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Apple Books Media Businesses Book Reviews

Mac OS X Power Tools 132

Posted by timothy from the powah-like-ahnold dept.
emmastory writes "'Expert Dan Frakes toiled endlessly with OS X so you don't have to,' proclaims the back cover of Mac OS X Power Tools. Not to be confused with the O'Reilly power tool books, this is a recent Sybex title. Frakes assures the reader that anyone who's ever touched a computer before can make use of this book, and that even the most experienced user will find something new and exciting. Is he right? Maybe." Read on for the rest of emmastory's review.
Mac OS X Power Tools
author Dan Frakes
pages 607
publisher Sybex
rating 7/10
reviewer Emma Story
ISBN 0782141927
summary A solid OS X title that covers its bases.

Here's the thing about book reviews: They're a lot easier to write when you either absolutely hated or absolutely adored the book in question. Once you've decided how you feel about it, it's easy to find a dozen examples of its mediocrity or excellence, as the case may be. However, I've been sitting on this particular review for a few weeks now, unable to finish it because I can't say that I feel very strongly at all about Power Tools. I recently decided, however, that being unable to form a definite opinion of it one way or another is itself a kind of opinion. There's nothing glaringly wrong with it or missing from it, but when it comes down to whether I'd choose to buy it over a different Mac book, I can't say that I would. I realize that this isn't a work of fiction -- its goal isn't exactly to suck me in with thrilling plot twists so that I read the whole thing cover to cover in one sitting. Nevertheless, there are some other books out there that do exactly that (I'll get to them later), and I think I've been spoiled by reading them.

What I Liked
Power Tools covers its bases in a thorough, informative way. It's a solid OS X book, intended for anyone who understands the very basics involved in using a Mac. The author makes very clear early on that he's not intending to show you how to log in, or how to launch an application, but that's about the extent of the proficiency required, I think. Frakes seems to understand his audience and to address it consistently, which is rare enough to be refreshing. One of my pet peeves in technical writing concerns authors who can't decide who they're talking to -- sidebars for beginners and power users are great, but when the body of the text itself waffles back and forth between skill levels, it can be both frustrating and confusing. This is a trap that Power Tools sidesteps completely: At the beginning of each section, you'll find a couple of lines telling you whether an Admin account is required for the techniques described, and whether the changes being made are system-wide or will affect only your own account. Mac OS X Hacks (which is, incidentally and confusingly enough, the Mac equivalent of O'Reilly's classic Unix Power Tools) uses a similar system to introduce each of the hacks in the book, and it's a practice that I'd like to see used more widely.

Favorite sections: Although certainly not the meatiest bits of the book, I thought the quick-reference keyboard shortcut and third-party utility lists were great, and I've used them fairly frequency since Power Tools took up residency on the shelf over my desk. As far as the more substantial content is concerned, I'd have to say Frakes's coverage of Classic is probably one of my favorite chapters -- oddly enough, since I never use Classic myself. That's part of the reason I liked his section on it, though: it does a good job of explaining why you'll want to avoid Classic whenever you can, while also pointing out some ways to make the best of it if it can't be avoided. The list of startup files necessary to use Classic is a good reference for folks who'd like to clean out their old System Folders without crippling anything. And of course Frakes's experience managing and troubleshooting OS 9 comes in useful here -- he points out classics like Conflict Catcher that users shouldn't be without if Classic is used with any degree of regularity.

Chapter 14, covering maintainence and administration of a Mac running OS X, is also full of sound, reasonable advice. Disk care and repair as well as how to recover lost data and prevent such mishaps to begin with are all covered thoroughly and intelligently in this section, as well the whys and wherefores of backups. Nothing surprising, perhaps, but nothing that should be left out of a decent Mac book, either.

What I Didn't Like
Although this is purely a matter of taste and I'm aware that there are many people who disagree with me, I just don't like Frakes's writing style. I have enjoyed some of his columns in the past, but it seems like his humor falls more than a little flat when stretched out over the course of a book. The alliterative titles were amusing for the first one or two chapters, but "Apple-ication Aptitude" is pushing it just a bit, I think. Although I realize that the first priority of a technical book is not to entertain its readers, exactly, is it too much to ask that it enthuse us? I was already interested in OS X before reading Power Tools, but I didn't find anything to excite me -- how would a new Mac user fare?

