Books

Mac OS X "Version X" for Dummies (For Dummies S.)
Teach Yourself Visually Mac OS X "Version X" (Teach Yourself Visually S.)
Mac OS "Version X": Top 100 Simplified Tips and Tricks
Microsoft Windows XP Power Optimization
Microsoft Windows XP Power Productivity
Special Edition Using Microsoft Works (Special Edition Using)
A Crash Course in SPSS for Windows
Easy Mac OS X Tiger: See It Done, Do It Yourself
Skinning Windows XP
MCSE Windows XP Professional Exam Cram 2: Exam 70-270 (Exam Cram 2 S.)
Microsoft Windows 2000 for Dummies: Millennium Edition
Linux for Dummies (For Dummies S.)
Foxpro 2.5 for DOS Developer's Guide
Windows 95 Secrets: Gold Edition (Secrets S.)
Windows Graphics Programming: Win32 GDI and DirectDraw
The Simple Answer to Using Windows 95
X Window System: Core and Extension Protocols Bk. 3
Writing Open VMS Alpha Device Drivers in C: Developer's Guide and Reference Manual
Oracle8i on Linux: A DBA's Guide
How to Pass ECDL4: Office 97
Operating System Concepts (World Student S.)
OS/2 Warp Survival Guide
Wiley Cpa Examination Review
Windows 95 Unleashed: Mcse Edition (Unleashed S.)
1001 Windows 2000 Tips

Average customer rating:

Mac OS X Tiger: Missing Manual
missing manual
Very Informative Book
Breadth but missing depth in places
Just the book I was looking for!

Mac OS X Tiger: Missing Manual
David Pogue
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition
Mac OS X Tiger Killer Tips
Mac OS X Bible, Tiger Edition
Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2004 Macintosh
Office 2004 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

ASIN: 0596009410
Release Date: 2005-07-01

Book Description

You can set your watch to it: As soon as Apple comes out with another version of Mac OS X, David Pogue hits the streets with another meticulous Missing Manual to cover it with a wealth of detail. The new Mac OS X 10.4, better known as Tiger, is faster than its predecessors, but nothing's too fast for Pogue and Mac OS X: The Missing Manual. There are many reasons why this is the most popular computer book of all time.

With its hallmark objectivity, the Tiger Edition thoroughly explores the latest features to grace the Mac OS. Which ones work well and which do not? What should you look for? This book tackles Spotlight, an enhanced search feature that helps you find anything on your computer; iChat AV for videoconferencing; Automator for automating repetitive, manual or batch tasks; and the hundreds of smaller tweaks and changes, good and bad, that Apple's marketing never bothers to mention.

Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition is the authoritative book that's ideal for every user, including people coming to the Mac for the first time. Our guide offers an ideal introduction that demystifies the Dock, the unfamiliar Mac OS X folder structure, and the entirely new Mail application. There are also mini-manuals on iLife applications such as iMovie, iDVD, and iPhoto, those much-heralded digital media programs, and a tutorial for Safari, Mac's own web browser.

And plenty more: learn to configure Mac OS X using the System Preferences application, keep your Mac secure with FileVault, and learn about Tiger's enhanced Firewall capabilities. If you're so inclined, this Missing Manual also offers an easy introduction to the Terminal application for issuing basic Unix commands.

There's something new on practically every page, and David Pogue brings his celebrated wit and expertise to every one of them. Mac's brought a new cat to town and we have a great new way to tame it.

Customer Reviews:

Mac OS X Tiger: Missing Manual.......2007-06-17

I wish I had purchased this manual a year ago. Great information regarding the MAC and Microsoft interface ideas and problems.

Fantastic information regarding the operation and what can be done with the Intel MAC.

missing manual.......2007-06-09

This book is a boring technical manual and not what it was advertised to be. I would not recommend this book for purchase.

Very Informative Book.......2007-06-07

I found the book 'Mac OS X Tiger: Missing Manual', by David Pogue, to be very informative and detailed, but yet not difficult to read. This large book covers many areas of Mac OS X, and includes sidebar tips & hints, and suggested software downloads. Overall, I found the book to be excellent.

