Running Mac OS X Panther 175
Running Mac OS X Panther | |
author | James Duncan Davidson |
pages | 292 |
publisher | O'Reilly and Associates |
rating | 8/10 - Excellent book, a little thin on details in a few places |
reviewer | Tony Williams |
ISBN | 0596005008 |
summary | A good shop manual for those running 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
Cortina == Gag! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Cortina == Gag! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Cortina == Gag! (Score:2)
Hey, that sounds like a handy feature for checking for black ice & whatnot. Also for checking on altitude without relying on the instruments. VFR rulez!
Re:Cortina == Gag! (Score:1)
Then again, if people were trained to drive like pilots are trained to fly, maybe I wouldn't get rear-ended so much.
Re:Cortina == Gag! (Score:2)
Re:Cortina == Gag! (Score:2)
Re:Cortina == Gag! (Score:2)
Re:Cortina == Gag! (Score:1)
But for many rock fans (of a certain age and/or taste) the Cortina was imortallized by Ian Dury:
"Had a love affair with Lena/In the back of my Cortina."
- Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick!
For the curious... (Score:5, Informative)
Exposé blob [macosxhints.com]
How to Bleed Brakes [stoptech.com]
Re:For the curious... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:For the curious... (Score:2)
Re:For the curious... (Score:2)
But a DVD, even easier is to change your desktop background to the same color Apple DVD Player is color-keyed to replace, with the player in
Re:For the curious... (Score:1)
Prophylactic comment. (Score:5, Funny)
You can buy a multi-button mouse that will work with OSX.
But you have to leave your parents' basement to do it.
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:2)
When I started buying those mice and giving them to the Mac users in my office they thought I was a miracle worker.
Wow! Two buttons! And a scroll wheel! You're a genius!
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:5, Funny)
-- MacFreak
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:2)
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:3, Informative)
Apple also sells a wireless version (bluetooth).
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but how do you replace the built-in single-button pointing device on an iBook or Power book with a built-in multi-button pointing device?
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:2)
Urg! I don't think so!
I kill off even the basic tap-to-click...
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, while three mouse buttons do not confuse me, five choices of non-standard function keys combined with a single mouse button definitely do. Talk about counterintuitive.
Control-click may do the same thing as a right click, but it is not a right click.
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:2)
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:2, Insightful)
What's your point? That there are obscure key/mouse combos that some small number of people use? What does that prove?
And how does an already unintuitive feature get better by adding another two modifier keys (Fn and Command) to the already confusing set of set of modifier keys (Control, Shift, Alt, AltGr)? Even Windows UI designers
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:2)
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:2)
Yeah, nobody but a Mac fanatic would ever select two files that are not directly located next to each other, nor would he want to open several links in the background. Not if he has to remove his hand from his dick to do it.
The Mac has Fn, Control, Shift, Command, and Alt, and they all are commonly used as mouse modifiers; furthermore, their mappings to mouse buttons and their fun
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:2)
The pointing device on my ibook has 105 buttons. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't do it with two hands, even if you want to.
The MacOS solution is vastly preferable, for laptops only. Click-hold brings up a context menu. If you don't like the delay, ctrl-click. There is no way you can convince me that that is more inconvenient than a two-button trackpad. If you try, I'll suspect that you're lying.
The second I hit a desk, of course, I plug in my Microsoft Intellimouse Optical. My thumb and pinky drive the cursor, while every suitable finger has a button conveniently placed. Totally different excercise than a trackpad.
Re:The pointing device on my ibook has 105 buttons (Score:2)
Having said that, I found the lack of a second button on the powerbook very frustrating, for about 2 hours until I mastered the art of ctrl-click. There's that darn opposable thumb again.
Re:The pointing device on my ibook has 105 buttons (Score:2)
How so? Have you tried using your left-hand thumb or index to click and your right index finger to drag? If there's any fault with the touchpad in normal notebooks, it's that often the middle button is missing. After I got used to Konqueror's opening links in a separate window when mid-clicked, I don't want to use any other method for clicking on links. The simultaneous clicking on both buttons to s
Re:The pointing device on my ibook has 105 buttons (Score:3, Informative)
That is a big annoyance for me. I feel that at that point, the control button is a whole lot easier to reach. When I use a PC trackpad for an extended period of time, I find that my right thumb hurts from reaching underneath my hand and poking sideways.
Re:The pointing device on my ibook has 105 buttons (Score:2)
And it could continue to do that if Apple put three buttons on their laptops. If you don't want to use the three buttons, you can continue to use just the left button with key combinations.