My least favorite chapter was probably Chapter 6, "Developing a Dynamite Dock." Despite Frakes's promise to assume that the reader is familiar with the basics, there's still the inevitable trot through the relevant Preference panel. Some good third-party software like Tinker Tool is discussed, but there wasn't anything that surprised me in this chapter.

The Bottom Line
This is a perfectly adequate OS X book, and you wouldn't be wasting your money by buying it. Indeed, if you're already a fan of the author, you should probably do exactly that. For me, though, while it does a decent job of accomplishing the tasks it sets for itself, the book just never quite cuts it for me. The bottom line is really that if I had enough money to buy only a single Mac book, this wouldn't be it. I'd spend my forty dollars (or so) instead on either Mac OS X Unleashed or Mac OS X: The Missing Manual. Frakes actually recommends the latter as an alternative for absolute beginners who would be lost in his own book, but don't make the mistake of thinking it's just for novices. It really is a complete OS X manual, covering topics for users at every skill level. As for Unleashed, I've reviewed this book already (more recently than I have the Missing Manual) so I'll just say that if you want a Mac book so complete that it will introduce you to web programming so you can use that default Apache installation, then that's a book you should consider. While I would prefer either one of these books to Power Tools if I were only able to buy one, it's also true that I'm not sorry to have added it to my collection (since, like most people, I'm not limited to one book per subject).

And Furthermore
Dan Frakes is a generally beloved Mac writer and developer and, my ambivalence about this book aside, his stuff is worth looking into. He contributes to the "Mac OS X Secrets" column in Macworld and is also involved in the 9th edition of the Mac Bible. His personal site is danfrakes.com, and the site for this book is at macosxpowertools.com.

You can purchase Mac OS X Power Tools 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 Power Tools More

Mac OS X Power Tools

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  • os x books (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KReilly ( 660988 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @01:05PM (#6666987)
    I have read several os x books and find that all have had little patch ideas or a vauge introduction. This disapoints me as someone who wants to get to the meat of the OS. Personally, I think this is a big hinderance of why people have not switched to powerbooks from their *nix workstation. If you want to learn about the OS, buy a freeBSD book and understand that there are a few differences

    • Re:os x books (Score:2, Insightful)

      by lordDallan ( 685707 )
      My two cents...

      The thing that is missing from BSD books (and every OS X book I've seen) is better information on managing OS X server, especially NetInfo. Apple has some OK docs, but they tend to be a little vague and absent of clear examples.

      I would buy (even a pretty expensive, like $99) book on managing OS X server if it handled OS X Server's management tools, how they affected the environment, why they do things the way they do. And good examples of setting up various Mac OS X networks, with lots

    • Re:os x books (Score:5, Informative)

      by __aavhli5779 ( 690619 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @02:05PM (#6667533) Journal
      There's actually a book that's right up your alley and it's evidently a popular one as every time I've gone to the Apple store downtown to attempt buy it, they've been sold out.

      Mac OS X for Unix Geeks [oreilly.de] really digs into the BSD core of OS X and covers such interesting topics as rebuilding the XNU kernel and a little bit about hacking Netinfo (although I wish there were more).

  • What is your fav OS X tool? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ACK!! ( 10229 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @01:09PM (#6667020) Journal
    It might be worth the price for the keyboard shortcuts stuff alone. It seems like every other OSX search gives me another shortcut or so to add to my respository of marginally useful knowledge.

    It sounds like something that is worth checking out at the local bookstore anyway.

    How many here us OSX everyday?

    What are the things that you like about OSX?

    Most of all pertinent to the above review what is your favorite OS X tool?

    • I like that you can replace the Dock with DragThing.
    • I use OS X every day. Every night, too.

      The list of things I like about OS X would be far too long to post here.

      My favorite OS X tool? Tough one. I love Terminal, of course, but I'd have to say the coolest thing around for OS X is LaunchBar [obdev.at]. Every app, url, email address, and file on your system available with a few keystrokes.

