Mac Osx Unleashed

by William C. Ray, John Ray, John Ray

Covers system administration ranging from advanced configurarion of FTP servers, SSH tunneling to installing secure email and webservers. This book will bridge the gap between the user interface and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0672322293
• ISBN13: 9780672322297
• Release Date: November 2001
• Publisher: Sams
• Length: 1500 Pages
• Weight: 5.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.3" x 7.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Review by Alaskan Apple Users Group member Ronald Schoedel

This is one hefty book, weighing in at over 1500 pages. Of small type. Did I mention the small type and 1500 pages? One can easily be overwhelmed by such a volume. I did not read it straight through. It is not the type of book you read, but rather the type of book you refer to when you have a specific question. It is an excellent reference book. It is not, however, something I would recommend to my mother or anyone else relatively new to Macs or scared of computers in general. Those types of audiences will get more out of a "Missing Manual" or "Dummies" book, and would likely find "Unleashed" way too in-depth. If you are an intermediate Mac user, and would like to get more under the hood of your Mac, this is your book. In "Unleashed" you will learn about the BSD Unix subsystem, the CUPS printing services, network administration, setting up servers, shell scripting, database serving, and more. If this is not your idea of a good time on your Mac, the authors DO cover some more basic stuff like how to get more out of the basic Tiger workspace and the graphical programs used for the internet, calendars, viewing and editing documents, and such. They give such subject matter about 400 pages worth of space, and do a great job describing how to use these features of your Mac. But "Unleashed"'s true value is in the last 1100 pages, which deal with the rock-solid and very customizable UNIX subsystem that underlies the beauty of OS X Tiger. If you have only ventured into the Terminal program a time or two, you can learn much from "Unleashed", and the examples are detailed enough to not be too scary. If you've never dabbled in the Terminal or you don't even know what the Terminal is, you may have little interest or use in some of the power user command-line programs discussed here. If you've never learned anything about UNIX up till now, but you are eager and earnestly interested, the book delivers on its promise of "knowledge, solutions, mastery." If you are a new Mac IT professional, either by design or by default (everyone turns to you for Mac help whether you want them to or not), "Unleashed" could be helpful to you, as well; but prepare to roll up your sleeves and get your hands a little dirty. You probably won't be copying pages for your friends who recently switched from Windows. On the other hand, if you find yourself being asked to set up a web server or a file server (FTP) for your office or school, you will find out how to do that in this manual. In short: this is a book meant for serious students of Mac OS X Tiger. Casual computer users will find it too much. But I enjoyed it and look forward to referring to it for answers. Pros: Loaded with Information! Great for intermediate Mac users or above! Cons: Loaded with information! Likely too confusing for new Mac users. Get a "Dummies" or "Missing Manual" book instead.

A Helpful book

Like any good MAC enthusiast, as soon as a new operating system comes out, I get it. I know that there are always promises of more stability, faster running programs, etc. As a practical matter, I never notice the improvements, because my MAC always operates well. Of course, there are always the added benefits that any new software that comes out takes full advantage of the new and improved Operation System, and there is nothing like a smoking Photoshop experience. That being said, I did notice a few differences with the new Tiger OS. Of course, there is now that cute little Dashboard that sits on my desktop. I can turn to it to find out where to get the lowest gas prices in my area (there are none) or to get my local weather forecast or get the lyrics to my favorite iTunes. But I know that there had to be so much more to Tiger, so for the first time, I decided to get a book to find out what else Tiger had to offer me. I picked Mac OS X Tiger Unleashed by John Ray and William C. Ray (ISBN 0-672-32746-5) and I'm glad I did. The book is divided into easily identifiable subject matters, so that whether you are a beginning Mac OS X user or an advanced user, you know where to go. Mac OS X Tiger Unleashed starts by covering the most basic and useful applications and utilities that any Mac user will need to know. The writing style of John Ray and William C. Ray is easy to understand and comprehensive on each topic covered. Particularly useful for the beginner is the chapter dealing with accessing email. Chapter 3 walks you through importing mailboxes from any client and setting up your own preferences. Chapter 3 also walks you through the new and improved iChat. The authors have also taken the time to explain things which seem like they should be easy, but always leave the newbie scratching their head - things like the printer utility, managing fonts and setting up firewalls. The last two thirds of the book are for the more intermediate and advanced users. The authors offer a comprehensive and easily understood introduction to the BSD Unix subsystem. I am not a longtime Unix user, so this introduction has been invaluable - they give a great deal of space to the basic Unix commands and then take you on from there, making the mastering of managing files and directories a snap. The authors then take you through more complex or advanced concepts, concepts which I am a little slower in learning. Finally, Mac OS X Tiger Unleashed deals with server side and network administration. Particularly useful to me was the chapter dealing with creating an FTP server. In all, I found this book to be highly comprehensive, extremely well organized and usually very easy to understand. Another great thing about this book, when you open it to any page, it stays open - very impressive given its 1500+ pages.