Breadth but missing depth in places.......2007-06-01

This is an excellent book for somebody new to this or any operating system. It could provide more details for those with some operating systems experience. If you're totally new to the Mac OS X, it's a great reference. It has too many anecdotes. It would be nice to remove the journalism and focus on the topic. Removing the extraneous asides might cut somewhere between 1 of 6 pages or more from the book length.

Don't get the book if you want to understand how the command line, tweak the firewall or do something non-standard. There really isn't any meaningful command line coverage in the book.

Just the book I was looking for!.......2007-05-14

Like I said - this is just the book I was looking for! Firm expedition!

Average customer rating:

Great for experienced programmers
"Learning Python" is right
A more appropriate title would have been "Learning to program using Python"
Not for beginners...
fast shipping

Learning Python, Second Edition
Mark Lutz , and David Ascher
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Programming Python
Python Cookbook
Python in a Nutshell (In a Nutshell (O'Reilly))
Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional (Beginning: From Novice to Professional)
Learning Perl, Second Edition

ASIN: 0596002815

Amazon.com

The authors of Learning Python show you enough essentials of the Python scripting language to enable you to begin solving problems right away, then reveal more powerful aspects of the language one at a time. This approach is sure to appeal to programmers and system administrators who have urgent problems and a preference for learning by semi-guided experimentation.

First off, Learning Python shows the relationships among Python scripts and their interpreter (in a mostly platform-neutral way). Then, the authors address the mechanics of the language itself, providing illustrations of how Python conceives of numbers, strings, and other objects as well as the operators you use to work with them. Dictionaries, lists, tuples, and other data structures specific to Python receive plenty of attention including complete examples.

Authors Mark Lutz and David Ascher build on that fundamental information in their discussions of functions and modules, which evolve into coverage of namespaces, classes, and the object-oriented aspects of Python programming. There's also information on creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for Python applications with Tkinter.

In addition to its careful expository prose, Learning Python includes exercises that both test your Python skills and help reveal more elusive truths about the language.

Book Description

Portable, powerful, and a breeze to use, Python is the popular open source object-oriented programming language used for both standalone programs and scripting applications. Python is considered easy to learn, but there's no quicker way to mastery of the language than learning from an expert teacher. This edition of Learning Python puts you in the hands of two expert teachers, Mark Lutz and David Ascher, whose friendly, well-structured prose has guided many a programmer to proficiency with the language.

Learning Python, Second Edition, offers programmers a comprehensive learning tool for Python and object-oriented programming. Thoroughly updated for the numerous language and class presentation changes that have taken place since the release of the first edition in 1999, this guide introduces the basic elements of the latest release of Python 2.3 and covers new features, such as list comprehensions, nested scopes, and iterators/generators.

Beyond language features, this edition of Learning Python also includes new context for less-experienced programmers, including fresh overviews of object-oriented programming and dynamic typing, new discussions of program launch and configuration options, new coverage of documentation sources, and more. There are also new use cases throughout to make the application of language features more concrete.

The first part of Learning Python gives programmers all the information they'll need to understand and construct programs in the Python language, including types, operators, statements, classes, functions, modules and exceptions. The authors then present more advanced material, showing how Python performs common tasks by offering real applications and the libraries available for those applications. Each chapter ends with a series of exercises that will test your Python skills and measure your understanding.

Learning Python, Second Edition is a self-paced book that allows readers to focus on the core Python language in depth. As you work through the book, you'll gain a deep and complete understanding of the Python language that will help you to understand the larger application-level examples that you'll encounter on your own. If you're interested in learning Python--and want to do so quickly and efficiently--then Learning Python, Second Edition is your best choice.

Customer Reviews:

Great for experienced programmers.......2007-06-17

Learning Python is an efficient way to learn python if you are familiar with one or more other programming languages. The book does a nice job of comparing and contrasting python's qualities with those of other languages (C++ and Java in particular) and provides many concise examples that highlight specific features well. For me, Learning Python was a great way to get going with software development in python.

If you are fairly new to programming, however, this book probably isn't for you. The first few parts try to be a more general introduction to programming, but they aren't enough for those truly new to programming languages. As an experienced developer, you will likely skim through the first few parts of this book quickly.

