Macintosh Systems Books

The book is a little on the expensive side, but it's well worth it. Of all the OS X books I've picked up over the years this was the most straightforward and clear. I would consider it an introductory to intermediate book for those who are just learning how to navigate their Mac via the terminal. The author's explanations of what a bash profile is and how to create cron jobs are the first such explanations of these topics that have ever made sense to me. I had encountered tutorials online that have attempted to do the same thing, but they were never as direct and thorough as the advice in this book. It was great fun to learn the topics and put my education to use on my own Macs. My only complaints were a couple of editing errors that would be obvious enough if one is paying attention. Other than that, this is a fantastic book; worthy of your money.

This book is not for geeks. If you are already someone who understands Mac OS X inside and out, uses the terminal to accomplish things periodically, and know how to get things done you will find this book to have no new information.

As I paged through my newly purchased copy I was quite disappointed at the lack of anything that was new to me. As such, this book will be passed on to one of my more advanced users who will enjoy learning more. For someone technically minded who wishes they knew how to do more with OSX, this is a pretty good book.

This book is well written and helpful, but geeks like me are not its audience. If you want a book that digs a lot deeper and covers a lot more subjects, pick up Mac OS X Unleashed (I bought mine from amazon, I know they carry it).

Joel

This book is supposed to fall in some middle ground between a Mac OSX manual (Like Pogue's Missing Manual on OSX) and the hard core extreme Mac-OSX-as-another-Unix-system (as typified in Mac OSX Unleashed or the OSX Nutshell handbook or the under-rated Unx for Mac OSX by Enzer). However, I think it just ends up neither fish nor fowl. Not really a Mac OSX manual because it is much too short for that, and not nearly as detailed as other books that get into much more depth on the Unix aspects of OSX. I would suggest getting the OSX Missing Manual (or Robin Williams OSX book) and then supplementing that with Enzer's book or Mac OSX unleashed.

Many years ago I bought a second hand Ford Cortina in dubious condition. I kept it running with the assistance of a marvelous volume purchased at a specialist bookstore that was referred to as "the shop manual." It wasn't much help teaching you how to drive or how to park but if you needed to know how to perform an oil change, flush the radiator or bleed the brakes it told you all the details. Now James Duncan Davidson has given me a shop manual for Macintosh OS X 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.

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.

This is a work for those who don't mind getting into the Terminal and into the internals of their Apple. The book has an interesting mix of coverage of the GUI and then the corresponding Unix layer. This dual coverage brings the topics covered home quite nicely. Some of the topics covered are; the Terminal, process control, file access, startup handling, printing and networking.

I consider this the most accessible of the recent crop of O'Reilly OS X books on Panther. If you are a reasonably skilled end-user or engineering looking to get under the covers of your Apple this is probably your best bet.

It is showing very good ABAP programming technique. It it mostly covering BDC programming and drill-down reporting (which I think is very cool).

This is book is well written and the information is every useful. I like to the way the book was laid out. It is very logical and the examples are very good. The Do's and Don't's are very helpful for ABAP developers...

If you are writting ABAP code, you need this book. The author provides stright forward examples and insights. This one never gets too far from the keyboard.

This is one of the best books on ABAP. Although it does not cover all the topics, it really helps you with BDC, Dataset and it shows you some good programming practices. This should not be your first book, cause it is not for beginners. Really worth it. I wish it covered more topics.

This is a well written book and makes easy reading, BUT it does not cover topics such as dialog programs, table controls, transactions, etc. I found this shortcoming to be a major disappointment.

I've used iWork since the first version but I don't do presentations that often so I never delved into some of the really unique features.
I've used some "training series" books that seemed to be too basic, taking too long to get past introductory things that any person buying the book should already know.
While this book does "hand-hold" the absolute beginner, it also gets right into creating presentations and introducing handy shortcuts.
I've only worked through the first chapter but have already learned things I wished I had know in doing some recent presentations.
Well worth the money!

