Macintosh Books

OS X UNIX is amazingly friendly and accessible. Some people who had never used it before type commands and work with the operating system directly as a "cool guys" in movies! This book is very helpful and well written and it is serves as a very nice reference. I paired this book with that "UNIX Essentials" DVD I found here on Amazon and it is complete OS X UNIX course recorded and this book and a video they contribute one another greatly. You improve the reading and by reading you improve what you have seen. The book has many typos though and paired with DVD those typos are avoided.
The book is very particular about the subjects that related to OS X and because there are some differences between OS X and other UNIXes it is nice to have a book that deals with it.

Unix for Mac introduces itself with a succinct history of BSD (Unix), the meaning of Open Source, and the role GNU plays in Open Source programming. It avoids bogging the reader down with excessive information while, at the same time, providing a very good introduction. My typical response to the historical and explanatory information was: "Oh, okay. That makes sense." This response was consistent through the entire book. Following the short historical introduction, the book continues with instruction on the Terminal application (the Unix interface in OS X - also known as the terminal shell), proceeds through basic Unix commands, and then describes some of the more intermediate-level activities that can be accomplished on the Mac via Unix.

Unix for Mac is very easy to read and rather personable - if such a thing can be said about a book. Its target audience is the user with some or no Unix knowledge, so it fit quite well with my ability level. The book covers a very broad assortment of topics yet provides easy and useful instructions complete with screen examples, helpful hints, and concise historical explanations. I found this approach to be extremely helpful in removing the intimidation I felt of working with a command prompt interface. Additionally, having read some rather esoteric computer manuals, I was pleased to note that when the text provides a command or a command set that is particularly helpful, such as pushd / popd (which causes switching between directories in a single shell), it draws attention of the command's usefulness to the reader. This prevents readers who are unfamiliar with Unix, and perhaps feeling a little overwhelmed, from missing the advantages that a particularly useful but unanticipated command can provide. (An anticipated command being either the move or copy command - one the reader would expect and look for.)

Another aspect of Unix for Mac that I like is its emphasis and re-emphasis on referring to the Manual (Man) Pages. This, even from my limited experience, is the hallmark of good instruction concerning Unix. The reason being, as the text points out, that while Unix commands do have their own logic, they are not necessarily intuitive nor are the command options consistent from command to command.

Concerning any possible negatives, for better or worse, Unix for Mac never seeks to explain or question why one might wish to access the Unix underpinnings of OS X. It merely presumes you wish to do so for your own reasons and provides instruction on just about every conceivable activity one might wish to perform in a Unix environment - whether it is easier in Aqua or not. While I actually liked this feature because I believe this approach helped preserve the book's conciseness, some people, particularly new Mac users in general, may not appreciate the lack of interface comparisons.

In conclusion, Unix for Mac is the first published book I have read that specifically addresses working with Unix on the Macintosh via the Terminal application so I do not know how others compare; that said, I liked the book very much. It was certainly a much easier read than most of the cryptic resources I have found on-line. In fact, as I progressed through the book, I found myself thinking it was very much like having an extremely knowledgeable friend looking over my shoulder who could give me the operational basics with some advanced insights into the inner workings of Unix. Questions that I had were answered as they occurred to me. Background information was presented so that I had a good understanding of what I was attempting to do and how I was accomplishing it. In my estimation, Unix for Mac won't be last reference book one uses if serious about working with Unix in OS X, but it should be the first.

A horrible horrible shovelware book. Riddled with poor explanations, typos,
blatantly wrong explanations, and incorporating zero "big picture"
descriptions of how everything fits together. I borrowed it from the
library under the assumption that it might be a good quick description
of some Unix tools of which I'm not aware, and it failed miserably in
that role. Moreover I'm hard pressed to think of a role in which it would not
fail miserably --- perhaps the "swatting cockroaches dead" role.

If you want to use the "Terminal" and play around with your unix capabilities, just get this book and go! It comes with a CD rom containing an e-version of itself, which is very convenient.

The crystal clarity comes from the presence of examples - **as they would appear on your terminal - below the actual text, and also the organization:
each concept is covered within two facing pages.

Much more detail appears here than in the O'Reilly book, which is mainly just a quick run-through based on their old unix-intro book. O"Reilly book does not even cover something as basic as text editing(!).

THe book is also superior to the "Visual Quick Start", whose author seems to have done very little work to make himself/herself clear and simple. In the very first chapter of Visual QS, there is a sidebar "explaining" the difference between
a "filesystem" and a "Filesystem" - and nothing could be more muddy than that
sidebar!

Get this book!!! I feel very strongly.