It's also not an exhaustive reference manual, and with Python 2.5 now released the book is getting a bit dated. But the core language features have not changed much, and there is plenty of online material describing that changes since version 2.2/2.3 that this book is based on.

"Learning Python" is right.......2007-06-05

The title of this book says it all: "Learning Python" is a great book to read if you want to learn Python. Granted, Python is not the hardest language in the world to learn, and I'm not sure that this book goes into enough detail about Python's trickier features (generators, anonymous functions, etc.). Still, I was able to sit down, read this book, work through the examples, and walk away feeling like I really knew how to develop software in Python. Most learn-a-language books are too dense for you to learn the language from the book alone, but "Learning Python" definitely made it as easy as possible.

A more appropriate title would have been "Learning to program using Python".......2007-05-15

This book spends a LONG time going over some of the fundamental concepts of programming. Although it does include very thorough coverage of the Python language itself, it suffers in many places from not knowing who its target audience is. For example, there are many comparisons made between Python and Java (and even C); however, one would assume that anybody with even a passing familiarity with another language knows what a "variable" is or that you shouldn't type the "c:\python22> " part when following along with the examples. If this demeanor was limited to the first few chapters, it might not have bothered me, but throughout the book, the authors can't seem to figure out if they're talking to experienced programmers or people who need to be reminded where the "on switch" is. Chapter 19, for example, is 12 full pages of "the concepts of Object-Oriented programming".

However, it's worth slogging through page after page of intro to programming material to get to the discussions on some of Python's advanced features, which they do cover well. I had previously tried learning Python from the online tutorial and although I made some progress, I could tell I was missing some concepts. After reading this book, I feel like I understand the "Python philosophy" - a few days ago, I wrote "datetime.date( *[ int( x ) for x in token.split( '-' ) ] )" in a program - on purpose! (That creates a date object from a string in the form "2007-05-13", if you're curious).

If you've got a reasonable amount of programming experience, you might want to start with "Python in a Nutshell" instead, though; as well written as this book is, it could have been two-thirds as long and still contained all the information I needed from it.

Not for beginners..........2007-05-07

This book bills itself as a book for beginners to programming but actually it's for experienced C programmers who are making the transition to Python. Someone with little coding experience will quickly get discouraged due to all the poorly explained terminology and constant references to C. Also, the pattern of the book is to give an introductory chapter on basic concepts then two or three chapters that get into extremely detailed explanations. At the end of one of those mind-numbing journeys through obscure details, the author will often will often say something like "But I would suggest you avoid doing this because..." Huh? Then why even bother to explain it? I can't believe Python is as dense and involved as this book makes it. If the authors would only spend as much time on simple, logical explanations as they do on explaining why Python is superior to every other programming language on the planet, this book might be useful.

fast shipping.......2007-05-06

The shipping is very fast, and the condition of the book is cool!

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac OS X (Visual QuickStart Guide)

Average customer rating:

Office 2004.
Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac OS 10 Visual QuickStart Guide
Gets You Started Quickly
Excellent quick guide to Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac OS X (Visual QuickStart Guide)
Steve Schwartz
Manufacturer: Peachpit Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac in a Snap (Sams Teach Yourself)
Mac OS X Tiger: Missing Manual
Office 2004 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual
Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac OS X (Visual QuickStart Guide)
Microsoft Entourage 2004 for Mac OS X (Visual QuickStart Guide)

ASIN: 0321247477

Book Description

If you're like many people, you wouldn't dream of turning on your computer without also instantly (or almost instantly) launching at least one of the applications included in Microsoft Office. This task-based guide recognizes that and gets down to business fast, taking you step-by-step through all of the key features of the Microsoft Office 2004 suite for Mac OS X: Word 2004, Excel 2004, PowerPoint 2004, Entourage 2004and MSN Messenger Version 4.0. If you're a beginning user, you¿ll appreciate the friendly, visual approach to all of Office¿s word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, calendaring, and email features. And if you're an Office veteran, you¿ll relish the coverage of Office 2004's newest features (many of them exclusive to Macs): Compatibility Reports, which identify and correct discrepancies between different versions of Office documents (including Mac and Windows versions); Word's Notebook Layout View; Excel's Page Layout View; and much more.

