Mac OS X Snow Leopard for Power Users: Advanced Capabilities and Techniques is for Mac OS X users who want to go beyond the obvious, the standard, and the easy. If want to dig deeper into Mac OS X and maximize your skills and productivity using the worlds slickest and most elegant operating system, then this is the book for you.

Written by Scott Granneman, an experienced teacher, developer, and consultant, Mac OS X for Power Users helps you push Mac OS X to the max, unveiling advanced techniques and options that you may have not known even existed. Create custom workflows and apps with Automator, run Windows programs and even Windows itself without dual-booting, and sync data on your hard drive, on your phone, and in the cloudlearn all of these techniques and more.

This is not a book that talks down to you; Mac OS X for Power Users is an essential book for experienced Mac users who are smart enough to know there is more to be known, and are ready to become power users.

What youll learn

• How to create your own custom workflows, apps, and services with one of Mac OS Xs hidden gems: Automator.
• How to share an external USB hard drive with a Windows and Linux users and mount a network drive using SSH
• How to run Windowsor even Linuxwhile youíre still running Mac OS X, without dual-booting. Even run the three major operating systemsMac OS X, Windows, and Linuxat the same time!
• How to customize Safari to make it even better than it already is.
• All about browser optionsChrome, Opera, Camino, Stainless, and Arora.
• How to manage data on your hardrive, on your phone, and in the cloud, with almost instantaneous syncing.
• How to protect yourself and your valuable data. Find out lots of great, useful info on firewalls, encryption, passwords, backup, and more.

Who this book is for


This book is for people who already know how to use their Macs but want to go beyond that. They want to be more efficient and productive, and theyre not afraid to try new techniques and software to do so. They also realize how valuable their data is, and they want to protect it in the smartest ways possible.

This book is also perfect for anyone who administers a group of Macs, because they will find lots of useful methods for managing their machines and also helping them work together.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Advanced Secrets of Mac OS X
2. Maintaining Your Mac
3. Expanding Upon the Basic Tools
4. Using Safari to Its Fullest
5. Stepping Beyond Safari
6. Using the Internet to Its Fullest
7. Securing Your Mac & Networks
8. Backing Up Your Mac
9. Manipulating and Sharing Pictures
10. Having More Fun With Audio & Video
11. Key Utility Tools for Text & Archives
12. Digging Deep as an Admin

Customer Reviews & Comments
Full disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes. If you already know your way around Mac OS X Snow Leopard but want to learn some power user tricks, this is the book for you. Scott Granneman has done a fine job of making some of the more advanced Snow Leopard features understandable and accessible for experienced users. The writing is clear, concise, and friendly in tone -- not something you see every day in a computer book. Much of the content covers third-party applications (a number of them free or inexpensive) you can use to clean things up, tighten performance, or add functionality. In most cases, several program options are presented and compared, and guidance is given as to which might be the right solution for you based on your needs. As an experienced, long-time Mac user measuring somewhere around a 4 on the 1-10 geekiness scale, I found the technical level of this book to be appropriate and only occasionally challenging. However, I did gloss over several of the more technical sections. Frankly, searching for files by metadata via the command line is something I can't see myself doing with any regularity, and I have no desire to replace the Finder with another program, but it's good that the info is there should I ever decide I want to do those things. While there is some content here that isn't all that useful to me right now for the way I use my computer, there was plenty here that was valuable to me. In the first few chapters I found some great tips for improving performance and working more efficiently, and the chapters on security and backups were very useful. Potentially the most useful for me was chapter 11, "Key Utility Tools for Text & Archives." I'm an editor who works with words all day, and I'm looking forward to testing some of the tips presented there. Overall, I found this book to be worth my time, and I recommend it to those who would like to take the next step with Snow Leopard.

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