Macintosh Books

Do you think that you love Apple and are passionate about their products? This book is all about the passion and the ways in which people show their devotion. You might dye your hair one week a year, or have a logo cut into it, but those efforts quickly return to "normal." This book details arguably the largest subculture in computing: The Mac Faithful. Where an Apple logo tattoo is not unusual.

Contents:
Part 1: Macintosh Madness. Techno Fetishism, Macs and the Counterculture, Worshipping the Two Steves, Mac Tattoos and Haircuts, Macspotting, Mac Evangelism, The Mac Web.
Part 2: Gatherings of the Clan. Tales of MacWorld, Macs in Japan.
Part 3: Incessant Tinkerers. Macquariums, Fantasy Macs, Hardware Mods, Paper Macs.
Part 4: Hoarders and Recyclers. Mac Collectors and Collectibles, Antique Macs.
Part 5: New Frontier. iPod, What Makes Mac Fans So Loyal?
Index

The Cult of Mac, by Leander Kahney, is an amazing book on an interesting part of the computer world. While you may be put off by the use of the word "cult" in the title, make no mistake, Leander means this is in a loving way. His chapters focus on one aspect concerning "Macheads," from the simple Apple logo sticker, to tattoos, to collecting boxes, to the prevalence of the iPod, and beyond. Each chapter is well written and includes many colorful pictures of the subject matter. As you can tell from the contents, Kahney spends time on many topics, allowing the principals to share their story. Some of the subjects may be hard to rationalize (which is the point, I think), but Kahney allows them to their needed time which only adds to the colorful Mac culture.

I picked this book up specifically to see the extremes of the Mac faithful. Yes, it does deliver those examples but without any editorial comments. Kahney presents these people as they are, and allows the reader to make their own judgements. However, somewhere along the way, I was struck by what this book delivers to the casual Mac user as well as people outside of the Mac culture. Kahney shows how many of these Mac faithful give up their time to sell, without any compensation, Apple products in big box stores, like CompUSA (you can see that some of the information is a little dated). But think about that - would anyone do the same for a Windows machine? Or any other personal computer? The chapter on Hardware Mods is one of my favorite. Kahney presents people that turn their Macs into gorgeous works of art. Or creating a Mac product where none exists (like a Mac-based Web pad fashioned out of a touch screen iBook). I could continue to expound on this book, as there are many reasons that I like it. Suffice it to say that this is an excellent book.

If you have one of the Mac faithful in your midst, this would make an excellent gift. If you don't use a Mac or if you can't understand why people fuss over the Apple brand, this book will provide you with many of the answers. You will not get a history of Apple from this book, but you will get a fascinating look into the Apple faithful.

'The Cult Of Mac' is a Mac fans ultimate guide to learn about the legions of people around the world who not only enjoy their Mac but LOVE their Mac. Packed with 260+ pages of full-color shots, this shows all the praise that people have in the form of tattoos, artwork, detailing, etc etc etc!

The first word that came to mind when skimming through this is the word FUN. Every page turn, every picture it's just a whole lot of fun and anyone that either likes or is a macaddict, this is a very entertaining book.

MACTABULOUS!!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This was a great book about the people that make up the Mac cultsa round the world.

The Cult of Mac
By Leander Kahney
Publisher: No Starch Press
Price: 39.95 US
ISBN: 1886411832

I was delighted when I was given a copy of this book to read and review. Not only is it about something I LOVE..... it is written so that even my parents would understand my passion. A lovely coffee-table book, this 260+ page book is a visual treat, with many pictures of our beloved machines, and the fans who buy them. You won't find a detailed look into Apple, Inc. This is about us, the users. The chapters are focused on specific traits, or habits of the Macintosh community. And while we all KNOW why we love our Macs, this book will help others learn, and perhaps make the switch.

There are also many little known factoids, and a full chapter devoted to the Japanese obsession for Macintosh computers. Many will remember, and perhaps still have, the holiday ornament that looks like an all-in-one classic. Fans have made replicas out of cardboard and paper for decades. Some even use the packing boxes as furniture.

