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X Books Media Businesses GUI Book Reviews Apple

Mac OS X in a Nutshell 95

Posted by timothy from the no-this-is-mac-os-x-in-a-nutshell dept.
honestpuck writes "It must be difficult when writing a book for 'power users' to decide what exactly needs to be put in and what can be safely left out. This volume does the job quite well, covering the simple stuff quickly and early while devoting a great deal of its 750 pages to topics of more interest to serious users of Apple's new(ish) operating system. It also declares its audience early, the preface devotes a page to explaining the target audience and states it is 'aimed at folks with a more technical bent than the average user--the power user.'" Read on to see what Honestpuck thinks of O'Reilly's OS X in a Nutshell.
Mac OS X In A Nutshell
author Jason McIntosh, Chuck Toporek & Chris Stone
pages 768
publisher O'Reilly
rating 8 - Almost excellent
reviewer Tony Williams
ISBN 0596003706
summary An Excellent book on OS X for 'power users' that will remain useful.

The Gist

The book is quite well structured, and organized into into 5 parts. The first is a quick overview of the Macintosh GUI. The second part, "System Configuration," is mainly devoted to getting the system running well (covering preferences, networking, the file system and Java). The third section, "System and Network Administration," is a good guide to several lower-level tasks, including an excellent chapter on directory services and NetInfo. The fourth is about development, including Apple's IDE "Project Builder" and CVS. The final part covers the Unix underpinnings of OS X and X Windows. This includes a Unix command reference of over 200 pages.

The Good

The book is also well written, with light, easily understood prose and some good screen dumps, tables and diagrams to make some of the more complex points easily understood. I appreciate the detailed contents section, good quality index and black chapter tabs at the side of each page for finding the information I need.

Everything seems to be covered, though you may sometimes find yourself needing to go elsewhere for more depth, but this is really only to expected in a book that is trying more for breadth across an entire operating system than depth in one particular area.

Despite having used and developed on a Mac for over 15 years and OS X since the late beta stage I still found myself discovering something new and useful every few pages in the book.

The Bad

The section of the book I appreciated least was the Unix Command Reference. 200 pages, most of which are adequately covered by the online man pages or a quick 'command --help'. Not that it isn't useful having this information on paper, and not that this section isn't more complete than the man pages and less error-ridden. It's just that my favourite operating system has a large number of commands that are hard to find by name alone. Online, I tend to rely on apropos to find what I need. Back when you paid a large amount of money for a Unix license they came with hard copy manuals that included a permuted word index of the same top slug that apropos searches, which made them infinitely more useful. O'Reilly could improve the heck out of this book by giving us the same thing for what I felt was otherwise an almost totally wasted 200 pages (though I admit that the combination of the chapter on NetInfo and the command references for nicl and niutil etc. actually have me now understanding and using NetInfo well.)

Once again O'Reilly have provided a web page for the book that is mostly marketing material -- though in this case the Errata page is useful. At the bottom of the page they have a number of links to "Related O'Reilly Articles" but have only listed three by the authors of the book, leaving out, for example, X11 and Open Office on Mac OS X by Wei-Meng Lee and Configuring sendmail On Jaguar by James Duncan Davidson to name two MacDevCenter articles I've found incredibly helpful.

Conclusion

This book is not quite in the "must buy" category. If you do want a book to help you with the more technical aspects of OS X or to help you move to OS X from Unix or Windows hacking then this one is worth a serious look. It certainly better covers the technical aspects than OS X Bible and others of that style (such as the Missing Manual or Robin Williams' Little Mac OS X Book.) The only other volume that really compares is OS X Unleashed and it has way too much coverage of the simple stuff and the various applications, is not as well structured and has a wordier, less terse and technical style. It's also more expensive and twice the size and weight.

You can purchase Mac OS X in a Nutshell from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Mac OS X in a Nutshell More

Mac OS X in a Nutshell

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  • What?!?! (Score:1, Funny)

    by mschoolbus ( 627182 )
    Mac OS X in a Nutshell

    I thought companies were moving away from software boxes and to cheaper, downloadable formats, Putting software in a nutshell is outrageous!

  • Panther (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mattgarnsey ( 660568 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @12:06PM (#5679430)
    i wonder how much of this will remain true once Panther rolls out (sept?)

  • Missing Sample Chapter (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kalak ( 260968 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @12:07PM (#5679437) Homepage Journal
    This is the first O'Reilly Review I can remember without a mention of the Sample Chapter [oreilly.com] O'Reilly is known to provide.