I needed to create a presentation for my Senior Seminar at college, and I wanted to take advantage of Keynote's superior media integration abilities, and not be yet another drone with bullet-pointed, standardized PowerPoint slides.

Don't let the thinness of this book deceive you; it contains everything you need to create a media-rich presentation. It covers seamless media importing from iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, GarageBand, and even covers the basic functionality of the rest of the iLife and iWork products. Aren't comfortable only having one copy of your presentation? This book explains how to easily burn your presentation to a DVD-player-readable disc in case of an unforeseen projector problem. Any of your corporate buddies stuck with Windows? You'll learn how to export your Keynote presentation to a PowerPoint-ready .PPT file (although you will lose some of the cinema-quality transitions and build effects).

In short, I was very satisfied with what I learned, and thanks to the book can now whip up a Keynote presentation in a couple of minutes that outshines and outclasses others. I didn't have a use for the Pages section, so I cannot attest to that portion of the book, but as far as Keynote goes, this is an excellent manual.

This is a very good but not great book. I am new to this program and that may be a good part of my problem. I am sure that someone who has used the earlier version of this program would have a diferent opinion. As I continue to come back to the book I am certain I will continue to have fewer problems.

The book which is a tutorial, is comprehensive, with a lot of chatter inbetween actual instruction. The book is perhaps too informative, and would be better served if the actual tutorial key strokes were colored or emphasized to stand out clearly from the between line chatter. All in all in all if you use the book chapter by chapter, and read the chapter first you will benefit from the book. There is a lot of tutorial on iphoto. Thus knowledge of i photo prior to using this tutorial will be beneficial.

Excellent book which guides you step by step trough all the gizmos and secrets of Keynote and Pages. It is easily and nicely written. I often use it as a reference when I forget something. Highly recommended.

I've just started to read the book (1st &2nd chapters) and it seems to follow the directions from previous reviews that lead me to buy it: it seems indicated to someone who, like me, is new to the OSX environment and is willing to do some programming on it.

Been a great book for learning Mac programming so far. Very hands on with examples aplenty.

I have been unfortunate enough to pick this book up as a starting point for Mac programming. Very heavy on sample code that's either not explained at all for a few chapters or just glossed over after you're made to type, compile and run it. Explanations are in the line-by-line format with no explanation of the larger context of what you're actually doing.

The book jumps around between new and legacy frameworks and environments as if a beginner needs to be confronted with more choices.

Oh and 200 of the 620 odd pages of content is about scripting, which again is split into UNIX scripting, Python/Ruby and AppleScripting...

I almost gave up on getting to grips with Mac programming until i thankfully threw this book in the bin and started again with something that's better structured.

I am new to MacOSX development and this is just hands down a great book to get started with. it lays down a great foundation for getting started. If you have done development or hand not it is a great way to get the ball rolling. Can't wait for the next edition.

I am a total programming newbie. I'm also fairly new to the Apple world, having bought my first Macintosh in April. I've really been excited about Macs, OSX, and all the stuff they offer.

I mainly work in graphics programs such as Poser & DAZ|Studio. Over the years, I've created countless tutorials to help Graphics Newbies. I'm known for extensive use of screenshots, and good writing skills.

I've been disappointed because there are no Macintosh versions of some very important Poser-related utilities. I thought it would be nice to learn programming, and make my own utilities.

I browsed through the Amazon book collection, and this book seemed promising. Unfortunately I was wrong. Unfortunately, it appears no one proofread this book. I got as far as Chapter 3 before I gave up.

There are numerous problems with the Calculator project. The code you enter doesn't match the code listed later in the exercise. You're supposed to fix errors on code you never entered.

The book was a problem from the start. The XCode installation information was incorrect. This problem cost me a couple hours of downtime. I eventually found the solution myself...

In the book, we have some exercises that get you started, and then you're left hanging while the authors go on and on about related stuff. Should you save the project? Should you abandon it?

In my own opinion, this book doesn't have enough screenshots. I'm left wondering exactly what item to click, or what my code should look like, etc.