    • Re:What is your fav OS X tool? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Fletch ( 6903 ) * <fletchNO@SPAMpobox.com> on Monday August 11, 2003 @01:19PM (#6667111) Homepage
      It might be worth the price for the keyboard shortcuts stuff alone.
      Save your money. Reference Magical Macintosh Key Sequences [davespicks.com] (or Apple's keyboard shortcuts knowledge base article [apple.com]) instead.
    • The scripting abilities of OSX combined with access to applications make this a great tool.

      I have macOSX a 200 gig drive for my scans. I wrote a perl scipt using imagemagick (gotten with fink) goes through my original scan directory tree and converts all my tiffs to jpegs on another drive. (basicially and incrimental perl backup)

      Then I wrote a little apple script to launch the image convertion perl script. So whenever I need to back up I double click on the application and automagic backup!
    • I use OS X everyday, for example.

      What I like? Photoshop and (no flaming please) Microsoft Office running side-by-side with vim and gcc. Also, I am a long-time Mac User.

      I think I have no real favorite OS X tool (as in geektool), as all my favorite tools are just as available on Linux or BSD. Which is something I really like.

      Just my 0.02

      Alex

    • Interesting question, and one that occured to me while taking notes for the review. My favorite third-party utility would have to be Key Xing [lumacode.com] - it's shareware, not freeware, but it allows you to set your own keyboard shortcuts for obvious things (like applications) and less obvious things (like copying full file paths from the Finder). Perhaps the only drawback is that I'm now so used to my own commands that I find myself using them on other people's Macs.

      A close second would be CodeTek Virtual Desktop [codetek.com], w

    • Re:What is your fav OS X tool? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mikey-San ( 582838 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @02:11PM (#6667584) Homepage Journal
      I use OS X every day, and it's amazing.

      Ten favourite things:

      1. Without anything needing configuration or installation, I can save to PDF any window I can print normally.

      2. Awesome GUI, mainstream apps like Photoshop and Office, and tcsh and bash when I need them.

      3. iTunes. (All of the iApps, really. I won't separate them here for the sake of padding. :))

      4. A great X11 setup from Apple. Easy to install, and piped through OGL. (For the most part, anyway.)

      5. Lots of great command-line tools installed by default. cURL, lots of text editors, screen, as well as command-line Apple utilities like hdiutil. (I know lots of stuff comes with Linux distros, but it's nice to see that Apple followed suit.)

      5. Everything in /Applications/Utilities. (Network Utility, a GUI front-end for a ton of CLI-based tools like traceroute, nslookup, and whois; Key Caps, the most awesome-est way to see what key does what when you hold which modifier; and Apple System Profiler, for seeing what's what in your rig when you need to, easily and all at once.)

      6. AWESOME foriegn character output and input support. Unfrickingbelieve how nice it is.

      7. Stickies. Can't live without 'em these days.

      8. Calculator. Big frickin' whoop, most say, but it's nice to have sci functions, a paper tape record, measurement conversions, and updatable currency conversions in one /simple/ app without installing anything extra.

      9. UI consistency. Apple's made it really easy to respect important aspects of the UI conventions they've come up with, and it shows. Camino, Transmit, OmniGraffle--these apps could have HORRIBLE interfaces, not feeling like any part of the OS itself, but they avoid screwing up entirely. Good developers, good Apple for giving them:

      10. Awesome development tools. Project Builder and Interface Builder are insanely cool, the latter being the nicest way of creating UIs I've ever seen.

      This is just OEM stuff, too, all part of the OS (save the apps I cited as examples). It's scratching the surface, really, because the more you use it, the more stuff you find.

      Some of you are gonna reply and say that this OS or this distro does x feature, too, and to that I say, "Yeah, but OS X does it all, sans configuration, out of the box, without fail, and I only cited ten things like that. Linux rocks hard, but I'll happily pay Apple once every year or eighteen months for this kind of quality."

      So please don't hit me with -1s, mods. Just answering a question ;)
      • 1. Nice. Although I have managed to have it in Linux in Sawfish with XSLT/PDF filters.

        2. No comments about Photoshop (I am a GIMP user), but as for Office I have serious usability-based reasons (apart of price ones) to prefer OpenOffice Office to Microsoft one on any platform I work. And OpenOffice Office is very bad in OSX (Linux and win32 versions work fine).

        3. iTunes has very poor configurability comparing to xmms.