The book is targeted at UNIX users working on the Mac OS X. More than 2/3rd's of this book covers basic UNIX commands & tools that any basic UNIX user should know; things like cp, mv, ln, pine email reader, vi editor, etc. The only somewhat useful information for a UNIX user is the last third of the book which covers things like fink and X Server integration. Throughout, some minor OS X differences are mentioned, like file placement in the directory structure. This is really a UNIX book for Mac users. So the title fits, but the "Who is this book for" section is definitely wrong.

This book changed my life, I had no idea that there are people out there, who feel the EXACT same way that I do!! I recommend this book to anyone who is down and needs some inspiration and motivation in their life.

This's good one, for all MIS and can use in the real worl

This book reminds me more of a travelog about many of the sights and sounds you will encounter on your quest to become best friends with your Accounting Information System.

It would make a lot more sense if the authors skipped a lot of the details of where Accounting Information Systems fit in our social experience and get down to dealing with the dirty details of how someone would go about writing a system of their own.

Then they could spend a chapter on how to go about the testing of the system and how and why to do a complete re-write of this masterpiece.

This is one book our professor recommends to all MBAs, IT Auditors and accounting professionals. I think its worth the price.

Easily worth twice the price. The only fault (?) I found was that the CD was prepared for Windows and doesn't work on Windows 95 (no one, of course, said it would or should) but the only consequence was that certain introductory movies were not accessible; everything else was. If all instruction books were written this well, we'd all use computer programs better and with more enjoyment. Someone put a lot of thought, effort, and testing into making this exactly what it asserts: A Classroom in a Book. A Quality Product, just like Premiere itself.

As a classroom teacher, I can assure anyone who buys this book that they can't beat it at twice the price. If you take the time to do each lesson, you will feel extremely comfortable with a very complicated program

As a previous reviewer stated, if all computer books were written this well, software publishers could close down their tech support departments.

This book is for Version 4 and includes a diskette of lessons for Version 4. It is totally outdated as the world is working on Adobe Premiere Version 5.1 now. Illustrations, drop down tables, etc. in the book do not look like those of Version 5.1. The title does not indicate the version. One can infer the book's out-of-datedness from the publishing date (1995).

out of date with the latest versions of Adobe Premiere ver. 5.1 and subsequent versions. Wait until the book is updated.

I found this book to be a very easy to navigate reference for my attempt at learning and using After Effects. I recommend it as an excellent cross-reference resource, especially if you are attending an After Effects classroom. I'm not sure, however, whether a nubie or novice would be able to learn easily just from reading this book alone. Nevertheless, I give this book and the way it is structured, two-thumbs up as far as adding it to anyone's Visual Media Library.

I wasn't expecting anything less and the only reason I got the book was because it was cheaper on amazon then at my college's bookstore. Now what I didn't realize was the fact that Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects volumes 1 and 2 are far superior to any other book out there. So I recommend those instead. This book is just as dull and boring as most informational software books with little explanation about how to do things, little picture representation and only explaining the basics oh in say 700 pages.... if you know how to use adobe illustator or photoshop which u clearly should if you intend on using aftereffects, I suggest whether you are a beginner intermediate or advanced animator to get the creating motion graphics books instead. Ya 10$ more but the learning experience and education you'll get from those books compared to this one is uncomparable.

Overall in 700 pages i really just skimmed through like i do with most books exactly written like this one. not very good at keeping my attention with black and white dull text with boring material.

Adobe is striving mightily to make After Effects the dominant tool for editing animated images, much like Photoshop is the pre-eminent program for editing static images. Bolante shows here why AE has a far more challenging task.

Even leaving aside competing tools, AE must handle video editing and audio editing. Here, it needs to synchronise two such tracks, in such ways as the ending of one triggering the start of another.

The audio editing is somewhat rudimentary. Other programs that specialise in this have more sophisticated options. But, unsurprisingly,the video editing forms the major part of AE. Several chapters are devoted to it. Many video special effects come right out of the box. Like texturing surfaces, or applying a gradient wipe.

Of course, many films will need text to be shown in the video. As expected, you get a panoply of font families to choose from. Along with effects like showing text along a contour that you define. Quite familiar to Photoshop users. But now redone in a broader context.

To be sure, this is not a simple book. The complexity of film editing necessitates this. But you should find that most tasks described here are straightforward to do. Though realistically, if you're trying a technique for the first time, many iterations may be needed before you're satisfied.

It says the books in the Visual QuickPro series are similar to the Visual QuickStart series, but QuickPro is for more advanced users. After Effects is, by its very nature, a more advanced application for creating video than, say iMovie. That's because After Effects is a "motion graphics" program with far more features than basic video editing. I think of it as Photoshop with motion and a timeline.

