Mac OS 9.1 Black Book: A Comprehensive Technical Reference Guide [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by Mark R. Bell (Author), Debrah D. Suggs (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The Mac OS 9.1 Black Book focuses on the built-in capabilities of Mac OS 9 plus covers printing, networking technologies, and Internet services. It covers what's new in the latest version of the Mac OS, 9.1, and provides step-by-step solutions to everyday problems encountered when working with OS 9. Each chapter includes: technical review of a topic, step-by-step approaches to common tasks, quick reference information, and a utilities section citing the best tools for each task and how to access them. This book goes beyond the basics with technical references and practical troubleshooting, administrative tools, networking technologies, and more. It demonstrates how to perform the most common administrative tasks. In addition, the book shows you how to use the most popular tools and utilities. This book dives into networking and online issues like Internet access and security, publishing on the web, Internet applications and utilities.

About the Author
Mark R. Bell (Chapel Hill, NC) is a best-selling author of over 22 computer books, articles, and software manuals, including The Mac Web Server Book, The Mac OS 8 Book, Mac OS 8.5 Black Book, The Mac OS 8.6 Book, and The Mac OS 9 Book. He also is a technical editor, contributing author, and technology forum guest speaker. Mark lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his wife, Virginia.

Debrah D. Suggs (Durham, NC) is a Macintosh specialist in the Office of Information Technology at Duke University. She has worked behind the scenes in the publication of several books, including researching, compiling software, and technical editing. This is her first book as coauthor.

Product Details

• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: Coriolis Technology Press (December 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576109291
• ISBN-13: 978-1576109298
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #434,270 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mac OS 9.1 Black Book: Needs More Updating, February 7, 2001

By	Laure-Madeleine (NYC) - See all my reviews

The _Mac OS 9.1 Black Book_ is touted by its authors as being written for three groups of people: (1) system administrators; (2) programmers; and (3) power users. Although I do not consider myself to have "geek" status, I might imagine that I am a "power user." Since Apple released Mac OS 9.1 on January 10, 2001, I found the publication date of this book, December 29, 2000, to be slightly suspect. After I browsed the book at random and cross-checked index references, I was rather disheartened to discover that the information seemed to be rather basic (more in line with what one would find in a _ for Dummies_ book). Moreover, I found that the index pagination did not match up with the entries.

Further, I discovered that there were no references to _Microsoft Office 2001 for Mac_, which I consider to be a serious omission since this software was released in September, 2000. There are only a few pages on MS Word and Excel, and the information states that the Mac OS 9.1 user should not have very many problems because of the improvements made in _MS Office 98_!

Another entry that I checked was for the ARA (Apple Remote Access) control panel. The _Black Book_ gave some very basic information on it, and concluded that the ARA was not something that most Mac users would be employing, unless they were connecting to a LAN (Local Area Network). The book gave the rationale that most non-networked users would connect through a PPP rather than use ARA. To me, this information is not only outmoded, it is rather incomplete. Without going into too much technical detail, there are several ways to connect to an LAN, such as using AppleShare, AppleTalk, IRTalk, a LocalTalk cable and adapter, an Ethernet cable, or IrDA (Infrared). Unless I want to connect to one of the online services directly, I always use ARA (rather than PPP) to connect to my ISP (Internet Service Provider) because I get a higher baud rate that way, and ARA supports multiple connections, which is necessary if one is doing data transmission, using more than one browser, connecting to online services (such as AOL), e-mail servers (such as Telnet or Outlook Express), and instant-messaging applications (such as AIM). Also, one might use a DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) modem, cable modem, or direct network connection.

This _Black Book_ does go into some detail about cross-platform connectivity. However, most power-users, programmers, and sysadmins already know about how to address this issue. Mac OS 9.1 is a major system upgrade from Mac OS 9.04 in some respects, but not that much in the area of cross-platform connectivity. However, this book does discuss the new "streamlining" of folders that occurs. It also has a lot of detail on tweaking the "Appearance" control panel settings.

After I looked up a few more topics, I concluded that the information provided in this _Black Book_ was lacking in sophistication for "power-users." Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, there are no other books in print yet that address Mac OS 9.1, (although Apple does provide online help and the "Mac Help" menu on OS 9.1 does cover the basics and "what's new.") So if you are upgrading from Mac OS 8.6 directly to 9.1, and you have not bought a _for Dummies_ book on your Mac system software in some time, you may find this book to be a useful reference.