        4. X11 in OSX is harder to install than even in Cygwin and it works worse than in Cyg

        • > 3. iTunes has very poor configurability comparing to xmms.

          how can you compare great configurability of a small, slim, trim, really sweet and fast mp3 PLAYER to an entire music DATABASE frontend? when you don't have to bother configuring things like the sound server you don't need an intricate configuration system.

          xmms doesn't let you rate songs, it doesn't keep track of the last time you played them, keep track of when they were added, sort by (genre|play time|artist|album|bitrate|filesize|etc.
        • > X11 in OSX is harder to install than even in Cygwin and it works worse than in Cygwin.

          You're on crack. I've install X11 in both OSX and Cygwin. The OSX install is basically download the package, double click on it, done. (admittedly the Cygwin install is also fairly easy).

          More importantly rootless X in Cygwin is still experimental. rootless X in OSX is quite stable and seamless.
          • I don't think that rootlessness is any important. Many users I know (including myself) prefer to have the root with X11 related menu.

            As for X11 installation on OSX - yes, download and click. But will it run as expected after that? Having just xterm is not enough. I need a choice of windows and desktop managers.

            • i think the idea that quality is based on localized need vs. world wide acceptance is ultimately ignorant. root free X is definitely important, whether or not you choose to acknoledge it.
            • Oh and another thing - I could be wrong, but as far as I knew, most desktop managers are 3rd party. KDE, Gnome, etc etc are all seperate from the OS... AND the Xwindows package... Now I can understand the desire for alternatives and options - but to demote an X distro based on unrequired options not made effortlessly available to you... how shallow. I'm gonna go return my car because it didn't have a DVD player installed when I got it, it just supports one.
      • wait until you use expose!it is easily the most useful new UI feature.
    • "How many here us OSX everyday?" /me raises hand

      "What are the things that you like about OSX?"

      Unix command line tools, security, and file-system layout, plus, USEFUL software. I have 10+ years of legacy mac software that I can't run on Linux (or Windows), but I CAN run on OS X.
      There's a lot of other things to like, and definately some things to NOT like. But those are what I like best.

      "Most of all pertinent to the above review what is your favorite OS X tool?"

      The Preferences Panel. Configuring an OS
    • Apple document outlining some great OSX key shortcuts:
      http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=754 59 [apple.com]
      This info was on MacOSXHints.com [macosxhints.com] today.
    • Although it's a third-party item, Launchbar [obdev.at] has to be one of the most innovative, helpful pieces of software that I've purchased in a long, long time. It uses the inherent benefits of OS X, and adds to them.

      Here's the writeup from this year's innovators contest [macdevcenter.com]:

      • LaunchBar for Mac OS X uses a powerful, fault-tolerant abbreviation search algorithm and a sophisticated rating system to deliver fast, accurate search results from abbreviations typed on the fly. Intuitive and adaptive, LaunchBar allows a user t

  • Black, white, and 10,000 shades of grey (Score:4, Funny)

    by mopslik ( 688435 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @01:15PM (#6667072)

    ...being unable to form a definite opinion of it one way or another...

    True to Slashdot form!

  • Humor in instruction material (Score:5, Funny)

    by jcsehak ( 559709 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @01:18PM (#6667099) Homepage
    This may be borderline off-topic, but I wanted to elaborate on the poster mention of stupid puns in the book.

    What's up with that? Why do people not think these lame jokes make them look like morons? I was watching a car show yesterday, and they ended with a bit on exhaust systems: "If you haven't exhausted your possibilites yet, you can pick up the acme muffler - it's a gas." Except it went on longer and was stupider. There were at least two more stupid puns, including "exhaust" being used again. With half the time being an advertisement of select aftermarket parts and the other half devoted to making me groan, I learned what a supercharger was, how it differed from Nos, and that's about it. In half an hour.