However, if you are a beginner at After Effects, this book can still work for you if you start with the early chapters first.

Bolante does a good job of giving you an overview of After Effects' interface, palettes, and the workflow. He moves on to how to create, open and close projects, including how to choose your settings and change them.

Next is importing files, how to import still images, image sequences, files with alpha channels, footage, etc. He also tells you how to loop footage and remove film pulldown. If you don't know what that is, look at page 60 for a few pages of good explanation.

The chapter on Managing Footage does a nice job of helping you organize your footage and understand how to view it. (Do you know about action-safe and title-safe areas?)

Like Photoshop, After Effects works in layers (with the addition of audio layers), and Bolante gives you the skinny on creating, naming, hiding, showing and rasterizing them. Editing is all about manipulating the layers by trimming, moving, sequencing, overlapping, splitting, changing the layer's speed, etc.

Motion Graphics is all about adding images, motion, changes in size, transparency, blending modes and more. Most of it is done with keyframes. Chapter 7 gives the ins and outs of keyframing. There is a big chapter on masking. Like Photoshop, you use masks to bled various images together. But, you begin, end, rotate, change, scale, show and hide them over time. He covers it all.

Special effects are the "magic" part of After Effects, so Bolante devotes a couple of chapters to their intricacies. There are also chapters on creating and animating text, painting on layers, keyframe interpolation (advanced layer techniques), integrating 3D layers, managing complex projects, and, of course, outputting your movies. All-in-all, it is a very thorough book for both Mac and PC users.

An easy read, I read through this reference guide over the course of 2 days. When complete I dove into Compressor and am now considered our production company's expert in it. It actually saved us over $1000 when I discovered through reading the book that Compressor can handle Reverse Telecine, making renting a HDCam deck for a specific job unnecessary. I highly recommend this book. I first heard about it when I saw the author on the MacBreak TV podcast.

The Apple Pro Training Series Books i'm familiar with (FCP, Motion, Desktop, etc) are 500+ pages and have a content DVD. This book is around 200 pages and does not have a content DVD.

A great resource regardless.

It's not particularly useful and too expensive given how short it is. A book that calls itself a "quick reference guide" should be able to deliver the basics to get you up and running, as well as the most important trouble-shooting issues. This does not deliver. Save your money and read the manual, it's just as useful and it's free.

Very disappointing, I own several of the Peachpit Apple Pro Training series and they are all much better than this.

All those nagging encoding questions about what GOP structure to use, what's the difference between "best" and "better" motion estimation, etc are answered here once and for all. This is an excellent resource well worth the 25.00 price of admission. It will pay for itself with increased production quality and productivity. Thank you Brian Gary!

I found this book great. I am a novice and wanted to create my own web site, thinking that it really can't be that hard. And thanks to this book it was easy. The lessons were easy to follow, the explanations were very clear, and it gives you a good grounding in html. I would recommend it to anyone with an iMac.

While basic HTML is the same, web site design has advanced so much since this book was first published it only serves as a source of frustration for anyone wishing to create a sharp-looking site. It takes hours of reading this book to learn basic information you could otherwise get from one of those HTML cheat cards they sell at the bookstore (which, this book is dearly lacking!). As an earlier reviewer noted, there is little in the book that is Mac-specific, so don't think you need a book that says, "Mac" on the cover to learn HTML.

The narrative format may work well for someone who knows absolutely nothing about the web. But, it only slows down the reader looking to get up and running fast. If you want to create a cheesy "retro" style web page circa 1999, this is your book. If you want to create a professional site, there must be better books out there than this one.

As an artist I felt it would be somehow cheating to have someone else design my website, even though I'm not a computer artist. But it seemed like a huge endeavor, something that would take ages to learn. ( I didn't even know what HTML was when I began!).
Finally I purchased Steve Callihan's book out of a small selection of instructional books for Mac users. I didn't look at it for several weeks, but when I did just a few days ago I found that with Steve's engaging writing style and clear step-by-step instructions, I was learning and creating just as fast as the book promises! In no time I understood what I was doing well enough to play around with the helpful example sites and graphics he supplies.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to do this but dreads getting started.
Also, the book's web site is very helpful, with more graphics that you can download and a FAQ section which you can add to with your own questions. Many other web publishing resources are also listed in the book.
Steve Callihan is a wonderful author and teacher!