But in real life, just about everybody plugs a three button mouse into their desktop Mac because it is simply more intuitive and usable that way: a button for pointing, a dedicated button for context menus, and a dedicated b
Re:The pointing device on my ibook has 105 buttons (Score:2)
Which "PC laptop pointing devices" are you talking about? Most PC laptops these days have the same trackpads that Apple popularized. The only other choice that is still commonly available is the nipples, and people either seem to love those or hate those.
My favorite laptop pointing device, a built in trackball, just doesn't get made anymore.
In any c
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:3, Funny)
Not necessarily. You could also order one over the Intarweb[tm].
Re:Prophylactic comment. (Score:2)
I have the bluetooth intellimouse explorer... (Score:3, Interesting)
So what you're saying is... (Score:5, Funny)
What a lot of work, I'll just stick with Windows.
Re:So what you're saying is... (Score:5, Funny)
...in which case you have to periodically just rebuild the whole damn car
Re:So what you're saying is... (Score:2)
Re:So what you're saying is... (Score:1)
Re:So what you're saying is... (Score:2)
Re:So what you're saying is... (Score:2)
I've never had to rebuild the Windows kernel for a new release.
Okay, you don't ahve to rebuild the engine, just take it out of the car, turn it all the way around, and put it back in.
Re:So what you're saying is... (Score:5, Funny)
And don't be bothered if someone else takes it out for a spin one day
Re:So what you're saying is... (Score:2)
Like those T-shirts with the slogan "your Windows PC is my other computer"...
Re:So what you're saying is... (Score:1)
Have you noticed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Have you noticed... (Score:5, Funny)
It's "*nix", Windows boy.
Re:Have you noticed... (Score:1)
...and you're obviously an aforementioned Mac user.
Re:Have you noticed... (Score:5, Informative)
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").
Re:Have you noticed... (Score:3, Insightful)
And how does working on Java (whether at Sun or elsewhere) make him a UNIX expert?
Re:Have you noticed... (Score:2)
And how does working on Java (whether at Sun or elsewhere) make him a UNIX expert?
I don't know. Who said he was a UNIX expert?
Nope.... (Score:2)
Nope. If he was referring to Davidson, he wouldn't have been talking out his ass like that.
Re:Have you noticed... (Score:5, Interesting)
Umm, no. The "average" Mac user only wants to use his/her computer efficiently. These people don't consider "knowing" the computer as more important than actually using it for work.
The only people who are big UNIX geeks running Mac OS X came from other *NIXes like Linux or BSD. These people have a right to assert they know UNIX because in most cases they do. In turn, anyone who can figure out UNIX can figure out the Mac overlay in no time at all. (hint: it's simple for a reason)
I suspect you were trolling, and I bit.
Re:Have you noticed... (Score:1)
Do you really think that I won't be able to figure it out?
Re:Have you noticed... (Score:1)
*nix doesn't translate well... (Score:1)
How do you guys pronounce "*nix"? "Nicks"? "Star-Nicks"?
Uh-uh!!! (Score:2)
See? We Mac users are just as advanced as you nixie people...
Why people say *nix... (Score:2)
Re:Have you noticed... (Score:1)
Re:Have you noticed... (Score:2)
That's a long time, considering this was advertised for months before OSX came out....
Re:Have you noticed... (Score:1)
Re:Have you noticed... (Score:2)
Re:Have you noticed... (Score:1)
To be fair (Score:2)
Panther Maintenence (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Panther Maintenence (Score:2, Funny)
Mom: "My computer is running slow!"
Me: "Did you regenerate your prelink binding like I told you to?"
Re:Panther Maintenence (Score:2, Insightful)
And there I was all this time worrying about things I do when I am root.
Re:Panther Maintenence (Score:2)
Has to be said: (Score:5, Funny)
Plug it in. Turn it on. Bam, OSX mopping that ass up with easy-to-use goodness. Go ahead mod me down, you'll change your mind once you use OSX.
Windows Switcher (Score:5, Insightful)
A buddy of mine is a Windows Admin. HE eats, sleeps and breathes Windows. He even got on me for my BSD servers over Windows ones. Then someone talked him into a Mac. Within 24 hours he was a complete convert. He actually said and I quote "What the hell was I thinking!?!?!?!?!"
Re:Windows Switcher (Score:2, Interesting)
i really didn't know what to say because i never did realize that i was praising the OS.. it just comes as a suprise to me now, since i use OSX as my #1 OS, that windows users can accept applicaiton lockups/freezes, viruses, security holes on a regular basis and go
Re:Has to be said: (Score:4, Insightful)
I am waiting for the Mac OS X server administration book. The PDFs at the apple web site are lame and only walk you through the GUI.