One of the things about this book that readers may like, is that the chapters can be read in any sequence. The topics are as individual as our users, and no strict order is required. Read about what interests you. There are references enough to follow on your own, so if you are interested in digging deeper, you can.

While some of the material is obviously dated already, this is not about the latest and greatest, but about the phenomenon of the Apple user. One word that stands out in many of the chapters is "community". The author stresses many times how incredibly loyal Macintosh fans are, in spite of the wide range of users. From tattooed bikers, to captains of industry, no barrier is too high, or wide, or deep to make any appreciable separation between Macheads.

Not to sound trite, but this is a "must have" kind of book. And it looks great with any décor.........

When your family asks you why you have a Mac, this book
explains it for you. We are unique in our view of life. The fact that
our cult is different is just fine with us. The text covers the roots
of the Mac experience, the skin ink, the haircuts, the car art, the
mods we have done, the inspirations we share with the creators
within Apple. We offer up our ideas for the next big thing freely,
hoping to become some small part of the process by posting on
discussion boards and rumor sites for those already at Apple
to notice.
But, this book goes even further. It recalls how every person who
buys a Mac, receives so much more than just a machine to do a
particular task. They receive a new pathway into a future. One
where some will find joy in the special thought that went into the
packaging the Mac was shipped in. We will throw a party for the
unwrapping of that new Mac and then take photos to share with
friends who were absent that day. Others will save the packaging
for later or build something out of the box. Get enough Apple
boxes together and build a sofa. Get a few older Macs together
and build a bar, a network, and a piece of art.
If you as I have bought Macs since the 80's, this book is a joyous
ride back. If you are new to the Apple clan, read about where we
have been. The inspirations that Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and
Guy Kawasaki brought into the business world. Of the developers
and suppliers who have created all of those little gizmos thingies
for the Macs, the Power Macs, for the ibooks, the PowerBooks, the
MacBooks, the minis, for the ipods, and for our lives. And mainly,
this book is for the users. For those of us within "The Cult of Mac"
and of how we relish life.

I bought this book looking at the reviews, but hell no, the reviews are overly exageraating, all you get here are something you can get in simple man pages, examples are very simple and outdated, and does not cover any latest developments in this area. I am a Project manager with 12 years industry experience, so I did not really need a book on this, but just tried, and it was a big disappointment...

This and the Bruce Blinn book are the best books available on shell programming. Very thorough, well written, and well indexed. There are many usefull examples and no stupid fluff that is so pervasive in recent technical books.

This book will, if you've never written code or scripts, help
you write them will proper flow.
I highly recommen this book, for newbies to UNIX.

The best beginning with Unix Book on the market period!

I have purchased this book several times. That is because I keep giving it away to friends. It is the best basic bourne shell programming book I've come accross in 10+ years of Unix admin.
Most other books tend to focus on Ksh or Csh or some facsimile. This one I always keep at my desk for quick sh reference and fine examples.

if your a beginner with photoshop i would highly recommend this book for hands on training. without this book...i wouldn't know what to do.

This book definitely does not have a "cool" factor, ei it does not show you how to do cool tricks. It may be helpful in some areas of photoshop, but I had already learned much of its contents on my own. It seemed to cover all the stuff I didn't care about, and nothing that interested me. I wish I hadn't wasted my money. I am never buying a book without looking through it beforehand at a store again!!!!!!!!!

I have been using books written by Gary Bouton and his wife Barbara for awhile now. I'm looking back at this particular book as a milestone in my Photoshop education. I took this book, and for a month I slowly read, re-read, underlined and executed the lessons until I truely understood what I was doing. By re-reading and trying the lessons I was able to overcome the stubborn paradigms I created which normally keep me from understanding what is being said.

This effort has paid off. I'm currently using Adobe Photoshop 5.5 and it's no problem. Thank you Gary and Barbara for taking on a task this immense. If any of you have ever written technical lessons you can appreciate the monumental effort it would take to create an 1134 page textbook with two associated CDs. Thank you, but no thank you.

