Mac OSX In a Nutshell
by Jason McIntosh, Chuck Toporek and Chris Snow
Published by O' Reilly Press, $34.95.
(Discounts available to MUG members)
Reviewed by Avrum Lapin
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Mac OSX In a Nutshellby Jason McIntosh, Chuck Toporek and Chris Snow Published by O' Reilly Press, $34.95. Reviewed by Avrum Lapin |
This book's subtitle says it all - "A Desktop Quick Reference." The publisher sees this book as a complement to rather than as competition to "Mac OSX - The Missing Manual." It is intended more for the power user than the eMail/Browser/Word Processor user.
The book is divided into 5 parts or 25 chapters.
While I don't consider myself a power user, I am somewhat curious about what is beneath the hood. I have opened the Terminal application, created and deleted a file, but I haven't felt motivated to go much further. Perhaps I haven't had a need or I am concerned about doing something bad and irreversible. I decided to approach "Mac OSX in a Nutshell" by beginning at the beginning and seeing how far I could get before my eyes became permanently glazed over.
What I got out of Part 1 was learning the vocabulary equivalents between Unix and Aqua (the OS X interface) such as a Directory in Unix is equivalent to a Folder in Aqua. I learned that there was a difference between a Dialog Window and a Dialog Sheet that I hadn't noticed before (the difference is trivial to most users). One of the most useful things that I found in Part 1 was a number of Tables which listed handy keystroke combinations (e.g. how to force a boot in OS X) that I have seen scattered about in various books. For those of you who only need these keystroke combinations once or twice a year and can't remember them these tables can be a real lifesaver. As a user of Classic (less so as time goes by) I found Chapter 3 (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and Classic) particularly informative. The 4th Chapter is a convenient listing of various settings that you might want to change but forgot where the instructions are.
Chapters 5 and 6 covered System Preferences and the Applications that came with OS X. There was some new to me information about some of the more esoteric System Preference settings, but what I found was of most potential use is the method of installing OS 9 software after OS X is installed (boot into OS 9, do the installation and then boot back into OS X). Chapter 7 on Networks was interesting. The next chapter on Printing was informative and included directions on how to print from Terminal. Chapter 9 dealt with the File System. - I found this chapter tough going because there were a lot of references to UNIX conventions. The final chapter in this section, entitled "Running Java Applications" did not have enough material for someone whose knowledge of Java is limited to how to spell it.
Part III covered System and Network Administration. Its first chapter (11) began by assuming that you knew what the Terminal Application does (covered in Chapter 19). I read Chapter 19 and was not really any smarter. The remainder of Part III didn't seem of much use to a sole user unconnected to a network.
Parts IV and V were also heavy going. I had thought I might try some of the things therein but I have suddenly become a lot more cautions about "fooling" around. I was poking around in the System/Library folder and suddenly lost the ability to boot up from the hard drive. I had to reinstall Jaguar using Archive and Install. I've decided to forgo fooling around until I either get a partitioned Hard Drive or an external Hard Drive with an installed System, which I can play with.