience. It is not for the newcomer to the Mac, perhaps, but everyone else will benefit from this book.
You can purchase Running Mac OS X Panther from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page
Movie running as a desktop (one method)
Exposé blob
How to Bleed Brakes
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
I agree. I have bought cheap two-button scroll mice at Office Max that were free after rebate and they work just fine in OS X. No driver installation was necessary.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
For anybody running Panther, here is a set of indespensible tips. I go through the steps outlined in that article about once a month, and it keeps my G4 laptop purring like a kitten. The steps about regenerating the prelink binding are especially relevant to performance.
A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
If you're refering to Davidson, it might interest you that he's actually a fairly recent convert to the Mac. He worked for Sun for quite a while, contributing quite a bit to parts of the J2EE spec and the Tomcat webserver (as well as creating "Ant").
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SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
With this.
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
This may not be exactly the solution you are looking for, but ctrl+click = right click.
Rhapsody in Numbers
"you realize all that candy sweetness is there to keep you from noticing how it's mostly unix with a sham thrown over it."
Actually more FreeBSD that anything else with the best GUI out there thrown over it. Better than gnome, kde or windows. And yes I do use all the others on a regular to semiregular basis.
And unix style systems can be pretty damn sweet.
Evolution or ID?
I have been looking at such books, but I have to say I like the "OS X in a nutshell" version better, because of their nice and extensive Unix command appendix.
The Jaguar edition has been out for a while, but I'm waiting for the Panther edition.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.