It's natural for a newbies to feel lost. It's the book author's responsibility to help the reader through this confusion and teach him something.

Unfortunately, the errors in the Calculator exercise are too great an obstacle to overcome.

The book will be placed on a shelf for now. Maybe one day I'll revisit it to see if the remaining chapters are better.

If I didn't have this book in my multimedia class, I would have failed horribly. You will be able to make great Director projects with this book. It's not over wordy. It's not full of techno jibba-jabba. I completed my class months ago, but I'm still reading the book. This time, I'm reading for fun. I recommend all the Visual Quickstart books, especially this one.

For those that have never picked up Director, this is a nice and clear way to step into it's powerful interface. This book introduces you to each of its panels- drawing, the timeline, properties and then briefs you on Lingo (Director's own scripting language). I'd give this book another star if it gave a little more information on Lingo.

A nice way to become acquainted with Director. If you want to get more in depth I'd recommend Director 7 Demystified.

It's exactly what the title says...a quickstart to using DIRECTOR 7. after all... that's all that could be quick, because in my opinion Director programs are work-intensive.

Being a beginner this book not only helped me but it increased the speed at which I would have learnt ... you may ask Why? Because it is such an easy to reference book and it is nice and easy to read. I have bought other books on director that look like thick manuals which take you days on end to get through but this one was quick and easy. I must agree with the other reviews that I have read, in that I wish there were more worked out examples (it is always a nice feature to work with the writer.) Summery If you are a beginner and want an easy to reference book then this is the book.

Well, I wouldn't recomend this book as anything but a primer. No real practical examples or inspiration. No real lingo help either.

This very nice looking book, very well done content. There's a few tips and tricks for experienced users.

But for the most part, this is a great book for a replacement manual. The included "manual" that comes with the iPod is pretty lacking, and this would be a great additional purchase for your first iPod.

If I were to buy my techno-phobe mom an iPod, I'd also buy this book to go along with it, and she'd be teaching me things in days.

Apple claims to have sold more than 6 million iPods to date and based on its trademark ease of use, 6 million is surely just the beginning. This cute, little book is a perfect companion to the phenomenon in that it presents a wealth of iPod information from downloading and ripping songs to managing playlists and much more all in the same funky Mac/iPoddy style that will appeal to users. Its tabby, buttonny page layouts are perfectly in sync with the design of the product it's describing. If you're buying somebody an iPod as a gift, this would be a perfect additional "throw-in" to introduce them to the "iPod lifestyle" as well.

A lot, with suggestions from this little book published by O'Reilly Media. Suggestions for third-party hardware, freeware and shareware programs to make the most of the iPod, and a lot more. At $14.95, this is the basic book for iPod users to have on their bookshelf.

I'm kind of on a mission to read all of the iPod books, seeing as how I'm enjoying the heck out of playing with my iPod. Just finished reading this one, and I have to say, I was very pleasantly surprised.

At first glance, I wasn't too optimistic. I mean, how could anything this small cover things that weren't covered in the other books and in more detail? Boy, was I surprised in the value I found here.

While I wouldn't recommend it as a start to finish manual for the iPod, it was a terrific addendum to whatever you might choose as your full manual. Full of great little tidbits of info and tips on how to do lots of very fun and useful iPod tricks. Plus, it sourced several software tools that the other books seem to have missed.

I would definitely recommend this book. Just don't expect it to be the ultimate manual on everything you can do with an iPod or with full and detailed instructions for everything. It does make some assumptions that you have at least some experience with an iPod. However, once you have gotten the basics, this book can definitely help you to expand your usage of the iPod.

The first impression you get of O'Reillys iPod Fan Book is of the packaging. A small volume (about the same height as the iPod and twice the width) it comes with a half-height wrap that has the title and author on the front and the bar code, price and a short contents on the back. Take this off and you have a full-size cover with all the simple elegance of the white iPod itself. The front features the wheel of a 4G iPod and the back has just the Apple logo and "iPod" in Apple's distinctive typeface below it. Remove this second cover and you have a book with a simple design of grey with a white border, the back is blank and the front has the title and the subtitle "Go everywhere with iPod" in small type.