    (Blatant Kerma whoring, but I immediately "dug" to find is, so I thought I'd post it.)

  • Power users (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07, 2003 @12:08PM (#5679446)
    power user = user who knows just enough to be way more dangerous than a normal user.

  • osxhints (Score:5, Informative)

    by selderrr ( 523988 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @12:08PM (#5679450) Journal
    it's been said here before I think, but this [macosxhints.com] is a great site with tons of usefull (also sometimes stupid) osx info.

    Some really funky applescript stuff, some lame bash scripts & much gui tweaks, but I've found a lot of fixes for problems that no apple docs could help me with.

    • Re:osxhints (Score:4, Informative)

      by ProfKyne ( 149971 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:15PM (#5680212)

      it's been said here before I think, but this [macosxhints.com] is a great site with tons of usefull (also sometimes stupid) osx info.

      And, interestingly, that site's editor has written an O'Reilly book himself, that is due to come out shortly, titled "MacOS X Hints" [oreilly.com].

      • Re:osxhints (Score:4, Informative)

        by selderrr ( 523988 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:37PM (#5680320) Journal
        And, interestingly, that site's editor is a really nice bloke. It's amazing how much time he's spending on his site : he verifies each hint, posts comments regularly and checks for dupes of submitted hints. Insane. I don't know how he keeps it going, but sure as hell he's an example to other portal sites.

        Additionally, he runs it without ad revenue, keeps it free of subscriptions. Quite an achievement.
        I really, really hope his book sells well. He deserves it !

  • Nice Review (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pirogoeth ( 662083 ) <mailbox&ikrug,com> on Monday April 07, 2003 @12:08PM (#5679451) Homepage Journal

    The problem with many of these books, though, is that they aren't where the masses will find them. I go into my local B&N and there may be a dozen or two titles tops that relate to the Mac, compared with the hundreds for Windows and other stuff.

    And probably, the only people going to O'Reillys are people that probably don't need the book.

    I think the Apple Store needs to go into the book-selling business as well and promote books like this on their site, or on the Switch site to that the masses who could use this type of information will know that it is out there.

    • Re:Nice Review-For whom the tome tolls. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "I think the Apple Store needs to go into the book-selling business as well and promote books like this on their site, or on the Switch site to that the masses who could use this type of information will know that it is out there."

      Yes, but. Will that not destroy the "Ease of use" illusion? Here's your computer, and here's this thick book to read.

    • Re:Nice Review (Score:4, Insightful)

      by telbij ( 465356 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @12:25PM (#5679562)
      And probably, the only people going to O'Reillys are people that probably don't need the book.

      Huh? This isn't scientific, but I'd say that the VAST majority of people who need a Nutshell book already know who O'reilly are and don't equate a B&N bookshelf with what's available about computers.

      Also, I've not been dissatisfied with Mac book selections at major booksellers. There's way more overlap in Windows books, and I prefer quality over quantity.
    • i agree that the titles are not as widespread as they could be, i could not find the Mac OS X for Unix Geeks at B&N last time i was there, though they did have over 15 books on os x, including both versions of The Missing Manual and the O'Reilly Cocoa manual. i really think that promoting the Unix side of mac is pretty foolish considering much of the linux community is more than comfortable ostracizing mac users, despite darwin being posix compliant and for most intents and purposes able to run the sam

    • Re:Nice Review (Score:2, Informative)

      by repetty ( 260322 )
      "The problem with many of these books, though, is that they aren't where the masses will find them. I go into my local B&N and there may be a dozen or two titles tops that relate to the Mac, compared with the hundreds for Windows and other stuff."

      Well, the Barnes & Noble, Borders and Fry's here in Austin have the Mac well covered. Austin's a nice town, too.

  • Goes Google obsolete these books? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by -tji ( 139690 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @12:15PM (#5679495) Journal
    I have been buying fewer books of this type recently. In the past, a good O'Reilly book was the best way to get on top of a subject. But, with a few google searches, I can find most everything I need about common topics, like MacOS X.

    The argument for disconnected access with books is a bit tougher with a 750page book.. Not really a mobile tool.

    • I still like the book (Score:5, Insightful)

      by siskbc ( 598067 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @12:51PM (#5679693) Homepage
      But, with a few google searches, I can find most everything I need about common topics, like MacOS X.

