Amazon.com: Learning Unix for Mac OS X Tiger: Dave Taylor: Books

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Amazon.com: Learning Unix for Mac OS X Tiger: Books: Dave Taylor

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22 Reviews

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
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4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #180,785 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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#10 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Apple > Mac OS X UNIX
#37 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Apple > Mac OS X

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This item is part of The O'Reilly Learning Series.

Inside This Book (learn more)

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
superuser privileges, managing files, base station, toylor toylor, text from another window, paste the same text, scroll buffer, accessing queue, root wheel, bashrc file, root admin, terminal window, relative pathname, shell prompt, xterm window, redirection operator, taylor staff, terminal application, grep command, absolute pathname, dot files, working directory

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Microsoft Word, Force Quit, Exploring the Filesystem, File Management, Xcode Tools, Some Picks, Defaults Figure, Masters Thesis, Launching the Terminal, Use Settings, Get Info, Option Description, X's Terminal, X's Unix, System Preferences, Transferring Files, Snapz Pro, Jeff Lorber, Adobe Photoshop, Taking Unix Online, Remote Logins, Activity Monitor, Microsoft Office, Explore Your Filesystem, Philly Style

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	58% buy the item featured on this page: Learning Unix for Mac OS X Tiger 4.4 out of 5 stars (22)
	14% buy A Practical Guide to UNIX(R) for Mac OS(R) X Users 4.8 out of 5 stars (5) $29.69
	12% buy Unix for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: Visual QuickPro Guide (2nd Edition) 5.0 out of 5 stars (5) $22.79
	9% buy MAC OS X UNIX Toolbox: 1000+ Commands for the Mac OS X 5.0 out of 5 stars (1) $23.09

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Customer Reviews

22 Reviews

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

Average Customer Review

4.4 out of 5 stars (22 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beginning Unix, June 14, 2005

By	E. Wuehler (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is primarily a "Unix 101" book. I would approximate that about half of the book is general Unix information that applies to all Unix/Linux variants. The other half goes over how to use these commands with Tiger.

It's not a big book and doesn't go into great detail, rather it gives short introductions to Unix utilities. For example, entire books are written on grep and regular expressions, but here there are only seven pages or so devoted to this topic. If you're already pretty comfortable with Unix, you may want to check out a different book (Mac OS X Tiger for Unix Geeks, for example).

I liked (and wish there had been more of) the information on mdls and mdfind, which gives you command line access to Spotlight metadata information.

I think the chapters on X11 and Fink, while interesting, might be a little too advanced for the beginner. In my opinion, there isn't enough information on X11 and you should be pretty comfortable with Unix before diving into Fink.

If you've never opened up Terminal to get a glimpse of Tiger's Unix capabilities, this is a great introduction. Just be careful with the sudo command! :)

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice on concepts, poor on details, September 18, 2006

By	D. Greenbaum "DoctorDave™ www.clickhere... (Lawrence, KS) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I had really high hopes for this book. I consider myself a pretty smart Mac tech, but Unix was the one thing that really scared me about OS X. To fix some esoteric problem, I'd have to follow some Unix recipe and it always annoyed me I didn't understand what I was typing. O'Relly books are well known not just for the animals on the cover, but excellent explanations of very technical concepts.

After reading Taylor's book, I felt better, but not by much. Most readers can easily understand the basic unix file structure commands, but towards the middle of the book he inaccurately assumed that his readers could also quickly understand some of the advanced concepts. Towards the end of the book I was left scratching my head. We went from move a file here and there to commands that were taking up multiple lines. Arrrgh!

The critical flaw in the book was a lack of exercises and real world examples. When I want to learn something, I don't just want to be told. Involve me and test my knowledge. Some of the more difficult concepts covered in the book would have been enhanced with numerous real world examples, each building on the other. Things moved way too fast and made it easy to get lost.