Good for a Windows/Linux convert

An "ultimate reference" type of bible for an operating system must be one of the most difficult books to get "right" simply because the volume of potential topics and details to cover is enormous and yet the skill level and knowledge of the reader varies significantly. From the perspective of a long time Windows and Linux user who's about to make the switch for personal (geek) use, I was delighted to realize that the Ray brothers have done a pretty good job at hitting my sweet spot. This 1400-page tome is split to seven parts and nearly 30 chapters. The first chapters introduce the desktop and some of the basic applications and utilities like the Safari web browser, Mail, iChat, the Spotlight search utility, and so forth. Very basic stuff, explained quite nicely with a couple of screenshots here and there. For me, these introductory chapters had a pretty good match for my preferred verbosity level, although I did tend to start skipping pages with a superficial glance on parts I would probably not be using all that much. The first part ends with a chapter dedicated to the new Automator utility for scripting OS X applications with the AppleScript language. I did feel like I would need some kind of a command reference in addition to the chapter, but it does a good job in getting past the steepest part of the learning curve. The second part talks about hardware. Starting from how to calibrate your display, the authors describe how to configure your accessories like keyboards, mice, Bluetooth devices, digital cameras, and such--as well as some less ubiquitous devices such as redundant disk arrays. It's mostly screenshots after screenshots and very understandable. I'm tempted to believe my mother could manage with these instructions. The chapter on printer setup is a lot less graphical (which isn't a surprise, really) as it talks about the various print settings and the CUPS printing system in detail, using the web interface for configuring printers. Networking, a topic near and dear to any geek, is also covered in the second part. Again, the authors have provided plenty of screenshots as everything is configured through wizards. I would've preferred more focus on networking, such as on the low-level tools available for determining what's wrong when "the Internet is broken", as well as a bit more instructions on how to configure the built-in firewall. The part finishes with a brief chapter on user management and basic security features like the FileVault. Speaking of low-level tools, part IV is completely dedicated to all the UNIX (BSD) stuff. File permissions, moving in the file system, inspecting running processes, and so forth. These chapters are written for someone not familiar with the UNIX shell and file system but there are some utilities that I at least wasn't aware of, such as the pushd and popd commands, for example. For a UNIX-newbie, these chapters are probably an excellent introduction. An especially useful piece is the introduction to

Covers just about EVERYTHING....

After buying a G4 Ti Powerbook, I found myself in a somewhat precarious situation. While I absolutely loved my beautiful laptop, it's rock solid and beautiful OS. I found that I needed some REAL documentation beyond the mere pamphlets that Apple included with it.I've leafed through 10-15 other OS X titles and honestly, they just don't seem to be worth the [price]. They all seem to be rehashes of the same introductory OS X texts that have been done to death.As an experienced Unix and PC user now newly migrated to the Mac/OS X ... I needed something way beyond the usual "Move the cursor to the File menu to..." introductory type stuff.Mac OS X unleashed first gives a brief but very thorough intro to the OS X and Mac OS features and interfaces but then proceeds to go far beyond where the other books stop. Wanna know about UNIX commands and shell programming? Yup it's in here. Wanna know about how to configure your firewall, computer security issues and TCP/IP in general? Yup that's here too. Hooking up to a PC/Wintel/Unix network? There is great coverage here on how to get it working.I can't think of any major and minor subject that this book doesn't touch on in more than sufficient detail. And the authors are kind enough to give you all sorts of web references/URL's to additional reading and software you can obtain on the Internet to really make your Mac/OS X fly.If you're a seasoned computer user (Mac, PC, Linux, whatever) and you're moving up in the world to a Mac/OS X, this is the ONE book you need for your library. My only complaint is that it is about as bulky as your average phone book, then again, it does cover a remarkable amount of ground. If they had split it into 2-3 volumes bundled together, then it would've been the perfect OS X reference. As it stands now, it is pretty darned close.P.S. I paid retail for this thing and it is worth every penny.P.P.S. My PC is now officially a door stop running spam filters and that's all!

The Mac OS X power users pocket guide

It's Christmas and I've just purchased Mac OS X Unleashed.The thing weighs a ton (1,464 pages!) but is one of the best computer books I've bought. The guys who wrote it are obviously Unix heads but they are also very much in love with the Mac as well so it's got a good feel when reading it.A long time Mac user I've just started to dig into the Unix side of things, attributes, permissions, owners, mounting volumes as directories, etc... it's actually quite interesting.If you're going to delve into Mac OS X beyond clicking around in the GUI this is the book to invest in.I'm currently formatting my "man" pages