I have since purchsed their "Inside Adobe Photoshop 5" book and am enjoying it as well. I must admit that I haven't read it with a fine tooth comb as I did this Photoshop 4 book. Shame on me. I have been perusing it of late and notice that it has some good stuff to try.

For those of you who don't know it, the Bouton's keep a website that is full of information and any corrections that their books need. That's a very nice feature; www.TheBoutons.com

I've been using Photoshop for fine art, severely damaged photo restoration, logo creation, brochure creation and web graphics. It's still the greatest. Try it, you'll like it. :-)

Gary David Bouton writes in the most logical, effective manner I have ever seen in this type book. This is a COMPREHENSIVE guide to Photoshop 4. It is a large book, filled with hands on tutorials (not to mention two CDs packed with lessons and extras) that begin with the very basics, build on them...and take you well into advanced techniques. At no time are you left hanging... every step in each technique is not only covered, but the logic behind it is explained. This book is written so skillfully that both beginners and Photoshop veterans will find Mr. Bouton's explanations and comments fascinating and invaluable. You will pick up REAL SKILL and a lasting foundation in Photoshop from this book... not to mention hundreds of cool effects to show off with!

I bought this book after searching through dozens of Adobe Photoshop 4.0 titles. This particular book is an incredible compendium that really turns the novice Photoshop user into a pro. Each chapter covers a different Photoshop task, making it easy for the reader to personalize the tutorial to his/her needs. And each little mini-tutorial is incredibly thorough, with dozens of examples and lots of step-by-step exercises that make each procedure second-nature. After only a few days, I moved from Photoshop ignoramus to website developer! ( )

I really like this book. The descriptions and pictures are very helpful. Also includes differential diagnoses, course and prognosis, and management. A favorite in our ER.

As a medical student just entering clinic, I have found this book to the the perfect resource. Reccomended by a Dermatologist on faculty, it is easy to navigate, has tons of useful pictures and is small enough to carry to clinic in my backpack. I've already used it to make a diagnosis or two and know for sure that it has earned it's place on my bookshelf.

I was in search of a dermatological reference and found a great one. Clear descriptions of derm. conditions. Photos are exceptional. Good reference for new or experienced advanced nurse practitioner.

Quick and assured reference for everyday use in dermatology clinic. However, does not substitute Fitzpatrick's 2 vol. compendium if you're looking to broaden your knowledge in the area.

This is a must have book, well written coincised, straight to the point and good for medical students,residents and attendings interested in dermatology.

This book is
-a great resource for those looking to implement various mysql functions
-a great resource for database programmers
-a trove of information on powerful query and sort techniques

Finding information about the topic you're looking for is a breeze in this book - the chapters are well-organized, and this book has anwered all questions I've posed to it....

The cookbook is a powerful tool to those who know some mysql, and some dB design. I recommend that you use another book to learn basic mysql (or just an online tutorial), and another to learn database design (Navathe).

While I'm very familiar with working with relational databases, my MySQL skills are weak. This book was exactly what I needed while building a new web application that uses MySQL. For every question I had, I found the answer in this book. Highly recommended.

This book is useful for anyone looking to find examples of MySQL 4 usage in multiple languages such as PHP, Perl, Java, and Python. It covers many areas that are used in real world applications and is great as a reference material. This book is structured in the Problem/Solution layout of the Oreilly cookbook series.

Visuals
Good. Page numbers and section title can be found on the bottom of every page.

Audience
From the book: "This book should be useful for anybody who uses MySQL, ranging from individuals [...] to professional database and web developers."

That is a pretty broad range, basically from introductory to advanced. Nevertheless I would have to say that the book meets this challenge well. This book should be of use to anybody who uses MySQL.

Practicality:
I have to say that I have fallen for Cookbook style books. While I still thoroughly enjoy more theory heavy books, cookbooks can really deliver in the immediate practicality department.