The book was an excellent overview of Unix for the Macintosh and perfect for someone to decide whether to pursue further learning. "Introduction to Unix" instead of "Learning Unix" would have been a better title. After reading the book, I was reminded of speed dating where you meet 20 people for five minutes each and decide whether you want to go out with them or not. After reading the book I have enough familiarity with Unix that I can understand basic commands and how they relate to each other. I clearly want to go out on another date but any type of wedding bells are way in the distance.

PROS: Excellent overview of Unix for the Macintosh
CONS: Doesn't leave you with enough practical understanding

3 out of 5 dog cows

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Introduction, September 25, 2005

By	Alex Yeh "Alex" - See all my reviews

I am a "Classic" Mac OS "Power User." I was accustomed to the power and flexibility of the Classic Mac OS coupled with various third-party utilities & software.

Upon recently acquiring an iMac DV with Tiger installed, I wanted to be able to wield similar power over this new computer, but I saw that in order to do so, I would need to learn Unix, since the various third-party utilities I was using previously would not work on Tiger. So I spent some time reading "man" pages and trying to find internet resources, but all the internet resources assumed a basic knowledge of unix, and reading "man" pages presented me with more information than I could process, as all the unix commands have such a large host of options.

Shortly thereafter, a friend got me this book. Unlike other materials I had seen, this book did not get bogged down in complex details. Instead, it "walks" the user through the totally novel (to mac users) environment of Terminal, explaining the terse grammar of UNIX, touching on the most useful options.

Some cool things I learned from this book include:
How to use the terminal to ftp to a site (you don't need fetch!)
How to use regular expressions and wildcards to quickly sort through scads of data
How to "pipeline" commands to automate in a way that would be much more difficult using applescript.
How to change the terminal prompt.

Perhaps after the next book, I'll feel confident enough to set up the SSH server.

When I emailed Mr. Taylor with a question, I was amazed when he actually responded. He seems like a really cool guy, and I think I'll get his next book, the one on shell scripting.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Baby!
Here you go. This can get you started as a system pro. Simplistic! I read a review before I bought this and it said , "nice handbook". Read more

Published 15 days ago by Albert Bommarito

5.0 out of 5 stars A clear explanation that isn't just for dummies
Learning not only one but two new operating systems can be a challenge (I have used computers since they filled rooms and ate punch cards, but this is my first foray into Mac... Read more

Published 15 months ago by Marte

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good introduction to Unix
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5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book to know Unix basics
The book seems to me an excellent reference in order to introduce the reader in the language which supports Mac OS X. Read more

Published on April 25, 2007 by S. L. De

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Overall Introduction
This book is easy to read and a good intro. to using Unix on the Mac, and the Terminal. It has enough information for most command line work, and will overwhelm you with some... Read more

Published on February 3, 2007 by R. Pierce

3.0 out of 5 stars Just a taste of Unix on Mac
Get the Sobell Unix for Mac OC X Users...it's by far a superior value, and provides in-depth coverage...Dave Taylor's book just scratches the surface... Read more

Published on December 11, 2006 by Conifer

1.0 out of 5 stars is this book UNIX for eunochs or what ?
I bought this book because I'm trying to get OS X to use a NFS mount off of a FreeBSD server - amongst other things. Read more

Published on July 14, 2006 by O. P. Gardiner

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book for novices of unix
Great book that got me back into the unix command line world. Hadnt used any unix commands in a long time, after reading the first 3 chapters i was back up and running. Read more

Published on March 25, 2006 by D. B Hargreaves

4.0 out of 5 stars a great book for beginners..... but
first off let me say that this book is extermly well written has excellent examples and the author is easy to understand. Read more

Published on March 19, 2006 by Mark Dymek

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good beginner book!
Having some extra time on my hands I decided to acquaint myself with the Unix underpinnings of Mac OS X, but being a Unix beginner, I needed some guidance. Read more

Published on February 26, 2006 by R. Hogg

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