[This is a review of the *Macintosh* version, "Create Your First Mac Web Page on a Weekend"] There's far too little devoted specifically to the Macintosh end of computing, so I was happy to see this book address a project I've always wanted to start: creating my first webpage, but *not* on a dreaded Windows machine! I'm pleased to say the book is exactly as advertised...by the end of a weekend I'd created and posted a simple but effective website on AOL. Step-by-step exercises take you through the various aspects of coding, assuming no previous knowledge, and a simple but effective process of typing a few lines of code, and then checking it in your web browser to see the instantaneous results, gives you good feedback and instant gratification to see what you're learning. Calihan covers text-based HTML as well as an overview of using Adobe PageMill 3.0, and a decent general look at the mechanics of a basic and effective website (rule #1: always plan your website's structure before you start coding...I learned this the hard way!) An enclosed CD-ROM contains all the software tools you'll need plus numerous coding examples, website templates, images, clip art and backgrounds to get your started. The basic structure of the book breaks your work into easy-to-handle weekend segments (Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, etc.) so you can go into work on Monday and tell your friends to look at your new website. A number of minor flaws take a couple points away from my praise: 1) There's no general overview or review of what you have learned and where it has gotten you at the end of each chapter or session--a point by point recap, with a review table of the coding you've learned, would have been much appreciated. 2) There's no appendix or pull-out reference chart of the various coding you've just learned...to remember what you need to type, you have to page back through the chapters. (There are several *other* books that feature such charts or pull-outs, but the inclusion of one in this volume would have been a big help). 3) The most grievous problem: a number of typos in the coding examples themselves might have you scratching your head wondering what you did wrong. I finally figured out there were missing proper end paragraph codes at the end of examples on page 51 and 60, for example. For Mac users who get frustrated at Windows-centric manuals, this *is* a solid book, but it needs some improvements and corrections. Version 2.0 anyone?

this is a cheap and fine medical dictionary.I can use this dictionary in my computer. It help me for writing medical papers.

Working as a radiology transcriptionist, I find this dictionary absolutely invaluable as a tool for finding some of the most obscure references to syndromes, diseases, disorders and every imaginable part of the human anatomy, from bones, organs, muscles, veins and arteries right down to drug names (generic and trade), the names of bacteria and technical terms like Houndsfield units. I also work part time at home, and I hope soon to load the CD-ROM version of this dictionary on my PC. You never know when you're going to have to look up something like Takayasu's arteritis, moya-moya syndrome or the foramen of Bochdalek!

I bought this Cd hoping to have a quick way to reference medical terms. WHat a joke, when you search for a word, it gives you EVERY OCCURENCE of the word in the entire book. If you search for DOPAMINE, it does not take you to the MAJOR topic "DOPAMINE" under D as a regular dictionary would, it starts at "A" and finds the word dopamine in every description from A-Z.

Their interface is a generic DataBase interface called DynaText reader, they were too lazy to write their own interface. Ugly, clumsy to use.

They say there are graphics--another bull story

Total piece of junk -- don't waste your money, the best dictionary was MOSBY's but unfortunately, they stopped upgrading it.

This product is not what you are looking for if you are looking for a traditional medical encyclopedia on CD rom.

Fast and easy to use if you are not sure how to spell a complex term. Pictures are there to access if you need them. The ability to hear the proper way to pronounce the tongue-twisting medical terms is great.

but I found this book to be one of the most difficult tutorial references I've ever used.

Firstly, it appears that there was a second release of the DVD that accompanies the book and some of the file references don't match what's in print (e.g., you are told to look for a file called "filename_unfinished", but that file isn't on the DVD). Secondly, some of the lessons either omit steps or don't include all of the information you need to thoroughly understand it. The author will say "Don't worry about setting the target for this button - we'll do that later" and then you never do that so when you run your simulation, your project doesn't do what it's supposed to (unless you figure it out for yourself). I've been through most of the chapters at this point and I did learn a lot (thanks to already being an advanced user) - but I have to say it wasn't easy and that's not because the software is difficult to learn, but because this book is really not well written or organized.

Thirdly - my biggest pet peeve - the author loves tangents into lessons involving other software and it sometimes feels like this book was really just designed to sell you about 6 other programs. I do realize the value of all of those programs because I already own and use most of them - but if you didn't, you would simply find this book too frustrating to deal with because of all the constant sidetracking. The examples that involve forays into Final Cut would require you to have at least intermediate skills in the program to be able to finish the lesson. Ditto for those that involve Photoshop and After Effects. To add insult to injury, in those lessons, the explanations for using the other program are either skeletal or non-existent (barring one example in iMovie for creating a slideshow, which for some odd reason walks you through ever single step). In a nutshell, this book assumes you already know a lot.

Also - the scripting information is almost useless. I struggled with the second lesson (which I'm convinced has an incorrect figure in it), learned a few minor things, and afterwards went online and found at least four tutorials that were leaps and bounds better and easier to understand.