Customer Reviews:

Office 2004........2006-11-05

This is one of the best of the Quick Start guides. It is clear and concise and makes a long time Mac. user comfortable.

Owen O'Meara

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac OS 10 Visual QuickStart Guide.......2005-08-24

This books makes learning the workings of Microsoft Office 2004 super easy. The photos and instructions take the reader step-by-step through the inner workings of the program. A must for the beginner and a resource for the experienced user. Learn Word, Excel and PowerPoint, as well as Entourage and more by using this guide any way you wish.

Gets You Started Quickly.......2004-11-27

Aimed at the beginning and intermediate user of Microsoft Office for Macintosh, this book is part of the Visual Quickstart Guide. The philosophy of the series is to use a lot of photographs so that you can see what the screen should look like as you do various tasks during the learning process.

The organization of the book, after an introduction that you really should read or at least glance over, is modular just like the software. There's a part on Word, on Excel, on PowerPoint, and on Entourage. Each part is self standing and can be used independently of the other parts. You can read the part on the software you need without having to go do everything at once. Although to be sure you will sooner or later want to use the various applications together, and for this there is Part VI: Combining the Applications.

As a visually oriented book, there are hundreds of pictures/drawings to illustrate just about every point. It's a very fast way to get started.

Excellent quick guide to Microsoft Office.......2004-11-15

This 453-page book is written for beginning and intermediate users of Microsoft Office 2004. It blends short, well-written sections on the various parts of Office 2004 with screen shots and other graphics that show you visually how to do things. This is a winning combination and makes learning about Office 2004 easy and fun. I also was pleased to find short "tips" following the various discussions that further enhanced your ability to use the feature being discussed.

Starting the book is a good summary of what's new with the four components of Office 2004, namely Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage. This is followed by separate "Parts" for each of these four applications plus an introductory section and a special ending section. The latter contains instruction on combining some of the aspects of the four applications. Within each of the major "Parts" are Chapters of major features each broken down further into short sections focusing on the various useful ways to use various features of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage.

For example, Part II is on Microsoft Word. It is broken down into 6 chapters focusing on working with word, document formatting, text formatting, adding graphics, creating tables, and other word features. Then within each of those are several subsections providing specific help on various aspects of each chapter topic. For instance, within "document formatting" you'll find specific focus on paper size and orientation, margins, headers and footers, page numbers, inserting page breaks, creating multiple sections, and multiple columns. And all are user-friendly and quite helpful!

This book is part of the "Visual Quickstart Guide" series of Peachpit Press, and the again lives up to the other fine visual guides from this company. I was also impressed by the knowledge shared in this book by the skilled author whose past works included more than 50 other books and hundreds of computer-related reviews and articles for various well-known computer magazines. He knows his subject and has the skills to guide the reader to a most satisfying understanding of Office 2004.

All and all, I would highly recommend this helpful book and I'm sure I will be referring to it many times whenever I have a question about Office 2004 - and I have confidence that I'll find the answer!

Average customer rating:

The UNIX bible!
True to the Unix philosophy
pricey but worth it
The one unix book that I'd like to have if stranded all alone on an island with a linux system!!
Buy this one!!

Unix Power Tools, Third Edition
Shelley Powers , Tim O'Reilly , and Mike Loukides
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Essential System Administration, Third Edition
Classic Shell Scripting
UNIX System Administration Handbook (3rd Edition)
Learning the vi Editor (6th Edition)
sed & awk (2nd Edition)

ASIN: 0596003307

Amazon.com

The mark of a craftsman is his familiarity with his tools, the speed with which he can use them to solve simple problems, and his cleverness in using them to solve more complicated challenges. The latest edition of Unix Power Tools explores the standard Unix tools in greater depth than ever, and with better coverage of Linux, FreeBSD, and even the Darwin environment of Mac OS X. It's also been improved by the addition of sections on Perl and Python, programming languages that can often solve Unix problems more adeptly than any specific utility. This detail-filled book distinguishes itself from other guides for Unix gurus with its organizational structure (it's a series of articles that can be absorbed sequentially or individually) and carefully designed and executed index. Like its esteemed predecessors, this book is one you will keep handy.