This concentration on design flows through the rest of the book. It is visually stunning; at the same time, effort has been made to make the design useful. The pages are visually tabbed to make it easy to navigate the seven chapters. Each chapter is tabbed in a different color reflected through use of that color within the chapter. Full color pictures and screen dumps add to the legibility and usability of the book.

This book is also full of useful information for the newcomer to the iPod. A small amount is covered in the documentation you get with the iPod, but a great deal is not. Apart from a useful chapter on accessories, the book focuses on methods of getting the best from an iPod and how to organise your music.

To sum up this book: it is a little more style than substance and falls short of being the ideal book for all newcomers to the iPod (and even less for experienced users). On the other hand, the style makes the information that is provided readily accessible for all. I'd say this is the perfect companion to an iPod for a teen-age girl and if my 12-year-old daughter was getting the mini she has been hinting for, a copy of this would be included. (I expect that anyone who spent more than ten minutes deciding on the colour of their mini would probably love the elegance and style of this thin volume.) The low price makes it a great impulse buy or stocking stuffer.

I bought my first Mac one year ago and was completly new to the OS operating system. I didn't have time to waste and I wanted a book that would get me started RIGHT AWAY.

This was that book. Easy to understand, beautiful graphics and JUST THE BASICS. As the year went on, I bought some more in-depth books on OS (The Missing Manual, etc) and some application specific books (Final Cut, Adobe, etc) but I'll always remember this book as the one that got me started.

Great for kids, older people or just new Mac users who want to GET STARTED RIGHT AWAY. For those users, this book gets 5 stars.

Very informative and user friendly computer guide. Pictures are very helpful.

Excellent reference for new MAC or OSX users. Clearly illustrates all of the necessary operations to get familiar with the MAC. The pictures are clear and complete with no ambiguity.

I found this book very easy to follow. It is well worth the purchase. It should be included with every new apple computer purchase.

I bought this book for full price ($24.95) at a Waldenbooks store when I was pressed for time. Not a good idea; and in this case, an expensive mistake. I do agree with the gentleman from Winnemucca, NV, who said that the book has high quality graphics and looks very good. (That's why I bought it without doing any research -- or even looking through it very carefully!)

However, virtually all of the information in the book can be found faster and more completely documented by using the Mac Help menu on your Tiger equipped Mac. And the book doesn't even tell you how to install new software or make a copy of a CD or DVD.

In summary, this book might be helpful to a person who has never used a computer--any computer--before, but it is of no value at all to anyone else. If you feel you must have it despite what I've said, definitely buy it here rather than pay full retail for it as I did. At least that way you won't waste as much money.

I purchased this for my wife so that she could better understand her iPod and iTunes. My wife is happy with this product and therefore I am happy with this product.. Need I say more..??

Three hours of reading and I still feel helpless with my I-touch. I am a collage grad. I've read text books that are better written.

For an Ipod novice this book is great. The pictures of the different steps to accomplish a task makes this the book to get!

I bought this book recently as I wanted to learn even more about probably the greatest, most enduring gadget of this generation. Unfortunately, and I entirely blame myself for not reading further, the book is about 24-30 months out of date. This, in gadgetry terms, is aeons. Nonetheless, I found one or two things I didn't already know, so it wasn't entirely wasted. I guess what is really needed is an updated version to take in the latest ipod developments.

This book is filled with very useful information. It is easy to follow and look for certain topics.

Take note of what year this was published: *2002*!
That makes it 6 years out of date as of this writing, and
has little to do with the iMac that I just bought.
If you just got an old, used, early model iMac, than this
might do you some good.