The MySQL Cookbook is a good example of this. This book has dozens upon dozens of recipes that will likely have some measure of application in whatever MySQL dependent system you are working on.

Each recipe contains a brief "Problem" scenario, followed by an often equally brief "Solution", and finally a more lengthy discussion that shows how to actually implement the solution.

Overall
I am very pleased with this book. Mr. DuBois and O'Reilly did a great job. For instance, one of the things I especially like is that often multiple solutions are offered. For example if you were to look up Section 6.6 "Extracting Parts of Dates or Times" you will find the solution lists 3 possible options. The discussion section contains 5 pages of examples of how you might use those options to extract the desired data.

If you fit in to the intended audience of "anybody who uses MySQL", I would highly recommend this book.

As indicated, this book is true to its title. It is a cookbook, by which I mean it contains a great number of (generally useful) recipes of varying complexity, but lacks detail and analysis that a more focused text would have.

Mr. DuBois and O'Reilly publishing are clearly targeting a wide audience: the recipes range from frighteningly simple (e.g. 3.1, Specifying Which Columns to Select) to fairly sophisticated (e.g. 12.14, Performing a Join Between Tables in Different Databases). The recipes are typically clearly written, with ample supporting code examples and few typographical errors.

I must also note that Mr. DuBois nicely avoids a pitfall many authors (the competence of whom I have to question) in this genre encounter: failure to weave security considerations into the text. While other books often mention security as an afterthought, or worse include code examples featuring disasters like non-escaped strings (hello, SQL injection!), DuBois explicitly points out the need to sanitize input and writes code examples that demonstrate the use of prepared statements in best-practices.

Unfortunately, in other areas he is less thorough. For example, only passing mention is made of the (possible) dependence of FULLTEXT indexes on choice of storage engine. There is an entire chapter on handling duplicate rows, but the oft-needed (and non-obvious) process for removing pseudo-duplicate rows differing only by a primary key field is not directly addressed. Stored procedures, triggers, and other new additions to MySQL are among the least-well understood but most powerful features of the database engine, yet astonishingly little space is spent on them. (I could understand not discussing them in depth as there are other books available, but length did not seem to be a concern anywhere else in this book.)

In summary, the book is an excellent resource for novices and experts alike - but only as a starting point. To return to the cooking analogy, the book at times feels like it is loaded down with recipes on how to add sugar to flour, but omits recipes on how to ice the cake.

As a 1st year ER resident, I picked this book up to supplement my knowledge on basic musculoskeletal and orthopedic injuries. The text does a wonderful job of illustrating proper physical exam skills, as well as covering a broad range of injuries commonly found in the ED. The specific topics are concise and in depth in terms of diagnosing musculoskeletal conditions. However, I felt the general orthopedics section didn't contain any new information that a fourth year medical student hasn't already covered at some point. And I was somewhat disappointed in the treatment and red flag sections on each condition, as I felt they were much too brief. That being said, I was happy with my purchase and have learned a great deal in diagnosing the various MSK conditions found in the ED, while supplementing treatment options with other texts.

I am a first year physician assistant student. As a student, this is an excellent resource to have. It is very organized and easy to read. Unlike other books where you have to look/search for information, this book lists definitions of the syndrome, clinical symptoms, and tests: physical and diagnostic, differential diagnosis, treatment, and then additional home exercises all in order. Highly recommend it...one of my favorite books

I am working in an Orthopaedic office as a Nurse Practitioner and find this book to be an invaluable reference, particularly for assessing specific areas I am less familiar with.

well rounded and balanced for both the orthopaedic and the primary care office.

If you're going to be in practice, you had better own this book. Every general practice physician I know owns this book, and every mid-level provider ought to have one, as well. Concise, easy to read/understand, discusses complaints by body region, includes IDC-9 codes.

I am an ER PA and very rarely open this book. However, if I do need to look up a drug I know I have all the info I could ever want in this text. Most other text on drugs either to not cover subjects completely or omit some drugs all togather.

