Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell (Paperback)

by Chuck Toporek (Editor), Chris Stone (Publisher)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
An instant success among newcomers, longtime Apple® fans and serious Unix® users alike, the Mac OS® X operating system combines stability, simplicity and elegance, and a stunning user interface. What more could Mac users want or need? The answer, of course, is Mac OS X Panther--a sleek and powerful overhaul of Mac OS X that promises to revitalize your Mac with improved views of the system, significant improvements to favorite applications, and numerous added conveniences. As with its predecessor, Jaguar, Mac OS X Panther offers plenty of new territory to explore. To show the way, O'Reilly's latest Nutshell book, Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition offers all audiences--both longtime Mac users and hardcore Unix users--the most complete guide to this remarkable operating system.

The latest edition of this all-purpose reference leads power users through the newly changed landscape of Mac OS X. Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition provides details about the user-interface elements, system and network administration, and scripting and development. If you want to probe more deeply into the BSD Unix side of Mac OS X, there's a section that delves "under the hood." The book also includes the most complete Unix command reference found in print--with each command and option painstakingly tested and checked against Panther. Even the manpages that ship with the system can't compete in accuracy!

Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition offers a thorough treatment of Mac OS X Panther, from its BSD Unix foundation to the finer points of its user interface. It familiarizes readers with the Finder™ and the Dock, file management, system configuration, network administration issues, and more, including a clear picture of what's new

Other topics covered in the book include:
Filesystem overview
Running Java® applications
System and Network Administration
Directory Services and NetInfo
Scripting on Mac OS X Panther
Using CVS
Unix Command Reference
An overview of the Apple® X11 distribution
Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition is the
indispensable guide for anyone who wants to know Mac OS X
Panther inside and out.

About the Author
Chuck Toporek cut his teeth on a Mac II system when he got his first job in publishing in 1988, and has been using them ever since. Chuck is a senior editor in charge of the Mac OS X/Apple Developer Connection (ADC) series for O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. He is also the author/editor of the Mac OS X Panther Pocket Guide, co-author of Mac OS X in a Nutshell, and author of the upcoming title, Inside .Mac.

Chris Stone ([e-mail]) is a Senior Systems Administrator (the Mac guy) at O'Reilly & Associates and coauthor of Mac OS X in a Nutshell. He's written several Mac OS X related articles for the O'Reilly MacDevCenter (www.macdevcenter.com), and contributed to Mac OS X: The Missing Manual from Pogue Press. Chris lives in Petaluma, California with his wife, Miho, and two sons, Andrew and Jonathan.

Jason McIntosh lives and works in and around Boston. He has co-authored two O'Reilly books, Mac OS X in a Nutshell and Perl & XML, and writes occasional columns and weblog entries for the O'Reilly Network. His homepage is at http://www.jmac.org.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1054 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.; 2nd edition (June 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596006063
• ISBN-13: 978-0596006068
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #514,638 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Definitive Guide to Panther, August 31, 2004

By	John A. Suda (Rochester NY) - See all my reviews

The publisher, O'Reilly Media, seems dedicated to covering Apple's OSX operating system, OSX, from every conceivable vantage point. Its "Missing Manual" series on Panther is a user's reference on how to use the operating system and its applications for productivity and fun. Its "Hacks" series provides dozens of tips, guides, and project ideas. In the "Nutshell" series iteration, "MacOSX Panther in a Nutshell" designs to provide in-depth, comprehensive information about the inner workings of the OS. It is for power users and developers who want to master the OS and have the fullest description and explanation of OSX.

This book starts out detailing the multi-layered architecture of OSX and illuminates its power and elegance. In great depth and detail, it explains the Unix components, Aqua elements, OS9 and Classic, the Finder, and the multitude of Unix services, daemons, and applications.

This is terse, descriptive prose. The authors focus a sharp telephoto lens on the skeleton, sinews, and pores of OSX, starting with basic elements and probing deep into the details of the file system, networking components, directory services, printing configurations and more. This in-depth description and large handfuls of guides and tips totals over 1,000 pages.

A separate part of the book is devoted to Applescript, X-code tools, and Java. The X-code tools are for developers. Part IV is all about Unix, including three chapters on "shells" alone, plus sections on text editors, the X-Window system, and a full 262 pages of Unix command references, touted as the most complete such source in print publication.

No mere user manual would have ten pages devoted solely to understanding and managing preference files, or five pages on using the Colorsync feature with Quartz filter scripts.

Surprisingly, only ten pages are dedicated to security issues. Although the Mac is known to be extremely secure, recent news shows even the Mac is vulnerable to sophisticated exploits.

For those with a need to know, this is the definitive source for deep knowledge of OSX.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and authoritative, July 21, 2004

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Do any of you remember the O'Reilly books from the late 80s on X Windows? Those became the definitive guides to X11, and probably were crucial in putting O'Reilly on the map as a prominent technical publisher.

Well, this book on Mac OS X Panther captures some of that early O'Reilly spirit. In its comprehensiveness and heft. But also in its terseness. Turn to a random chapter and start reading. The authors try to get to the point, without wasting time. They write at a technical level that assumes you don't know the specifics of that chapter, but that you are no novice to computing.

It should be noted that the second half of the book is essentially a standard unix reference. As you may be aware, OS X is now a unix variant. Which is neat. But also accounts for much of the book's size. Unix has built up a massive set of utilities in 20 years, and the length of the unix sections here reflects this.

Don't let this put you off either the book or OS X. On the contrary! The building of the Mac operating system on top of unix gives you more power and stability (against crashes) on the Mac.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hefty, deep and well written, July 28, 2004

By	Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

It's tough to tell this from Amazon, but this book is a thousand pages, which makes it quite a hefty tome. But that doesn't make it a doorstop. There are screenshots, but they are, by in large, useful and relevant, and the book doesn't use them to tell a click by click story of the interface.

The book is organized into four parts that start at the user interface and continue to peel away levels of the system until, in chapter four, the author covers the command line unix shell at a surprising level of detail. A level of detail which rivals O'Reilly's other command line exclusive books. In fact, this book gives a fine introduction to scripting bash and tcsh. It does as good a job there as it does covering printing, or the vagaries of the new Finder in the chapters that precede it.

This is a quality piece of in-depth work about the unmodified Panther operating system. It's well worth the price for those who are more interested in understanding than hacking (though I admit a love for the new Mac OS X Panther Hacks book as well.)