As long as I am griping... When is Apple going to get off their ass create a ports collection for apple. For those who are wondering here is the current state of the art for mac flavor of bsd.
Darwinports: Does not resolve dependencies. Very limited.
Fink: Does resolve dependencies and less limited but still fewer ports then freebsd.
Pkgsrc: Lots of ports, resolves depencies but you are likely to get lots of errors when building them on mac.
Re:Has to be said: (Score:4, Informative)
WHAT?? this is coming straight from the mouth of a darwinports contributor. it supports dependencies, including specific versions, build dependencies, run dependencies, and even config-level dependencies. darwinports is also much more pure to the bsd roots than fink. fink puts things in
darwinports also has superior gtk-app support, including gtk2 versions of most apps (abiword, gnumeric, gimp, pan, and more) long before fink did. some fink still doesn't have.
in spite of all this, darwinports was *almost* included in panther, but for some reason was pulled last minute. i do hope that 10.4 ships with darwinports, as it is the official opendarwin-supported project, and with mac os x being based off darwin and all i would imagine they'd pick the official one.
Re:Has to be said: (Score:2)
As for the hierarchy I am less concerned about that. Pkgsrc (netbsd) puts everything in the
Sad to say Mac OS X is a weird mishmash of stuff. Some logs are in
Re:Has to be said: (Score:2)
Panther Server is sweet, but I certainly agree that Apple seriously needs to get on the stick and produce some decent documentation, not to mention training materials for their certification tests. Punch in pretty much any Microsoft exam number in the search field at Amazon and it takes a day to go through all the results. Try that with an Apple exam... nothing.
There are so
Re:Has to be said: (Score:2)
Re:Has to be said: (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Has to be said: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Has to be said: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Has to be said: (Score:1)
Neither harder nor easier. (Score:2)
Re:Neither harder nor easier. (Score:4, Insightful)
After a while you get used to fixing minor problems by reinstalling the operating system. It seems normal. Then you come onto slashdot and say stuff like "I find Mac OS X, Windows 2000, and the various UNIXes about as easy to use as each other" and tag people who disagree as anti-Microsoft bigots.
But... really, you shouldn't need to do that. Honest.
Re:Neither harder nor easier. (Score:2)
Then you go to change a tail light, and find that you need to jack the car up, put stands under it, remove the boot lining, remove th
Re:Neither harder nor easier. (Score:2)
The thing about Windows isn't that it doesn't have situations where you have to depressurise the hydraulics to get to the tail light, but that it's got situations where you have to remove the gas tank with a welding torch to get to the oil filter, and this only works in certain models and option packages anyway so the user manual says "the hell with it, if you need to change the oil just throw the car away and get a new one".
Really. I'm not even exaggerati
Re:Neither harder nor easier. (Score:2)
Seriously - people say "Oooooooh, who do you sue if Linux breaks down and kills your business?" Well, no-one. Just the same as, Microsoft won't take responsibility if Windows fucks up and kills your business.
I'd rather use a system that might not work, and tells you it might not work, and gives you the email address of the guy that wrote it, rather than a system that might not work, and might never
Re:Has to be said: (Score:2)
And yes, it's easier to use. Took a bit of getting used to and the installation of LaunchBar [obdev.at], but I'd say it's the easiest to use machine I've ever had.
Re:Has to be said: (Score:2)
I hope whoever moderated you down as a "Troll" gets his karma cut for it. That's actually a reasonable question, and deserves a reasonable answer.
The answer is, well, it's not always easier to use. Nobody's perfect, and there's shortcomings to everything... and even Microsoft gets things right once in a while.
But in general, well, Mac OS X just works. It's unmysterious. There's very few dark corners w
Wait for the OS X in a nutshell (Score:4, Informative)
The Jaguar edition has been out for a while, but I'm waiting for the Panther edition.
Great Slogan! (Score:2, Funny)
"Drives Like Fun! Saves Like Crazy!"
Maybe Panther can adopt this as theirs - although maybe just overseas... [engrish.com]
Re:Why dogs? (Score:1, Informative)
Thank you AC! (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:LOL (Score:2)
In fact the review box on my reviews has always given my name as Tony Williams. Good Slashdot trolls never let the truth get in the way of a good brainfart.
Tony
Re:LOL (Score:3, Funny)
I was wondering if you could come up with another topic - you're posts are getting WAY too repetitous. Perhaps start in on my politics instead of sexuality. You could accuse me of being a Nazi, a Communist or even (topically) a Muslim terrorist.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Tony