      I'm usually in agreement - I find that google is nearly always the best reference for everthing...except computer how-to. Usually, what I find, is my searches turn up 1000 people with the same/related question as me, but usually, either no one answered, or the advice sucked. It takes me usually a lot of searching through google to find someone who had the exact problem adequately answered.

      By then, with a good book, I have found the answer far sooner. Of course, the main advantage of google is it's free, so I end up repeating the above process a lot...

    • Re:Goes Google obsolete these books? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Phoukka ( 83589 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @12:57PM (#5679713)
      You wrote:
      The argument for disconnected access with books is a bit tougher with a 750page book.. Not really a mobile tool


      I own the book, and it is rather small and unassuming for a book with 801 pages. It is NOT a Wrox book. It is a bit thicker than other O'Reilly Nutshell books (Perl IAN, Java IAN, Python IAN), but it is not quite as thick as Oracle IAN. I suspect they are using slimmer pages than they used to do, but they also seem to be a bit more durable.

      I can't really comment on the content yet, as I've been reading through Python IAN first -- which, by the way, is amazingly good!

    • Re:Goes Google obsolete these books? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 0x00000dcc ( 614432 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @01:22PM (#5679868) Journal
      This might be true, but nothing saves the convenience of a book to flip through. Back in the day, when I was poor, I taught myself c++ entirely via internet tutorials. Of course I bought c++ books later on afterwards, but I remembered thinking how much more convenient it would have been if I had had the extra cash to run out and buy a book. I even did the same thing with learning the (gasp) Win32 API. Obviously this would have been even more frustrating if I didn't have a little bit of education/programming experience behind me to begin with.

      That being said, learning from internet searches might prove useful because you collect form a multitude of authors -- when you only have one author, you only see one part, and s/he may, for example, not give much importance to templates (back to c++ example) as another author might. Choosing a multitude of authors circumvents the "paradigm bias."

      OR you could just have the cash in the first place and go out and buy 10 books ;-)

    • Google is great, as long as your problem is not related to getting online. A real bitch when the network card in my IBM laptop is acting up, or the cable modem goes down (only happened once in 6 months). Redhat got to the point that I just used Mandrake instead (better hardware recognition for some reason)! Same would apply for OS X or Windows or whatever.
    • Given the choice, I would rather take a 750-page book into the bathroom than my iBook. (The iBook gets a little warm on my left leg)
    • Books can often help you find out about new things. Google usually helps me find an answer to a specific question while books give completly new knowledge. One example is the unix tool bc which I read about in OS X: The missing manual. It has been really useful for me, and event though the man pages are decent I would nevere have read them because I would never dream of typing man bc. Books can also give you in-depth knowledge quicker, but I do use google more and more lately instead of books.
  • at slashdot

  • How big is this nutshell, exactly? (Score:5, Funny)

    by pnot ( 96038 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @12:23PM (#5679550)
    If you can get 768 pages into a nutshell, you've got to be talking about some pretty big nuts...

  • a little off-topic, but... (Score:5, Informative)

    by mgs1000 ( 583340 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @12:24PM (#5679555) Journal
    Don't bother getting the O'Reilly book MacOS X for Unix geeks. It cost me $20 and took less than 30 minutes to read. There was nothing in there that I hadn't already figured out by just using my Mac. (It explains quite obvious stuff)

    If you are indeed a Unix geek, go to macosxhints.com and you'll find a lot more useful information there for free.

    • Agreed - I bought it mainly because it was published by O'Reilly, and to be honest it's the only book from them that I've ever bought and don't keep going back to.

      With most technical books, I'll give them a cursory read-through, and then they go onto the shelf for constant referencing (referral? refferation? Whatever), but this one is just mouldering off in a corner somewhere. Pretty much that whole book can be summed up with "It's FreeBSD, more or less".
    • Stupid you :-) - I read it in the store :-)
    • I also agree I felt really cheated. There are a ton of topics regarding OSX from a Unix users's perspective I'd like to see covered and this book had about 5% of them. There is good information in the book its just not indexed well enough and there isn't anywhere near enough book to justify the title. Its more like a dozen good articles than a book.
    • I agree with you about the book, but one of the authors of the book has an article [macdevcenter.com] that has been very usefull to me. It is a list of the top ten things he learned while working on the book. I wish I had read this before I bought th... oh wait, my company bought the book for me <grin>.