This book is a good one, but has one little problem, the book doesn't have much coherence because there are too many people writting the book. You can note the difference of redaction between the chapters because were written for different person and that's what make the book very difficult to read, because one chapters are good, but others are very bad.
I prefer a book written by a few person because are much clear.

"Goldman & Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics" is one brain toasting book. It reminds me of the "Principles of Pharmacology: Basic Concepts & Clinical Applications" (edited by Paul Munson). Of course, either of these two books can serve as a reference tool; and although the latter maintains a price advantage, 'Goldman & Gilman's' is more ubiquitous.
It is rich, versatile, and presents well laid-out voluminous chapters. Anyone who reads this book will appreciate how it tackled General Therapeutics, Biochemistry, and Molecular Biology.

This is the 10th edition, published in 2001. Not quite as 'out-of-date' as suggested by the previous reviewer. It is, however, dificult to keep these texts current.

"Goodman & Gilman" has been the staple of pharmacology for many years, and with good reason. While I agree with the other reviewers that it is the gold standard, in the "old days" the book was updated about every 5 years, and this one came out in 1996. Given that the book probably took a couple of years to revise, the information is close to 10 years out of date! As is stated in the Notice on p. xviii, "Medicine is an ever-changing science." I have been waiting for the 10th Edition for some time now...!

I bought this book a number of years ago, when I was struggling with creating effective animations, and Actionscript really intimidated me. Right now I'm enjoying a productive career doing professional Flash work, and I wouldn't be as proficient at Flash if it weren't for this book.

I'm the kind of person who likes to develop my own skills and techniques instead of 'formulaically' imposing someone else's techniques into my work. This book is perfect! It doesn't waste any time on 'How to draw a circle!', and gets straight to teaching the critical foundation skills of making good Flash. Don't worry though, it isn't one of those 'Bibles', but at the same time it isn't about creating one big project through the course of the book.
In my opinion, this book is the perfect balance between reference and teaching. It gives you the solid skills and techniques on how to lay down advanced flash, which fully eliminates the mystery of things, so you can then expand on these techniques with your own innovation.

What's best, I keep coming back to -this- one book, even in these days of Studio MX 2004 Pro, for an effective reference manual. At the time of writing this review, I'm working on an interactive skeletal system for my animations, and paged to the section on angles and math to help me create proper rotating limbs.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to become a Flash master!

After being intrigued by Macromedia Flash and learning as much as possible via internet and the included tutorials, I felt I had a pretty good grasp of Flash. Still eager to learn more, I found this book and I must say that I couldn't have made a better choice. It was exactly what I needed to get to the next level, and the way the concepts were presented couldn't have been done in a more pleasing way. On a scale of 1 to 10 on Flash advancement, I'd say I went from a 4 to a 7.5. This is a definate keeper.

This is a great book for those who want advanced flash techniques and skills. I'd buy both the beginner flash book and this one together. When you are done with this book, you'll know the in's and out's of flash and be able to put your flash movies to useful work. This book focuses on the action scripts and advanced movies. I would highly recommend this book.

Too much to say, but this writing helps you incorporate Quicktime, 3d, actionscript, and many other aspects of flash. It's a great book which covers many topics briefly. You get a book like this to see what it interests you most about software, and buy more specific, in-depth books to follow up. It's also a great reference.

This book covers the various areas of creating key flash elements for your web pages that require actionscript. A great book for anyone who is trying to learn some of the more advanced features of Flash 5.

High Performance MySQL opens with a quick chapter describing various MySQL installation options including binary packages and compiling from source code. The next chapter describes the different storage engines available in MySQL and why you would want to choose one over another. This is the book's first hint of what you can do to improve database performance: picking the right table type.

Skilled software developers use benchmarking to gain insight into how their software is performing and database benchmarking should be part of that strategy. A brief chapter introduces some database benchmarking strategies and tools.