The authors have achieved a nearly ideal balance in the pages of this book. It's not just a collection of recipes (such collections tend to leave you hanging if you want to do something a little differently), it's not just a book of documentation (books like that have application mainly as references for people who know a lot already), and it's not just a conceptual how-to guide. Unix Power Tools is all of those things, and the overall effect is impressive indeed. If you work with any flavor of Unix, whatever your level of experience, you will benefit by having this book. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to work efficiently, elegantly, and creatively with the Unix tool suite, as well as (to a lesser extent) with Perl and Python scripts. Tips and strategies on customization, document generation, process management, and networking abound in this wisdom-rich volume.

Book Description

With the growing popularity of Linux and the advent of Darwin, Unix has metamorphosed into something new and exciting. No longer perceived as a difficult operating system, more and more users are discovering the advantages of Unix for the first time. But whether you are a newcomer or a Unix power user, you'll find yourself thumbing through the goldmine of information in the new edition of Unix Power Tools to add to your store of knowledge. Want to try something new? Check this book first, and you're sure to find a tip or trick that will prevent you from learning things the hard way. The latest edition of this best-selling favorite is loaded with advice about almost every aspect of Unix, covering all the new technologies that users need to know. In addition to vital information on Linux, Darwin, and BSD, Unix Power Tools 3rd Edition now offers more coverage of bash, zsh, and other new shells, along with discussions about modern utilities and applications. Several sections focus on security and Internet access. And there is a new chapter on access to Unix from Windows, addressing the heterogeneous nature of systems today. You'll also find expanded coverage of software installation and packaging, as well as basic information on Perl and Python. Unix Power Tools 3rd Edition is a browser's book...like a magazine that you don't read from start to finish, but leaf through repeatedly until you realize that you've read it all. Bursting with cross-references, interesting sidebars explore syntax or point out other directions for exploration, including relevant technical details that might not be immediately apparent. The book includes articles abstracted from other O'Reilly books, new information that highlights program tricks and gotchas, tips posted to the Net over the years, and other accumulated wisdom. Affectionately referred to by readers as "the" Unix book, UNIX Power Tools provides access to information every Unix user is going to need to know. It will help you think creatively about UNIX, and will help you get to the point where you can analyze your own problems. Your own solutions won't be far behind.

Customer Reviews:

The UNIX bible!.......2007-05-13

Back in 1995 I started working at a client and all the UNIX guys had this book on their desk. I was a newbie at that time and the book helped me out a lot. It was clear and to the point. There is so much useful information. Recently I got my own copy because I had to jump back into the UNIX world and having this book around make me feel like I can handle any task that may be required. This is a must have if you want to dabble or become a pro in UNIX.

True to the Unix philosophy.......2007-05-12

Here is a quote taken from _Unix_Power_Tools_ which demonstrates the
attitude, shared by the authors, that unix allows you to make things
easier. "''Ugh!', you say, 'that's just what I hate about UNIX. All
these long filenames and options I can't remember. Who wants to type
all that stuff!' Precisely. That's why UNIX makes it so easy to
create custom commands, in the form of aliases and shell scripts."

Unix Power Tools is true to the spirit and philosophy of unix in
focusing on the command line environment with its rich abundance of
command interpreters, shell languages, system utilities, commands, and
the like. This is the realm of real power.

The book is aimed squarely at the user who wants to learn what's under
the hood of the unix (and Linux) system. It's not about how to change
your wallpaper or install the latest media player, or configure your
desktop, although this new edition may touch on these topics, too.
It's really about using unix to greatest advantage, about tapping its
real power, the power of its simplicity, of its flexibility, of
tapping into I/O streams, and using the tool-box approach to solving
real problems. It's about using 'pipes', 'redirection', and
'filters', to automate the big jobs.

My copy of this book is tattered from all the use it's had over the
last ten years. I'm always hunting it down, as my associates at work
are constantly borrowing it to help them solve a problem. That's
okay, though. I am ordering another copy, just for me. I'm curious
to see this new edition, which I understand has broader coverage of
the various unix flavors, including Linux, which I run
at home.

