What is the best OS X Book?

M

macuser4life

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I am a new user here, and am curious to know the opinion of the group here. I have been looking for a good, intermediate to advanced book on OS X. I have been using Macs forever, and know all of the basic info I seem to find in amny OS X books. I have been surfing forever, and the one that seems to be thought of highly is "Mac OS X Unleashed." Is this a good book? Does it go into depth on not only advanced features of OS X, but on Unix as well? How about the upcoming "Mac OS X 10.1 Black Book?"

Any other books you might reccommend? Thank you! :)
 
sounds like what you really want is the terminal manual. i believe you just type man into terminal and it appears.

I bought Mac OS X: the Complete Reference Manual. It is not a book that i would read cover to cover but i do find some new things when i look up subjects from time to time. it also has a good introduction to terminal use.
 
I have both "Mac OS X the Complete Reference" and "Mac OS X Unleashed".

"Mac OS X the Complete Reference" is good for beginners. I havent' gone through all "Mac OS X Unleashed" yet, but I think it's great. There's a lot about the unix shell, and a complete appendix about the command line (180 pages!). Many chapters cover GUI apps and their command line equivalents.
Explanations are usually clear and accurate. :D
 
"Unleashed" sounds nice...

A friend of mine has both "the MacOSX Black Book" and "the Little MacOSX Black Book".... both are nice, however, they dont go quite as indepth into the Unix side of Mac OSX as he had wished. I looked them over and found them to be lacking in it as well... that isn't to say they are bad, however.

Perhaps you would be well served to find a cheap distro agnostic Linux book.... I have "The Idiots Guide to Linux" and it covers a ton of CLI / *nix style stuff. It was on closeout for 12.99 at borders. While it obviously has some irrelevant chapters (KDE, GNOME, distro lists) it does bring you up to speed on things like CRON, CHMOD, and other common utilities and CLI apps.


Just a thought.
 
My vote goes for "Unleashed" :)

It's got so much stuff about getting things done from the command line that I just couldn't resist purchasing it. I'd no idea how flexable niutil was until getting into the book a bit... It also gets into quite alot on getting other *nixish stuff working under X. Although there are books on Linux/Unix that will give you some basic information, a lot of it is wrong in the MacOSX arena. For instance, adding users is completely different when using the NetInfo bits in X. Unleashed is well worth the 50 bucks to get a reference that is specific to the MacOSX way of doing things.
 
Originally posted by Luca
Kenny, 34.99 bucks at Amazon.com (30% rebate!) + shipping charges.
Click to expand...

I hate you. :)

Mine copy was an impulse buy at Borders. I'd been very irritated at the lack of good references like that, and once I got reading it, I had to have it.

Actually, tacking shipping back on (it's a heavy book) probably puts it back in the neighbourhood of $40, so I really only saved $10. I can live with that, but thanks for pointing out my fiscal irresponsibilty... :)
 
I was in borders the other day and finally found a copy of Unleashed, went through it, and it is just what I need. I went through OS X 10.1 Black Book too, and it was not enough. Now I have to wait for it, because I have a gift certificate from Barnes & Nobles to use and they have it delayed by 2 weeks. Errrgh, but oh well, I know what I need now. Thanks again! :)
 
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