Since I bought a Brand New iMac Aluminum... I thought the books that Amazon recomended would be about that machine... Instead they were antiques and did not help me with the new iMac Aluminum.... Very Very Disappointed

I bought my first Mac, an iMac but I couldn't get anywhere with it, because there wasn't a real manual. Just a little card that got me as far as turning it on and that's all. I bought Mr. Steinberg's book, "Sams Teach Yourself the iMac in 24 Hours" and followed the instructions. It didn't take me very long before I was sending faxes to a business colleague in New York. This is a great book, easy reading, and I enjoyed it immensely. END

This book teaches you so much--Apple, like most computer manufacturer's--tell's you almost nothing about the computer when you buy it. And this is coming from a first-time computer buyer, not a techno-geek. END

I am a complete computer idiot. Before I bought the iMac from the local CompUSA store here in Northern California, I didn't know a mouse from a menu. I sat down before the iMac and just sat, not knowing what to do next. I ordered a copy of "Sams Teach Yourself the iMac in 24 Hours" and read it cover to cover (no it didn't take 24 hours). Then I had the courage to hook up the iMac, and, following the author's detailed instructions, I had it hooked up in minutes and that day I was connected to the Internet, via America Online. In a week or two, I had a printer and a scanner, and I got through it, relatively unscathed, because of this marvelous book. Highly recommended!

I am new to Cocoa & Mac OS X Development.

This book is one of the fastest/easiest ways to get a Cocoa feeling.

I really enjoyed this book. By following this book, you will develop a real Cocoa application. All steps are clearly documented (what/how/where etc).

This book is not written for experienced Cocoa developers. For this people, this book would be probably to easy ('I know this already').

This book takes an unusual approach that some people seem to like and others don't. The entire book is devoted to building a single Cocoa application, step by step. Each step builds on what has come before, so you really can't jump around in the book at all. And the book is entirely example-driven; there is very little text talking about higher-level concepts, principles and design. If you learn best by example, and you want to see a large, high-quality application in Cocoa built from the ground up, then this book might be very good for you. Others will probably find it frustrating.

This is an excellent programming cook book. Armed with this book and some conceptual background, the world of Cocoa Programming is open to you. This book is not suitable for people who have never programmed before, but you don't need a computer science degree to use it either. The individual recipes are each valuable and explain both the "hows" and "whys" of common Cocoa programming techniques. The book has a "learn by doing" philosophy. The recipes in this book are the best and most comprehensive tutorials available for Cocoa programming, but they are long. Plan to spend several hours working on each recipe. Once mastered, you will be able to modify and reuse each recipe to develop countless applications. This book will give you a sense of how the pieces of Cocoa fit together so that you will be able to more easily approach new programming topics.

I have been working on learning Cocoa part-time so this seemed like a good book to try to get me up to speed. There is a lot of information packed in this text- unlike some, there are really very few figures and pictures and there is an awful lot of explanatory text and digressions as new concepts arise. The main problem I have with the approach here is that it takes a _long_ time between successive builds of the application. In fact, one must plow through 70+ pages before even getting to the first time you are told to build an executable of what you have been working on. This really goes counter to the Cocoa paradigm of ease of application construction- I much prefer a more experimental approach in which small incremental changes are made to the application, so that the effect of new features can be appreciated right away. Here, by the time you rebuild the application, a lot of time has passed since you coded the features, so the connection between the code and the app feature is not so immediate or clear. Also, if there are bugs from your typing, it is hard to fix your app as it has been a long time since a previous build, so for someone new to Cocoa, it can be hard to know where to look for the errors.

Anyone serious about learning Cocoa should consider adding Cocoa Recipes to their reference arsenal. I have found it to be a valuable source of information that extends the essential Cocoa books authored by Hillegasse, and Anguish et al. Cocoa Recipes discusses in depth a number of areas not discussed extensively in other titles. I found the discussion on formatters very useful. Also, Cocoa Recipes provides an additional perspective in relation to core cocoa programming tasks. Best of all, it provides many practical, easy to adopt code examples. If you are serious about learning Cocoa, you will get something out of this book. Cocoa Recipes is best read after you have read one or two of the Cocoa books mentioned above. It will help round out your knowledge and will become a valuable reference source.