I would recommend this book to those who find unix intimidating, as
well as to the unix enthusiast. For anyone who ever wondered what the
fuss over unix was about, this book will certainly bring on an
epiphany. For between these covers is the greatest accumulation of
unix wisdom and know-how to be found in any book. The shear volume is
enough to elicit awe. But that's only part of its value, because such
an enormous accumulation of material might normally overwhelm the
reader, leaving him frustrated and unenlightened. Happily, this book
is so well organized, and the material so pleasingly presented, that
anyone will find it a pleasure to browse through and to mine
repeatedly for those precious tips, tricks, and methods that make
using unix so rewarding.

This is admittedly a pound heavy volume, and might be expected to
contain a lot of chaff with the grain. I have not found it so. The
authors have chosen the material well, and know their subject so
intimately and thoroughly, that I am left with a feeling of profound
respect. This is, in short, a book that is worthy of its subject; a
truly great book for a great OS.

I read another reviewer who avers this is the one book he would take
with him to a deserted island. I concur. It has taught me more than
any other unix book, and has made my work more efficient, and most
importantly, more interesting. I paid full retail for my copy of
Power Tools, and at the time, I thought it was a lot, but it has
repaid me many times over. It's the most indispensable unix book on
my shelf; a real gem.

pricey but worth it.......2006-06-23

I know this seems abit pricey but its worth it. I dont have the attention span needed to read most books cover-to-cover. Even though this book is huge I have browsed it all and read most of it. Multiple times! Each time I find some new tidbit to use.

The one unix book that I'd like to have if stranded all alone on an island with a linux system!!.......2006-05-01

I'm an analog IC designer moonlighting as a linux hacker (I'm actually addicted). I try to build software, write shell scripts and customize my desktop to death. I picked up this book a year or two back and I think I've probably used it almost every single day to look up something or the other. I probably own about 20 linux related books (more than my engineering books) but this is the one that I would run out with when the firealarm sounds. Here is my short summary of my feelings about this book.
- this book (primarily) caters to intermediate to advanced users
- I would still recommend this for linux beginners as a reference to check up when every other beginner book fails. There are introductory chapters on shell scripting which could put some of the dedicated shell scripting books to shame
- One of the fundamental holy grail that linux books try to achieve (and in which they often fail) is to find a good balance between breadth and depth - both qualities which the subject of Unix do not shy away from. So a Linux beginner picks up an introductory book which addresses just one linux issue and before he knows it-he has gathered enough knowledge and the book just picks up dust. Or he could pick up a book that claims to be a reference and skims over all the items with little depth and boom when he really needs information about a particular topic he finds that the book is too shallow. The "Unix Power Tools" book, I'm happy to say achieves this good balance between depth and breadth in very good measure. Ex. When I was confused about the intricacies of bash quoting or I/O redirecition, this book came to my rescue. The Unix command "find" which was buried under a 4-year old alias for me owing to it's complexities, suddenly developed a fascination for me after I discovered it's myriad use and value from the multiple pages that this book devoted to it's demystifcation.
- I bought the O'Reilly books - "Linux in a Nutshell" and "Essential system Administration" with the purpose of using them as references - The first one was just too shallow for my requirements and taste and I use it basically as a replacement for online man pages. The second one has it's very niche, but only in specific circumstances. So they have been put to use probably just 1/10th of what the "Power Tools" book has been put to
- I'm not a guy who is driven to write reviews i.e unless I am totally ecstatic or totally disgusted with a product and you probably have guessed where I stand with this one. I waited 1 or two years and I somehow felt that I owe this review to this book.

Buy this one!!.......2005-10-02

This book is the godfather of *nix system reference books. Absolutely stellar! Best in breed.

