Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach

By Jon M. Smith

Book Overview

Mac OS X was released in March 2001, but many components, such as Mach and BSD, are considerably older. Understanding the design, implementation, and workings of Mac OS X requires examination of several technologies that differ in their age, origins, philosophies, and roles. Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach is the first book that dissects the internals of the system, presenting a detailed picture that grows incrementally as you read. For example, you will learn the roles of the firmware, the bootloader, the Mach and BSD kernel components (including the process, virtual memory, IPC, and file system layers), the object-oriented I/O Kit driver framework, user libraries, and other core pieces of software. You will learn how these pieces connect and work internally, where they originated, and how they evolved. The book also covers several key areas of the Intel-based Macintosh computers. A solid understanding of system internals is immensely useful in design, development, and debugging for programmers of various skill levels. System programmers can use the book as a reference and to construct a better picture of how the core system works. Application programmers can gain a deeper understanding of how their applications interact with the system. System administrators and power users can use the book to harness the power of the rich environment offered by Mac OS X. Finally, members of the Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unix communities will find the book valuable in comparing and contrasting Mac OS X with their respective systems. Mac OS X Internals focuses on the technical aspects of OS X and is so full of extremely useful information and programming examples that it will definitely become a mandatory tool for every Mac OS X programmer. Note - this paperback edition is a two-volume set and contains all the content from the original single-volume hardcover publication. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0321278542
• ISBN13: 9780321278548
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 1641 Pages
• Weight: 5.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.6" x 7.7" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

The book I've been waiting for.

I'm a professional Mac/Unix developer for a relatively large, very well-known, and generally well loved company. I'm also a sort of junkie for good tech books, and this one is among the best. I've read a lot of Amit's technical writings on his website over the years, and they were always chock-full of awesome tid-bits, had unmatched depth, and were written very well. So, when I heard he was writing a book, I could hardly...

Advanced

Most Mac OS books were authored by the same handful of recycled authors, except the occasional new one. The UNIX underpinning of OS X enriched Mac libraries with new authors and perspectives, however, all the books were either Beginner or Intermediate regardless of the classification on the back. I had been eager for an OS X equivalent of Windows Resource Kits or the many other very detailed books on Windows such as Windows...

Most Impressive!

This book has to be one of the most comprehensive treatments of any operating system ever. I read through the sections with which I am most familiar (file systems, Spotlight and HFS). The level of detail and understanding expressed in those sections is very impressive. I thought I might find some errors or at least niggling details that weren't quite right but I could not find any. Perusing the other sections of the book...

Essential for really understanding how Mac OS X works

This book is essential for anybody that wants to understand the inner workings of Mac OS X, which should include all serious OSX software developers. This book is also a must read for any technical users of OSX, in order for them to know what's really underneath the covers, even when they are not writing software for OSX. I am the second type of reader: I am a researcher with Microsoft Research, where I work mostly on operating-systems...

Outstanding book - indispensable for all Mac programmers

I had the opportunity to review the draft manuscript of Amit Singh's Mac OS X Internals book. With so many different types of operating systems books out there, let me try to place the book to give a better idea what to expect. There are general introduction books that normally introduce the operating system to the reader, without explaining what is actually going on. We have concept books (I put "The Design and Implementation...