There has been a number of MacOSX books released since the MacOSX public release by Apple a year ago. However, none is either as… thick or as rich in content as “Mac OS X Unleashed” by SAMS Publishing. It took me some time to go through its 1400+ pages, but the review is finally here. Update: Current readers can find the errata of the book over at the author’s web site.The book has been written by John Ray and William C. Ray, both with vast Unix and Mac experience. Their tone throughout the book is very friendly, and I must say, honest. One gets this impression from the introduction already, where the authors are describing Job’s keynote in May 1998, when Jobs revealed that he canned the Rhapsody OS (which leaked betas able to run on x86 are still to be found on the web) and pronounced a “new” OS, named MacOSX. The authors described the news they got back then as “I went back to my hotel room and became ill.” From that point on, I knew that the book would be as enjoyable and everything but boring.
The book continues by mentioning and quickly analyzing the parts from which MacOSX is built, from the ground up, including explainations about Aqua, Quartz, the Mach/BSD kernel and more. In the next chapters you will find information on how to go through the MacOSX installation step by step, how to use the OS and Finder, how to configure MacOS 9 to be in a peacefull co-existance with OSX, which are the new applications on OSX and how to use them, how to configure your internet connection etc. The book continues with coverage of more advanced topics, like adding users, configuration, system level component maintenance, etc.
At around page 470, the book ceases its similarity with the rest of the MasOSX books we have seen so far. For the next 950 pages the user is pretty much introduced to… UNIX.
Indeed, the authors seem to be BSD fans, and they introduce not just the BSD subsystem, but they even explain its philosophy and open source nature. From that point on, you will get a full overview of how to use the Shell under OSX, the main commands, how to understand the unix filesystem hieriarchy, and you will be introduced to a number of command line apps, like ssh etc.
There is even whole chapter about Shell, PHP and Perl programming, how to compile and even how to debug C/C++ applications, in conjuction with an AppleScript’s chapter.
About 2/3rds of the way through the book, you will find a whole chapter on how to use and install the X11 system under MacOSX. Following are chapters on how to install and configure Apache, FTP, mail, Samba servers and even how to do clustering with OSX. The last two chapters are dedicated to security and system health, followed by an command line reference (pretty much printed “man” pages).
On the downside, the only negative point I found in the book is that sometimes some articles do not truly belong in the chapters where they were placed. For example, in the MacOSX installation chapter, you get quite a number of pages explaining how to download some freeware hack applications from the web and make your MacOS9 look like OSX. The authors pretty much argue that if you haven’t made your OS9 look too much as the real thing, then go ahead and install OSX. I am not sure these pages belong in this book at all (why someone would buy 1400 page book written for power users if he/she was not sure if he wanted to install OSX at the first place?). There is a great deal of information in the book, so some misplacements here and there can be noted. The only other downside of the book is that it is… heavy. But that may be interpreted as a good thing by others, so I will leave that to your judgment.
This book is a treasure for MacOSX power users and administrators. It is a MacOSX book with UNIX in mind. It is clearly destined for people who want to put their Mac/Unix_Underneath system to do more than Photoshop. For users who just want to use the GUI system and hardly do more than web surfing, “MacOSX – The Missing Manual” is probably a better buy. However, for most OSNews readers — power users that is — “Mac OS X Unleashed” is what you would ever want or need if you have a Mac. This is the best book ever published for MacOSX so far in the power user/admin category.
Overall: 9.5 / 10
Buy “Mac OS X Unleashed“ at Amazon.com for less |
Good review – this sounds like a keeper book, if/when I take the Mac OS X plunge
)
Time to go into overdrive on freelance work, so I can not only afford an OS X machine, but also all of the software apps I need … *sigh*
maybe those incorrectly placed articles were paid for by Apple?
Incorectly placed?
Eugenia, I’m wondering what info they provide about configuring NetInfo specifically. That seems to be the most arcane bit of X, and you are least likely to find any info in Mac, BSD, or Unix books on that. Is it covered well?
There are 44 pages devoted to NetInfo. A whole chapter (chapter 23). Also, at the end of the book, you will find the help (man) pages for NetInfo, almost 3 more pages.
Let me know if you want to know what exactly is discussed in that chapter.
Eugenia, I may be terribly wrong but I thought you don’t have a Mac but a Dual Celeron only. So I kinda had to smile seeing a Mac OS book review written by you… So, how much have you tempered with OS X so far..?
Yes, I only have a dual Celeron 533 (along with another dual celeron 466, two notebooks (Vaio/Celeron and CTX/K6), a dual PIII, an AMD K6 and a BeBox
but we are thinking with Jbq to buy a new iMac for my birthday in May.
