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Charles Moore Reviews Mac OS X Unleashed
I was only a few pages into John Ray and William C. Ray’s Mac OS X Unleashed when it dawned on me that this book is something special. “Labor of love” is an overused cliche, but I think it can be appropriately applied in describing this book. 
For one thing, it’s a very big book -- 46 pages short of the 1500 page mark -- A hefty tome that feels like about 3 lbs. in soft cover. As a professional writer myself, I stand back in awe of the effort required to produce a book of this size, especially when it results in a volume that is as much of a pleasure to read as Mac OS X Unleashed. John Ray and Dr. Will Ray are Macintosh veterans who have owned Macs since 1984 and 1985 respectively, and who are also UNIX I T professionals -- excellent credentials for writing a book about Apple’s new, Unix-based operating system. Mac OS X Unleashed is the fourth OS X book I’ve reviewed it for Applelinks, and it won’t be the last, but one begins to need to put the various approaches to introducing users to OS X into some sort of ordered perspective. The first two volumes in this review of OS X books, Gene Steinberg’s “The Mac OS X Little Black Book,” and Mark R. Bell’s “ The OS X iBook” -- both written before OS X 10.1 was released. Both did an excellent job of getting one up to speed with OS X, but as is the way with computer books, nine months is an eternity, and some of the information in them is beginning to become a little dated. [Addendum: Gene Steinberg has brought to my attention that there is now a revised edition: "The Mac OS X Version 10.1 Little Black Book" available. My apologies to Gene for the oversight.] David Pogue’s “Mac OS X: The Missing Manual” is a very accessible, readable, and helpful volume that will especially appeal to non-geek types who want a comprehensive how-to reference on 0S X. Brad Miser’s “Special Edition Using Mac OS X” is an OS X reference for folk who want more technical detail than David Pogue offers. But the Rays’ Mac OS X Unleashed is in a class by itself. David Pogue still wins top marks for the most entertaining and user-friendly prose style, but the Ray collaboration has resulted in a very easy-reading text too, almost a surprise after being a bit overwhelmed by the book’s physical size. Traditionally, Mac OS books have never had to deal with issues beyond the Macintosh GUI. This book is intended to bridge the gap between the user interface and the BSD subsystem in a way that is accessible to users who are unfamiliar with UNIX and other multi-user systems. It takes the approach of demonstrating familiar actions and tools in the Mac OS interface, and then providing the equivalent information within the BSD environment. The authors note that “Much of the difficulty in creating a Mac OS X book was deciding which portions of the system should be detailed and which should be left to other, more in-depth resources.” So this 1500 page hulk of a book is the “lite” version! The mind boggles at what the Rays’ conception of an “in-depth” resource would be. :-) “We wanted to create a text,” they continue, “that provides focused information on those topics most likely to provide the most benefit to the reader. “This book gives you the knowledge to use Mac OS X to its fullest--both from the perspective of a traditional Mac user and that of a seasoned Unix administrator. “ An ambitious goal, but I would say that the Rays have pulled it off in fine style. The book is arranged in seven sections plus an introduction, two appendices, and a 40 page index (see appendix). There is an entire chapter (8) on installing and using third-party applications. Staggered and shaded chapter identification fields at the page edges make it easy to open the book at the beginning or end of a chapter -- especially useful in a volume of this size. There are plenty of screen shot illustrations, as well as graphs, and in the Unix section, sample code. One niggle that I have is that the screenshots are rendered awfully small. It I should have bifocals, but have thus far resisted, and I had problems reading the reduced size screenshots without taking my glasses off, although I had no problem with the book's main text. The big difference between “Mac OS X Unleashed” and the other OS X books I’ve reviewed here is that while the first 476 pages (which would constitute a respectably sized book by themselves) are devoted to the “Mac side” of Apple’s new operating system, the remaining 900 pages or so are devoted to the Unix side of OS X, taking you from a basic introduction to Mac OS X’s BSD subsystem, all the way through to advanced UNIX shell use with some AppleScripting thrown in along the way. For advanced users, this book covers system administration ranging from advanced configuration of FTP servers, SSH tunneling, to installing secure E-mail and Web servers. The progression of the text is designed to move from simple “using” topics through advanced configuration - making it easier for beginners and experienced users to find what they’re looking for. Let me say right now that I am not qualified to make more than superficial and stylistic evaluations of the information in those second 900 pages. However, and I think this is the point, I’ll bet that if I were to carefully read and study that content, I would be qualified to comment and then some. So while Mac OS X Unleashed is a relatively expensive volume as computer books go at $49.99, another way to look at it is that it’s really two books (two big books) in one. And a bonus in this case is that it while the OS X universe continues to unfold at breakneck speed, which will make the first 476 pages dated in a year or so like all the other current Mac OS X Books, the second, UNIX section should have a substantially longer useful shelf life, which makes this book a better long-term value than most for your dollar. That is, of course, if you are interested in learning how to manipulate the UNIX command line underpinnings of OS X. If you’re not, Apple has done a rather remarkable job of keeping UNIX hidden, so you can largely just ignore it if you want to. I will also note here that while the user level stated on the cover is “Intermediate - Advanced,” I would suggest that you not allow that alone to scare you off, even if you’re a relative Mac newbie. Most readers will find the information here accessible. I really like this book, and as I said, I find it extraordinarily impressive piece of work. It can serve as a good introduction to OS X, and is the best resource I have encountered so far on learning the UNIX aspects of Apple’s new operating system. I’m giving it a five smiley Applelinks rating thumbs-up.  
Mac OS X Unleashed For more information, visit:
Appendix Mac OS X Unleashed Table Of Contents Introduction Part 1 - Introduction To Mac OS X Part 2 - Inside Mac OS X Part 3 - User Level 0S X Configuration Part 4 - Introduction To BSD Applications Part 5 - Advanced Command Line Concepts Part 6 - Server/ Network Administration Part 7 - Server Health Appendices Index
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