Mac OS X in a
Nutshellelpt
by Stephen Henry
I purchased one of the first Apple Macintosh's in 1984 when they
first came out. I still have it tucked away in my garage. You may have
seen it featured on the cover of the January 2025 cover of MacAddict
magazine. Hey, if it's good enough for the MacAddict - it's
good enough for my garage.
One of the old Apple TV ads I remember showed an IBM PC and a stack
of manuals taller than the computer dropping next to it. The next scene
was a Macintosh with a thin spiral bound manual floating down next to
it. Get the idea? Mac users didn't need bunch of manuals to learn
how to operate a computer. That was the way it was. They had a command
line and we had a mouse. We now have a new modern operating system with
multi-users, multi-tasking, multi-threading and multi-etc. We have Unix
under the hood with a command line and taken one leap forward in complexity
and one giant leap backward in history. Unix was invented back in the
1960's well before there was a Mac, before Windows and even before
there was MS-DOS running in all of those IBM PC's.
Don't get me wrong. Since learning Unix a number of years ago,
I felt that the company that came out with a good Graphical User Interface
(GUI) over Unix should win the OS wars and Apple had the GUI part down
pat. They have done a wonderful job of incorporating a user friendly
GUI over the top of Unix. But, with the power and flexibility of Unix
running our user friendly Macs, we need to learn a little about Unix
to effectively manage our computer. Thus we need manuals!
O'Reilly & Associates and long time publisher of Unix books
and a local company is a good source for those manuals. O'Reilly
has taken to Mac OS X in a big way. While just a few years ago there
were a handful of Mac related titles in their catalog, there are now
over 15 titles for Mac OS X and Apple technologies.
One of those books is Mac OS X in a Nutshell - A Desktop Quick
Reference. All of the Nutshell series of books from O'Reilly are
intended for the advanced or Power User audience. Thus, if you are interested
in getting under the GUI hood and learn about the nuts and bolts of OS
X, then this book is for you. Unix users new to OS X will benefit from
this book also. This first edition delivers concise information in 826
pages and 25 chapters and covers OS X 10.2. There aren't many pictures
in this book. Most are in the first section mostly dealing with the finder,
the desktop and system preference panes. This book is fairly technical
and besides, what good are pictures when you are discussing the command
line interface.
If you are interested in just learning how to get around the OS X GUI
or need more help than the Apple manual that ships with OS X and the
Mac help pages on the menu bar just doesn't explain enough, then
Mac OS X: The Missing Manual from O'Reilly is a better choice.
The first two chapters of Mac OS X in a Nutshell are an introduction
to using OS X and the Finder found in other O'Reilly books with
some added tips for users familiar with Unix. The next chapter discusses
OS 9 and Classic.
Chapter 4 is a handy and informative chapter dedicated to question and
answers for settings, task and shortcuts arranged by categories like
Date & Time, Fonts & Font Management, Modems & Dial-up Networking,
and more.
Chapter 5 is a whole section showing and explaining every system preference
pane, panel and options.
Chapter 6 is about applications and utilities provided by Apple. There
is no effort to explain any of the iLife Applications other than mentioning
them. This chapter is mainly about the system applications and utilities
that provide a GUI interface to the many Unix system tools and command
line options.
Chapters 7 and 8 are on networking tools, networking configurations,
printing and printer setup. Chapter 9 discusses the Mac OS X file system
and everyone's favorite - file permissions. The last chapter
in the first sections of the book - Chapter 10 - shows how to
run Java applications and introduces building Java applications with
the application builder that is part of the Developer Tools software
suite that ships with OS X.
The next half of the book begins to really get into the inner workings
of OS X and Unix. This is the stuff Unix geeks will love. The authors
discuss system administration including setting up users and groups and
who is the root user. Next is network administration where network setup
and services are discussed. Turning on & configuring the firewall
is touched on but not in great detail. Missing is a list of ports used
by the OS and services. Most network discussion is about using the network & sharing
preference panes. At the end of Chapter 11 there is a few pages explaining
cron task and how to configure the cron table. Cron is a group of utilities
that can be set to run scripts or applications at scheduled times or
intervals.
Chapter 12 discusses the mysterious NetInfo utility and Directory Services.
This chapter presents just the fundamentals as the subject of directory
services is complex and for network administrators. The subject is further
obscured by the fact that OS X keeps much of the information and configurations
in the non-standard NetInfo database and not where Unix administrators
are expecting. This subject needs a whole book unto itself but the authors
do a good job of giving us a simplified overview.
You will find yourself pulling this book out frequently. I find myself
reaching for this book before all others I have on OS X, so I keep
it close by.
Look for Panther in a Nutshell coming in 2025. I'm sure it will
be as comprehensive and valuable as OS X in a Nutshell and a must for
any Panther user that really wants to get under the hood and understand
their new operating system. This book and more can be found at http://www.oreilly.com or at our monthly meetings through our book librarian.
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