Customer Reviews

Apple Training Series: Mac OS X Support Essentials (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is for Service Professionals or those wishing to become Service Professionals. It gives the reader everything he/she will need to pass the required exam for the Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP) designation. This rating replaces the Apple Certified Help Desk Specialist (ACHDS) rating and covers Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Each chapter provides in-depth coverage of the workings of the operating system. The Appendix includes the Apple Troubleshooting Workflow Chart and troubleshooting methodology used by Apple Technicians.

You'll learn about Installation and Setup, including configuring, installation troubleshooting, etc. Lesson 2 covers User Accounts, how to manage them, account security, and more. Lesson 3 covers Storage, Partitions and Volumes, File Ownership and Permissions, File Management via the Command Line. Lesson 4 covers the Mac OS X Volume Hierarchy, Mac OS X Metadata, Archiving and Backup. Lesson 5 discusses Applications and Boot Camp, Processes, and how to run Windows on a Mac. Lesson 6 provides detailed information about Network Configuration, fundamental networking concepts, configuring Mac OS X networking, and network troubleshooting. Lesson 7 describes how to access network services and directory services. Lesson 8 takes you through a discussion about providing network services, providing and protecting network services, and troubleshooting shared services. Lesson 9 talks about peripherals and printing, as well as faxing. Lesson 10 includes an overview and detailed discussion of the startup process and troubleshooting the startup process. Finally, the Appendix covers troubleshooting techniques.

Support Professionals need to pass one exam, Mac OS X Support Essentials v10.5 Exam (9L0-402), sponsored by Thompson Prometric. This book will give the reader everything necessary to pass the exam. Those pursuing Apple Technical Certification may also want Apple leader-led training, which is available at training centers in major cities in the United States.

For the above reasons, I highly recommend this book, which is well written, easy to read, contains essential information, is thorough in its scope and complete in its design.

It's hard for me to get past my only major complaint with this book: the complete lack of proofreading. It's littered with typos, duplicate or missing words, and sentence fragments. At least a dozen in the first half of the book alone! For example, pg 27 ends with, "However, if you wish to migrate from another MAC system." That's an if/then statement without the "then" part. That's the whole sentence, I swear.

Technically speaking it's very thorough, without going overboard. The information is presented clearly and logically. I'm a novice MAC user whose clients use a few MACs for nothing important but are looking to expand their usefulness and this book helps me understand some of the finer elements the other idiots guide books don't.

Really, it's a fine book. But if typo's drive you nuts -and this book has more than its fair share of them- wait until they release a revised copy.

I purchased this book to prepare myself for the OS X Support Essentials 10.5 Exam, I PASSED and PASSED WELL! Everything that you need to know is in this book. If you want to pass the exam and can't afford to attend a training course this book is all you will need. It covers every topic in sufficient detail, it is easy to understand and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone wishing to embark on a career supporting OS 10.5 machines. Please make sure you read the Knowledge Base References at the end of every chapter. They will give you greater background on each topic area. Kevin M White has produced a great text here, well done!.

I picked this up to read and prepare for a mac OS X certification test. Its got lots of great information and really explains a lot of what is going n in the background in Leopard. I've used macs for years, but I still found this to be helpful in explaining the why behind a lot of the Mac OS.

I have taken (and passed) the exam by intensely studying this book and Pogue's Missing Manual. Having said that, let me warn you about two things: 1) This book is piss-poor when it comes to preparing you for the networking aspect of the exam. (And, yes, there are quite a few networking questions.) I might also add I passed the exam without touching a Macintosh computer, but that's another story. 2) After passing the exam and going through the labyrinthine process known as Apple hiring, I was offered a job, but the pay was abysmal and I turned it down. I did consider taking the hardware exam, but that's not really my thing, so I never followed through on the second exam. (I've heard that the pay for that, too, is a mere pittance.) I guess saying you work for Apple is supposed to be a substitution for a real living wage. Anyway, as a side note: I do own a Mac now; and it's the best computer I've ever owned. If you really want to ace the exam, you do need this book. But you need to supplement your knowledge with real hands-on experimenting with networking or maybe getting another book on the subject. The way the exam is structured, you're presented with a real-life situation, and it's impossible to BS your way through it. You have to be very well aware of proper trouble-shooting protocol, etc. Hope this helps someone.

I saw a Macworld talk by the author (Neutered Admins, from the 2008 MacIT conference), and learned some really useful things. He mentioned that he'd written this book, and I bought it hoping for more information that would be useful to me in my system administration job supporting Mac and Linux users.

Alas, this book is aimed at help desks providing tier-one support, new users, or maybe Windows power users who are switching to the Mac. It has lots of coverage of the GUI and how to use a Mac for routine tasks and very little else. If, for example, you wanted to learn how a Leopard system sets a user's path (for use in the Terminal), you won't find that information here. You also won't find any information on how the system handles NFS mounts, how Leopard handles X11 and SSH agents with launchd, how you would set a Mac up to authenticate from another machine, or any other topic beyond what a reasonably experienced Mac user would probably already know or be able to figure out pretty quickly.

This book was very informative and easy to read. If you have no experience at all with a Mac this book is still very easy to understand. I would recommend this book before you decide to tackle any other book in the Apple Training Series, it will give you a good foundation.

This is an excellent book for anyone wanting to learn more about OS X Leopard. I'm using it to study for the ACSP test. So far I've learned a lot from the book. Recommended highly.

I kind of came to this book "backwards"; I had (still have) a job working with Macs before I found this book. We're still using 10.5, so this copy is 100% relevant to my job. Reading this book puts all the rather random pieces of information that I've gleaned and the solutions I've found into a more complete understanding. It flows rather nicely from one concept to the next, from first install on to user management and on into file system and so on.

The real value here is that it covers the parts of troubleshooting and setup that you may not ever use day to day (but will surely be useful for the 1% of head scratcher problems that dog you for a whole day). The book is also very conversational about those settings that you probably shouldn't mess with for your own good (i.e. advanced user account settings).

Though this is for the "old" version of OS X, its loaded with information, much of which also applies to 10.6 (though I wouldn't try and test with only info for 10.5!).

Purchased for class I am taking. This text is part of exam prep for Apple Certified Support exam. Very good resource.