8038 Some people just can't resist hacking their computers and software, and for them the journey often becomes the destination. Others are inclined to leave everything box-stock and even a stick with the operating system version and browser that their computer shipped with until they upgrade to a new machine five or six years later. The preponderant rest of us fall somewhere between these extremes, upgrading when it seems sensible read and advantageous to do so, and indulging in a bit of hacking as well when that seems like a good idea. And often an idea is all we need to inspire us to take on a hacking project.

Which is where Chris Siebold's new "Big Book Of Apple Hacks" comes in. With over 100 software and hardware hacks described, and many more smaller tips and tricks, there are plenty of the inspiring and hopefully useful ideas in this book from which one can pick and choose. The selection is wide- ranging and eclectic, so most anyone should be able to find a number of hacks they will want to try.

Why hack? Because Apple systems (as well as iPhones and iPods) and software are configured the way their designers and engineers deem to be the most useful and convenient for the average user. But who's average? For sure, Apple has a strong track record of getting the default settings pretty close to right to for facilitating the out-of-the-box plug in and play experience the brand is famous for, but most of us will sooner or later get the urge to make the product(s) conform more specifically to our particular needs, ergo the impetus to hack.

The term "hack" may be off-putting to some users, connoting the nefarious types who inhabit the IT world with evil intent, writing malware and breaking into private and corporate databases. However, at its most basic, hacking is just customizing and modifying stuff to make it better perform what you need it to do. Indeed, some software is designed explicitly to be hackable, for example the plug in oriented architecture of Adobe Photoshop and the Firefox browser. Plug-ins are essentially hacks, and so are a lot of third-party applications and utilities.

There have been books on hacking the Mac almost as long as there have been Macs. The first one in our house was a 1994 tome by Doug Houseman, then Program Chairman and one of the founding members of the Mac Hack conferences, entitled "Late Night With Mac Hack" - a compilation of some 100 hacks presented at the Mac Hack conferences and which of course included the then-customary bundled CD containing some of the hacks discussed in the book. It was very popular with one of my progeny in particular.

Chris Siebold's Big Book Of Apple Hacks from the Make:Books imprint of O'Reilly Media, is a contemporary treatment of that same concept, only in this instance it's a collection of hacks from the editors of MAKE magazine and O' Reilly Media, including Siebold himself, a senior editor for the Apple Matters site.

The Big Book Of Apple Hacks containsa whopping 131 hacks arranged in 15 separate sections or "chapters." It would take up a column just to list the individual hacks and briefly describe them, but a few examples that jumped out at me, sending me a diving into the text to check them out as I browsed the the Table Of Contents included the several browser-oriented hacks (I'm a browser junkie), "Use That Software Restore Disk On (Almost) Any Mac;" "Free Up Gigabytes Of Space On Your Hard Drive (And Never Miss The Data)," "The 2¢ iPod Case," "Build A Screaming Fast Darwin Machine For $935 (Or Less); "A Brighter Spotlight;" "Burn Leopard To A Single Disk;" "Install Leopard From An Image;" the whole 7 - hack section on hacks for laptops, "Legal Online Sources For Music (Besides iTunes!)" And "No Lights? No Power? Still Got The Net!"

Of course that's just a small sampling of what's contained in this book. There are sections on hacks for the Internet, hacking OS X itself, command-line hacks, network and security hacks, hacks for the iPod, iPhone, and even Apple TV, hacking iLife applications, multimedia hacks, and multiple operating systems hacks. What ever your interest with the Mac, you should be able to find plenty to interest you in this book.

The Big Book Of Apple Hacks is set up more for reference browsing than cover-to-cover reading, so except perhaps for the introductory chapters, there's no "right" place to dive in, since each hack is intended to be as self-contained as possible and will point to where you need to go if it isn't. Since some of the hacks depend on command-line entry, so Chapter 4, "Command-Line Fun," (which you can also check out on line from the sample chapter link below) is probably worth checking out early on, especially if you're a bit rusty in that department. Not being much of a command-line jock myself (I have trouble remembering 6-word passwords, let alone strings of code!), I don't find the hacks requiring command-line manipulations especially enticing, but perhaps I can be brought up to speed.

"Most of the hacks in the book are answers to questions or problems people have had when using their Apple products," says Siebold, noting that "one of my favorite hacks is from a contributor, (Rich Lefko). After he left a job, he wanted to keep his work data - he used a PC at work, without having to buy a Windows PC. Rick's hack was brilliant. He discovered a way to swap the hard drive of the MacBook and install the hard drive from work and boot into Windows. So now, on the rare occasions he wants a Windows machine, he just switches out the drive in his MacBook."

Cool trick, but it should be noted that it is essentially limited to 13-inch MacBook users, thanks to that machine's extraordinarily easy access to the hard drive, which can be swapped in a minute or so.

The Big Book Of Apple Hacks is, well, big, described by the publisher as "bigger in size, longer in length, and broader in scope." It has a larger footprint than even the formidable O'Reilly published "Missing Manuals" books - 616 pages of text content plus another 10 pages of index, and spanning the Apple hardware and software spectrum from iPod to Mac Pro and OS X to iTunes.

The book's design is attractive - I find the blue and white cover theme with a photo of a disassembled MacBook Pro appeals to my sense of aesthetics.

Inside, page layout and design are reminiscent of the style of the Missing Manual books, although with a smaller font (a bit smaller than I would prefer, being a stubborn holdout resisting the bifocals I've been told I should be wearing), and if were my decision, I'd have opted for a couple of points larger font size and made room with less white space. Indeed, the book could have been made substantially smaller and easier to heft without any content change whatsoever simply by whopping off three quarters of an inch or so of white space. from the page margins.

Most of the hacks are copiously illustrated with screenshots and photos in grayscale, with Quick Tip, Quick Note, and Quick Hack sidebar boxes appearing frequently in the margins.

While this volume's the formidable size and weight are not my favorite features, the content is substantial, and ther is plenty keep any hands-on tech-oriented Mac user engrossed. The price is perhaps a little steep at $34.95 (US and Canada), but f you get a lot of content for your money, and some of the information included will almost certainly save you money in other contexts.

The Big Book of Apple Hacks
Tips & Tools for unlocking the power of your Apple devices
By Chris Seibold
First Edition April 2008
Pages: 640
Series: Hacks
ISBN 10: 0-596-52982-1
ISBN 13: 9780596529826
Price: $34.99 USD/£21.99 GBP
PDF $23.99

For more information, visit:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529826/

Sample Chapter

Command-Line Fun (PDF Format)
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529826/chapter/index.html

Charles W. Moore

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