    Make jokes, that's fine. If you want to say "how can the iPod be so skinny, yet sound so fat?" that's great, I'll chuckle. But "Apple-ication?" Don't be a dumbass.
    • To some extent, editors encourage this. The author may not feel like being funny, but the editor says "be funny," so that's what you get. So much of the humor geeks that like is exclusionary -- suits don't get it, editors don't get it, publishers don't get it -- so (and I'm serious here) the author is forced into the "lowest common denominator" of humor: the pun, something which everybody gets, even if nobody likes.
    • Perhaps they all watched too many episodes of Tales from the Crypt and Bond flicks.
    • I think many would agree with me that "Learning Perl" has a consistent and tasteful, slightly humorous tone through the whole book. Very effective.
    • I'm guessing you were watching HorsepowerTV, since they always feel the need to make puns, and then followed that up with Trucks, which is sometimes really good, and sometimes is just an infomercial, hawking all sorts of annoying shit, like custom gibson guitars.

  • What's the verdict again...? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 11, 2003 @01:31PM (#6667234)
    Frakes assures the reader that anyone who's ever touched a computer before can make use of this book, and that even the most experienced user will find something new and exciting. Is he right? Maybe.

    Way to take a stand there. Quick, what are your thoughts on fast food? Are you a BK guy or a Wendy's guy?

    "Maybe."

  • From the book's author ;-) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DanFrakes ( 685413 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @04:46PM (#6669137) Homepage
    I'm the author of "Mac OS X Power Tools" and a regular /. reader, so I was of course fairly interested in this story/review, which it turns out is a repost of an Amazon.com review. Although it's not glowing, I'm at least happy that it's the worst one the book has received ;-)

    I have a couple comments about the review, and a couple comments in response to posts in this discussion.

    First, a comment about the review's recommendation that really has little to do with my book, and more to do with recommending books in general. Writing style is a very personal thing, and unless you're David Pogue, it's impossible to write a book everyone will love ;-) So I have no problem with the reviewer preferring a different "style." However, I do disagree somewhat with the overall recommendation made in the review ("Get The Missing Manual or Mac OS X Unleashed instead"), and not because I wrote one of the books in question.

    When recommending a book, the most important things to know are the reader's level of expertise and the reader's goals in reading the book. The three books mentioned here are aimed at very different levels:

    • The Missing Manual: beginning to intermediate, with an emphasis on learning to use OS X.
    • Mac OS X Power Tools: "advanced beginner" to advanced, with an emphasis on understanding OS X and becoming a power user.
    • Mac OS X Unleashed: intermediate to advanced, with an emphasis on technical topics and reference.

    There is undoubtedly a bit of overlap in these three books, but for the most part they are written for different audiences. In other words, it's difficult to simply say "get Book A over Book B" without knowing more about the reader. All three books are, in my humble opinion, great books -- I wrote one and own the other two -- and I recommend them frequently. However, I've rarely recommended one over the other two, simply because they aren't comparable substitutes, IMO.

    I guess what I'm saying is to make sure you're buying, or recommending, the right book for the reader. I'd rather see you buy someone else's book than buy mine if it's not appropriate for you.

    A few quick comments on messages in this thread:

    jcsehak wrote:

    • I wanted to elaborate on the poster mention of stupid puns in the book... Make jokes, that's fine. If you want to say "how can the iPod be so skinny, yet sound so fat?" that's great, I'll chuckle. But "Apple-ication?" Don't be a dumbass.

    Sorry you didn't like that joke ;-) Using alliteration in chapter titles is a bit of fun when you're writing 600+ pages on an operating system, and, from a pedagogical standpoint, a useful approach. However, it can admittedly get a bit cheezy after a while, and I was actually trying to make fun of that fact with the chapter title in question. The original title was "Application Aptitude" -- which probably wouldn't have generated any comments -- but as a joke I changed it to "Apple-ication," basically parodying the approach. OK, it was a very bad pun, I admit it. Maybe my brain was a bit fried after writing 600+ pages, but I thought it was funny at the time. Maybe it wasn't so funny after all -- you're not the first person to criticize it ;-)

    mr_luc wrote:

    • I think that using an analogy to "Power Tools" -- and doing so in the context of a book about a Mac -- is kind of stupid. I mean, "Power Tools" does not go with the image that I have of Macs as these clean-running, quiet, beautifully usable machines. The image I have of my power tools is one of grease, dirt, and bugs that need to be patched.

    The book belongs to a series of books from the same publisher called "Power Tools" that includes books on Unix, Linux, Windows, etc.; I didn't have much say in the title. In some ways I agree with you that it doesn't properly indicate what the book is about. On the other hand, as I mention in the book's introduction, hard

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