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Mac OS X Hacks
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by Rael Dornfest and Kevin Hemenway
Sales Rank: 583900
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List Price: $24.95
$0.48
At Amazon
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Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly; 1 edition March 24, 2003
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0596004605
ISBN-13: 978-0596004606
Product Dimensions:
9 x 6 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
Book Description
Mac OS X is a marvelous confluence of the user-friendly and highly customizable Macintosh of yesteryear and the power and flexibility of Unix under the hood. Those coming to Mac OS X from previous incarnations of the operating system recognize much of the friendly face of the Macintosh but they are also plunged into a whole new world. Unix converts to Mac OS X find a familiar FreeBSD-like operating system at the core and many of the command-line applications that they're familiar with.
This presents a unique opportunity for combining traditional Unix hacking and Mac OS know-how. Mac OS X Hacks goes beyond the peculiar mix of man pages and not-particularly-helpful Help Center, pulling the best tips, tricks, and tools from the Mac power users and Unix hackers themselves.
The collection reflects the real-world know how and experience of those well steeped in Unix history and expertise, sharing their no-nonsense, sometimes quick-and-dirty solutions to administering and taking full advantage of everything a Unix desktop has to offer: Web, Mail, and FTP serving, security services, SSH, Perl and shell scripting, compiling, configuring, scheduling, networking, and hacking. Add to that the experience of die-hard Macintosh users, customizing and modifying their hardware and software to meet their needs: System Preferences, GUI mods and tweaks, hardware tips, vital shareware and freeware, AppleScript, AppleTalk and equivalents, keyboard modifiers, and general Macintosh-style tomfoolery.
Each Hack can be read easily in a few minutes, saving countless hours of searching for the right answer. Mac OS X Hacks provides direct, hands-on solutions that can be applied to the challenges facing both those meeting the Mac for the first time and long-time users delving into Mac OS X and its Unix underpinnings.
Mac OS X Hacks is the third in O'Reilly's new Hacks Serier which aims to begin reclaiming the term "hacking" for the good guys. In recent years, the term has come to be associated with those nefarious black hats who break into computers to snoop, steal information or disrupt Internet traffic. But the term originally had a more benign meaning, and you'll still hear it used this way whenever developers get together. Our new Hacks books are written in the spirit of the true hackers -- the people who drive innovation.
Customer Reviews & Comments
...O'Reilly has never steered me wrong with books for UNIX, Windows, Perl, you name it. So therefore when I saw the "MAC OS X HACKS" book I immediately grabbed a copy. Having just finished "Google Hacks", another O'Reilly publication, I was eager to dive in and see if this book would be as useful as the Google book. I would not be disappointed. One of the unique aspects of this book is you can turn to any "hack" and begin applying it without having to read the others. The book is like a collection of many magazine articles brought together under one roof - and with all the media fluff removed. I was amazed at how a novice like me could easily follow the step-by-step instructions and not feel lost. I soon found myself using color-coded paperclips to mark off sections of the book for future reference in terms of what they did (OS setting, audio settings, etc.). You can dive right into some of the more advanced hacks, such as setting up your own mail server, without having to worry that the authors will assume you are familiar with how to do a particular step. They walk you through the entire process; complete with screen shots for some of the more tricky options, and let you focus on the task at hand. Considering how much benefit this novice MAC OS X user got from the book, more advanced Macintosh users are likely to find that this book provides a quick "easy reference" for some of the more tricky or complicated setups. Since the book is organized into independent sections, one could easily use this for a desktop reference. Plus, it's not the "Macintosh for Dummies" type of book that seems to fill most shelves nowadays - the authors assume you want to do the advanced stuff with OS X, but just need some tips to get you going. Hopefully O'Reilly will continue with the "Hacks" series of books (I'm eagerly awaiting a book on Windows Hacks!); they are the first series of books that really let the end users get under the hood of various platforms and tasks and "get the job done" without feeling lost. I would not be surprised to see MAC OS X Hacks, as well as other Hacks books, come out in volume format. After all, after spending almost a week with the MAC OS X book, I can see how these can quickly expand to cover a lot more topics in a similar, condensed format - which for us "get it done now" type people is a godsend!
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Mac OS X Hacks
List Price: $24.95
Available from Amazon
Price: $0.48
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