      Among other helpfull things is a detailed explanation of OSX startup items (startup is totally different than other *NIX), A list of all the root folders and what OSX uses them for, and some caveats about symlinks and the

  • Book wide of mark (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mariox19 ( 632969 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @12:37PM (#5679627)

    Okay, as a word of warning, my comments are based on looking through the book at a local bookstore, and confirming my conclusions by reading the review. I agree with the "Bad."

    In aiming a book at the power user for Mac OS X, it's safe to omit almost everything about the GUI. It's not too difficult to learn the GUI in the first place (after all, it's supposed to be intuitive). I think what would most interest the power user is the UNIX underneath.

    Now, the so-called "power user" really comes in two forms: one, power users coming from the old Mac OS, and two, UNIX power users. Both of these groups could benefit from a book that concentrates on how OS X's UNIX works. (Note, I'm not talking about an introduction to UNIX, covering grep and piping one command into another, and so forth.)

    Besides on essentially wasting so many pages on the GUI (in my opinion), the book falls short in just the way the reviewer noted: namely, thin documentation of the UNIX base and how it differs from others. There is some good coverage; but what is needed is more than a "nutshell"; what is needed is a fuller explanation of the commands.

    What is needed is more than what goes only slightly beyond being printed manpages.

    • Re:Book wide of mark (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      On the other hand, most UNIX power users are totally unused to working with a *good* GUI, so it's worthwhile spending time to explain the power user GUI features.

      Yes, all the stuff you *need* is easily discoverable in the GUI, but lots of people will use a GUI for years and never notice that option-dragging this or that does something different and useful. A true power user knows these things too.
  • It seems to me that the Apple section [slashdot.org] and the main page aren't talking to each other. The "sections" sidebar incorrectly says it hasn't been updated since April 2, and this story didn't even make it into the Apple section! Is CowboyNeal sleeping at the switch?
    • i know, slashdot only gets like 30 hits a day, and ten are from me. i am sure that you guys are not busy at all. was that a book review we were talking about? why did it not end up in the apple section? wait, nevermind.
  • I think it has to be said that slashdot book reviews, much of the time, are just reviews of the table of contents.

    This is not the case with this particular review. Both good and bad aspects were covered. As well as a conclusion that compares this book with others of the same ilk.

    Also, it's very interesting that OS X gets so much attention from the publishing industry. Coincidence? I think not.

  • And in related news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by dspeyer ( 531333 ) <dspeyer&wam,umd,edu> on Monday April 07, 2003 @12:54PM (#5679703) Homepage Journal
    O'Reilly's Definitive Guide to OSX is being delayed by hnical difficulties: the finished book keeps collapsing into a black hole.

    I mean, if a nutshell guide is over 700 pages...

  • That's nothing! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Animus Howard ( 643891 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @12:55PM (#5679705)
    Heck, there was a /. story a few weeks back about a server in a housefly. That's much smaller than a nutshell.

  • re: nutshell (Score:4, Informative)

    by bakedgoodz ( 664429 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @01:17PM (#5679831)
    I pre-ordered this book from amazon. I am a network admin and about half the machines I support are MacOSX. This book has provided me with alot of usful hints and tips that I now use on a regular basis. Although this book is NOT *must-read*, it did provide me with some good info and I would recommend it to anyone that uses OSX on a regular basis.
  • Is there any OS X book out there that is a must read for someone coming from a linux background?

    I was going to get OS X for unix geeks but everyone is saying it's lame. Any suggestions?
  • If the book is *only* 750 pages, I suggest we change the name from "Mac OS X in a Nutshell" to "Mac OS X in a Bombshell", since it will fit better there.
  • Mac OS X says: Help! I'm in a nutshell! How did I get into this nutshell?! Aaaa!

    Must be from the folks who brought us a webserver in a fly and a network switch in a teddy bear.

  • Jason McIntosh [jmac.org] has done many Cool Things (tm), including co-authoring Perl and XML [oreilly.com] and defining ComicsXML [slashdot.org]. He worked at O'Reilly for awhile in the now defunct Tools group, helping to build programs to convert author manuscripts into a formats amenable to the Production workflow. When not hacking code, jmac finds and plays obscure games [looneylabs.com] from impolitely named companies [cheapass.com]. Buy his book and encourage him to write a second edition about Panther.

  • Wow, OS X with its "lickable" interface and "Cocoa" center, put in a nutshell! This is the greatest advancement of the confectionary industry in years!

    What? What do you mean, "It's an operating system" ?

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