However, since the G4 offerings are extremely expensive and far slower (as the Heise benchmarks revealed) than the latest AMD and Intel offerings, we are thinking of buying a dual Xeon SMT 2 GHz instead (that will be like having *4* Xeon CPUs
. Funny, that such a MONSTER machine, is cheaper than the iMac we wanted to buy. 
So, we are still thinking about it, even if we had decided to buy an iMac some months ago. BTW, this is not the first MacOSX book I am reviewing. Scroll down here to see the rest 4 books I read and reviewed about MacOSX the last few months:
http://www.osnews.com/resources.php
I still have to review an AppleScript book and I think I am done with the subject.
I generally don’t like apple oses, but yet again I have to exclaim my love for that flat panel on the new imac. I stopped in the local apple store today, and after playing with the imac for a bit I still don’t like the os much (no particular reason, just not my cup of tea), but damn if i’m not smitten on that panel. That has got to be the sharpest image I’ve ever seen on a flat panel (granted most of the other ones I’ve seen are low to middle market). If only apple would sell a version of that bad boy for x86 I think I’d be forced to break my piggy bunk and dump my crt.
What Os’s yeah got runnin on all your machines Eugenia?
What u planning on running on the Xeon, i know Linux supports SMT but last i heard none of Micro$hite’s Os’s did.
Hello from Ireland everyone 🙂
>However, since the G4 offerings are extremely expensive
>and far slower (as the Heise benchmarks revealed) than the
>latest AMD and Intel offerings, we are thinking of buying
>a dual Xeon SMT 2 GHz instead (that will be like having
>*4* Xeon CPUs
. Funny, that such a MONSTER machine, is
>cheaper than the iMac we wanted to buy.
Eugenia,
I believe that no publically discussed benchmarks with Xeons with SMT enabled have demonstrated more than a 10-15% performance increase so far … and that’s with code designed to show it off. It’s not like the performance increase one gets going from uniprocessor to duel. The user performance difference under Windows or Linux might be even harder to notice.
— Ed
Nice review! I’ve been loooking at the book for a while, wondering if i should get it… i guess when i get my mac with osx i will!
Hey
oops, clicked the submit button before i was done… oh well, nothing important.
>dual Celeron 533 (along with another dual celeron 466, two
>notebooks (Vaio/Celeron and CTX/K6), a dual PIII, an AMD
>K6 and a BeBox
looks like you can make your own startup.com with all those computers
Yes, the MS Windows 2000 and Windows XP both support Intel’s whiz-bang new acronym, with one TINY little problem for Windows 2000. Remember that for a long time, Microsoft sells NT derived versions of Windows under a license that extends to a specific number of processors in your machine.
Example: Win 2000/XP Professional for up to 2 CPUs, all the way through Ultra-Mega-Datacenter Supreme with Onions for up to 64 (I have heard after 64, NT and friends lose any real benefit to added CPUs).
Now, the SMT driver for Windows XP and up treats each CPU as 1 REAL CPU and 2 Virtual SMT CPUs. The license only covers real CPUs. This is the Right Thing To Do. The current SMT drivers for Windows 2000, treats the Virtual SMT CPUs as REAL CPUs. Windows 2000 Professional would disable one of the real CPUs on a 2 CPU SMT Xeon box because it thinks there are 4 real CPUs in the machine, even though there are not! This is a shaft for people who don’t want to move up to XP yet, and DON’T want to shell out for a Server version of Win2k.
Things may have changed since then, but here’s a thingy from Microsoft on the subject:
http://www.microsoft.com/WINDOWS2000/server/evaluation/performance/…
Yes, it’s a link to a Word file. This is Microsoft, you think they’re NOT going to support their own proprietary format they spent SO much time inventing and reinventing?
> What Os’s yeah got runnin on all your machines Eugenia?
Everything you can think off.
> What u planning on running on the Xeon, i know Linux supports SMT but last i heard none of Micro$hite’s Os’s did.
Everyone’s support them nowdays.
> I believe that no publically discussed benchmarks with Xeons with SMT enabled have demonstrated more than a 10-15% performance increase so far … and that’s with code designed to show it off.
Yes and no. I mean, benchmarks are just benchmarks and not compiled for the specific machine, therefore indeed, the advancements are not showing off. However, in a daily basis use, where more than 2-3 important threads or applications are running at the same time, at least theoretically, a dual Xeon SMT 2×2 Ghz can be up to 3 times faster than its equivelant Pentium 4 at 2 Ghz. And that’s fast.
Yes, the review should mention that this is the best book on Netinfo and the Next past of OSX. Easier to use this book as a guideline to run a netinfo server,, set up NFS exports, ect… Netinfo has been despised by lack of documentation and knowledge but it is a very neat technology.