Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Book!, June 16, 2003
This book is a very interesting read. For folks that like their solutions quick and clean this the book for you. The book is designed to be used by reading "chunks" to accomplish your desired hack, in the vein of "How to" articles popularized by the now defunct MacUser magazine. Dornfest and Hemenway put together a slick, easy to read guide with some very useful tips and tricks for Mac OS X. The authors have impressive credentials in the Mac community and several equally qualified professionals are credited with contributions to the tome.The book is divided into nine chapters, each with about 10 tips. The subjects include Files, Startup, Multimedia and iApps, The User Interface, UNIX and the Terminal, Networking, Email, The Web, and Databases. Each tip is one to three pages long and well laid out in easy to follow step-wise instructions. A simple "thermometer" icon is given with each tip to alert the user to the level of difficulty. Additionally, throughout the book the authors alert users to areas where they should be careful. Being new to the Unix environment, I found the tips on use of the Terminal application and several utilities that are unique to Unix to be a valuable introduction for me. After the thorough introduction to the Terminal application, Dornfest and Hemenway proceed to build on the basics by demonstrating the usefulness of the application with more advanced commands such as chmod and sudo. Tricks covered include: Stubborn trash, stuck images and Jammed CDs; Turning your Mac into a Hard Drive; Hijacking Audio from Mac Apps; Top Screenshots Tips; Interacting with the UNIX Shell from AppleScript; Sharing an Internet Connection; Creating Mail Aliases; and Serving up a Website with the Built-in Apache Server. Each chapter includes tips and tricks for beginners and advanced users alike. Several of the hacks make reference to other areas covered in the book, but each tip is useful on its own. Several of the tips are hacks to the system using the Terminal application and serve to show the user the underpinnings of the OS. All in all, a fascinating look at OS X from two masters of the realm.
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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hack-A-Mac, April 4, 2003
...O'Reilly has never steered me wrong with books for UNIX, Windows, Perl, you name it. So therefore when I saw the "MAC OS X HACKS" book I immediately grabbed a copy. Having just finished "Google Hacks", another O'Reilly publication, I was eager to dive in and see if this book would be as useful as the Google book. I would not be disappointed. One of the unique aspects of this book is you can turn to any "hack" and begin applying it without having to read the others. The book is like a collection of many magazine articles brought together under one roof - and with all the media fluff removed. I was amazed at how a novice like me could easily follow the step-by-step instructions and not feel lost. I soon found myself using color-coded paperclips to mark off sections of the book for future reference in terms of what they did (OS setting, audio settings, etc.). You can dive right into some of the more advanced hacks, such as setting up your own mail server, without having to worry that the authors will assume you are familiar with how to do a particular step. They walk you through the entire process; complete with screen shots for some of the more tricky options, and let you focus on the task at hand. Considering how much benefit this novice MAC OS X user got from the book, more advanced Macintosh users are likely to find that this book provides a quick "easy reference" for some of the more tricky or complicated setups. Since the book is organized into independent sections, one could easily use this for a desktop reference. Plus, it's not the "Macintosh for Dummies" type of book that seems to fill most shelves nowadays - the authors assume you want to do the advanced stuff with OS X, but just need some tips to get you going. Hopefully O'Reilly will continue with the "Hacks" series of books (I'm eagerly awaiting a book on Windows Hacks!); they are the first series of books that really let the end users get under the hood of various platforms and tasks and "get the job done" without feeling lost. I would not be surprised to see MAC OS X Hacks, as well as other Hacks books, come out in volume format. After all, after spending almost a week with the MAC OS X book, I can see how these can quickly expand to cover a lot more topics in a similar, condensed format - which for us "get it done now" type people is a godsend!
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great book albeit already dated, February 9, 2004
I am coming back to Mac after 8 years of unix and linux, so it's cool to have a book like this. It has a lot of good tips about using the Macintosh applications (iPhoto, iMovie, Mail) as well as ways to integrate them with the unix stuff (cron, apache, mysql,...). I also loved the information about dynamic domain name service for your broadband connection. I devoured the book in a weekend. One caveat: the book covers OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) and we're up to 10.3 (Panther). Some of the iApps have changed since the writing. Interestingly enough, some "hacks" are now easy-to-use features. There are a few notes about this fact, but it would be nice to have a new edition for a new OS. All in all, though, it's a book that makes me feel smart for buying a Mac, and helps me to realize its full potential.
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