Don't get me wrong - this book can teach you something, if you're persistent enough. I spent four evenings with it and I've already authored one great project. But I'm an advanced user with some video/audio background already and I still found the book frustrating at times.

If you're really interested in learning DVD Studio Pro 3 in an organized and logical manner, save yourself some hair follicles and find a different tutorial.

The Apple DVD Studio Pro is a popular but very complex tool for authoring DVDs. This book shows why it is popular, and also offers an improvement on the Apple documentation. The program has immense ability to record audio and video and to merge these in as intricate a fashion as you desire. There is a panoply of editing functions. For such things as adding subtitles to video tracks. Or supporting several languages using the audio tracks. Or to have a multistory project.

Where ever possible, the book shows how Studio Pro has automated the steps in each of these tasks. There are many colour screen captures revealing the menus you invoke, and the results they generate.

Plus, in today's Web oriented world, Studio Pro lets you insert hyperlinks using DVD@ccess. These links can go into menus, markers and slides. So that the user can reach out into the Web (or local files). In this way, you can use the DVD and Web to complement each other. Imagine producing a game DVD with links to your website. So that a gamer can easily engage in a multiplayer scenario, or download the latest 3 dimensional world. In this way, you can offer more fresh material to the gamer. Increases the value of your website, and helps you get paid.

This book breaks new ground for O'Reilly. I'm used to finding great technical content in their books--that's what they're famous for--but media tools like DVD Studio Pro require a more visual approach for explanation, and Marc delivers this extremely effectively.

The examples are numerous, on target, and very thorough. They walk you through the process of learning and achieving anything you might need to produce a compelling, professional DVD experience. And what really struck me is how unbelievably good the book looks. Every page is beautiful, glossy color with a clean, easy-to-follow layout, and huge numbers of screen shots and visuals.

If you have a chance to flip through this book in person you'll realize how much you need it when you're starting to create DVDs. Or you can order it sight unseen and be pleasantly surprised.

If ever Apple made an application that could use some usability work it's DVD Studio Pro. It's a comprehensive and powerful application that has a user interface that only a mother could love. That's why I found this book so critical. It's an end-to-end guide from the very basics of DVD construction through to using templates and building custom transitions. There are also pitstops along the way into building DVD games and creating easter eggs.

As with O'Reilly's other book on DVD construction, Adobe Encore DVD, one of the other benefits of the book is the content ideas that it gives you. Though I found the examples in this book slightly less appealing than those in the Encore book.

Very well written with appropriate, not overwhelming, use of screenshots and illustrations. This is a must have for DVD Studio Pro users.

eWorld was once a great online service. Too bad we can't use it any more. This book really makes it feel like old times again.

eWorld was great and whoever had the privilige on having the online service should consider grabbing a copy.

eWorld was a great online service provider. I read this book... And, I love it. I still keep a copy of eWorld on my PowerMac 6500 and my PowerBook 1400... I think that Apple should bring eWorld back... Until they do, this book can help you see the "eWorld Light".

Regardless of the possible historical significance of this book, the fact remains that Apple officially pulled the plug on E-World as of 3/31/97. One should consider whether reading this book would be an appropriate use of one's time

As the author, I wrote this book as an introduction for
someone who wanted to learn to use this design language. It is
not particulary suitable as a reference guide, but instead
is organized to help you grasp the fundamental relationships
and organization of the VHDL language. Even for experienced
programmers some of the concepts are a bit hard at first.
We try also to include the motivations and uses for various
features. There are a number of simple examples included.
I hope you enjoy and use this book.
stan mazor

I just borrowed the book from the library and I am reading through it to understand VHDL. It is good for my background: I know more than ten programming languages, know digital logic design, and is familiar with Verilog. I had read a few other VHDL books, but was kind of confused by their writing styles.

I like this book because it tells the rationals behind the VHDL design. It is focused on the design of the language itself. The other books I read tried to cover many things like microprocessor design or DSP design, but didn't clarify why VHDL uses concepts like entity, architecture, process, etc. For a professional, it is fast to learn VHDL from this book.

But this book is possibly not a good book for a student because of its focus. It lacks detail (not a good reference book) and doesn't have many examples.

My major complaint against this book is that it is not useful as a reference. The index of only six pages is hopelessly devoid of useful information. Nearly all keywords listed in the index merely point to a table of keywords, with no explanation or further reference. Not in the index: "<=" (which has two meanings), "explicit literal", "aggregate", and "assignment statement", for example. Index often references wrong page. Typos ("discreet", "scaler") abound.

If you want to build a solid foundation in VHDL, this is the book to buy. I absolutely loved it.