Chapters on indexing and query performance follow, describing some of the most important skills to master. Following that, replication and load balancing are discussed. Backup and recovery options are covered, as is the topic of security.

A somewhat thin trio of goodies rounds off the book in the appendices: the SHOW STATUS / SHOW INNODB STATUS commands, the mytop tool, and the phpMyAdmin user interface.

Overall, I found many possible areas for performance improvement that I had not thought of before. At 278 pages, a lot of material is crammed into this book. It's a quick read and if you're a MySQL admin or a developer using MySQL, you're bound to find something useful here!

A great overview of MySQL, with a cursory introduction to virtually every field a DBA will encounter over the years. The book is aimed at someone who has already used MySQL, but does not require in-depth knowledge - it's well written and should serve as a great starting point for further research. Jeremy covers: indexes, engines, query tricks, backup, security, and more. For a seasoned DBA, this book may not offer as much, but for the rest of us, it's a highly recommended read!

Having written LAMP-based web applications, I read High Performance MySQL hoping to gain a deeper understanding of how MySQL operates at a relatively low level and how to deal with ongoing frustrations (especially replication).

I was quite pleased. As others have noted, the book is readable and the authors' tone inviting. While the book does rigorously avoid discussion of low-level implementation details (e.g. "the query is parsed" is left as a black box step in the execution process), this does not detract materially from the message. The chapter on replication is one of the best treatments of this topic I have seen.

I only have a few criticisms. First, there are a number of typographical errors of varying severity, though I understand that the most egregious ones (e.g. in code) have been fixed in newer printings. Second, while the book is titled, "High Performance MySQL," it might be more aptly called, "High Volume MySQL." The contents seem highly directed toward sites that run simple queries against huge tables, neglecting somewhat the many sites (e.g. ecommerce) that may run very complex queries against small to medium size tables, but for which optimization may be just as important. This focus is unsurprising given the lead author's career at Yahoo!, but prospective readers should at least be aware of the bias.

This is an overall solid book, covering all aspects of running a MySQL database, from the impact of various flavors of hardware to architecting database clusters. However, I was expecting more details and insight about configuring and scaling MySQL. What are some of the finer points of implementing database clustering or federation? How does indexing and caching work in MySQL? How much will data fragmentation impact performance? In the end, even though the title suggests it covers advanced topics, I didn't learn much new from this book.

I'm Certified MySQL Associate and preparing for the next exams (Developer and Admin)... and I must say I didn't liked the book.

It offered nothing new for me... so if you're at a high level in MySQL it will not help you that much.

I saw some slides by Jeremy that were by far more informative and compact than the whole book.

To keep it short the complete title should have been: High Performance MySQL for MySQL beginners.

I am a beginner to editing video. This text is easy for me to understand and gives
great detail on how to do all the procedures needed to create great videos.
I highly recommend Final Cut Pro 5 by Diana Weynand, whether you are a begninner or
if you are well versed in the program. After the initial tutorial material is covered,
it will make a great reference manual.

very useful, pretty easy to read. would they consider publishing a smaller version for all the commands only?

Book is very comprehensive, covers topics in depth and allows the reader to work through projects. Final Cut is quite a program, and to try to learn about it on your own would be a challange, this book bridges the gap.
Not once could I complete the project tasks in the estimated time given, i.e. 1 hour, I don't know if I am the only one who can't pick it up as quick as the book says, for me personally the concept of completing the book in the time stated is unrealistic, nevertheless I got it eventually and now have a much broader understanding of the program, so in this sense I found it useful and it has fulfilled it's purpose as a learning tool.

I am new at editing having only used Final Cut Pro for very basic and simple editing. This book is superb for beginners who wish to take their skills up a notch with plenty of tidbits for experimentation. I recommend beginners to have a copy of this book in their library if only for referrence.

Excellent lessons... just perfect... sssshhh.. I'll let you in on a little secret... you listening? Give Apple 99 bucks and get 50 one hour lessons! 2 bucks an hour with a pro at the Apple store!