Average customer rating:

An in-depth and elegant look at the construction of Mac OS X
Good for very specific, low-level needs
Excellent all around
An awesome comprehensive programmer's pal
A remarkable achievement

Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach
Amit Singh
Manufacturer: Addison-Wesley Professional
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Step into Xcode: Mac OS X Development
Advanced Mac OS X Programming (2nd Edition of Core Mac OS X & Unix Programming)
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Programming in Objective-C
Solaris(TM) Performance and Tools: DTrace and MDB Techniques for Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris (Solaris Series)

ASIN: 0321278542

Customer Reviews:

An in-depth and elegant look at the construction of Mac OS X.......2007-01-05

This book is an ambitious attempt to cover the modern operating system of Mac OS X in substantial breadth and depth in one volume. This is what has been missing from previous books on programming and Apple's products - detailed serious knowledge of what is under the hood that has long been available for other operating systems such as Solaris. The most important contribution to the book's depth are all of the various programming examples. Although much of the book's content is rather technical, each chapter has sections that should be accessible to non-programmers. Several topics are excluded that are covered in other books such as the TCP/IP stack, since there is no "networking" chapter. This is because the Mac OS X TCP/IP stack is largely a derivative of the FreeBSD stack, which is already well documented. In general, information that is generic across Unix variants and can easily be found in other books is not included. The table of contents is as follows:

Chapter 1, "Origins of Mac OS X," describes the technical history of Mac OS X and the systems it derives from. An unabridged version of Chapter 1, which covers all of Apple's past and present operating systems, is available on this book's accompanying web site.
Section 1.1. Apple's Quest for the Operating System
Section 1.2. The NeXT Chapter
Section 1.3. The Mach Factor
Section 1.4. Strategies
Section 1.5. Toward Mac OS X

Chapter 2, "An Overview of Mac OS X," is an eclectic tour of Mac OS X and its important features. It contains brief overviews of various layers that constitute the system.
Section 2.1. Firmware
Section 2.2. Bootloader
Section 2.3. Darwin
Section 2.4. The xnu Kernel
Section 2.5. A User-Space View of the File System
Section 2.6. The Runtime Architecture
Section 2.7. The C Library
Section 2.8. Bundles and Frameworks
Section 2.9. Core Services
Section 2.10. Application Services
Section 2.11. Application Environments
Section 2.12. User Interface
Section 2.13. Programming
Section 2.14. Security
Section 2.15. Mac OS X Server
Section 2.16. Networking

Chapter 3, "Inside an Apple," describes the PowerPC architecture, using the PowerPC 970 processor line as a specific example. It also discusses the PowerPC assembly language and calling conventions.
Section 3.1. The Power Mac G5
Section 3.2. The G5: Lineage and Roadmap
Section 3.3. The PowerPC 970FX
Section 3.4. Software Conventions
Section 3.5. Examples

Chapter 4, "The Firmware and the Bootloader," explores the firmware environment on a PowerPC-based Macintosh computer. It also examines the sequence of events that happens during booting--up to the point where the Mac OS X kernel gains control. Finally, there is a discussion of an equally interesting firmware environment (EFI) for x86-based Macintosh computers.
Section 4.1. Introduction
Section 4.2. A Whole New World
Section 4.3. Power-On Reset
Section 4.4. Open Firmware
Section 4.5. Forth
Section 4.6. The Device Tree
Section 4.7. Open Firmware Interfaces
Section 4.8. Programming Examples
Section 4.9. Firmware Boot Sequence
Section 4.10. BootX
Section 4.11. Alternate Booting Scenarios
Section 4.12. Firmware Security
Section 4.13. Launching the Kernel
Section 4.14. The BootCache Optimization
Section 4.15. Boot-Time Kernel Arguments
Section 4.16. The Extensible Firmware Interface

Chapter 5, "Kernel and User-Level Startup," continues from the point where the kernel takes over from BootX. It looks at the important events that occur during kernel startup, visits various kernel subsystems, sees how they are initialized, sees how the kernel launches the first user-space program, and looks at the details of user-level startup--up to the point where the system is ready for the user.
Section 5.1. Arranging for the Kernel to Execute
Section 5.2. Low-Level Processor Initialization
Section 5.3. High-Level Processor Initialization
Section 5.4. Mach Subsystem Initialization
Section 5.5. The First Thread
Section 5.6. I/O Kit Initialization
Section 5.7. BSD Initialization
Section 5.8. Launching the First User-Space Program
Section 5.9. Slave Processors
Section 5.10. User-Level Startup

Chapter 6, "The xnu Kernel," describes the core kernel architecture of Mac OS X. The discussion includes system call families and their implementation, low-level tracing and debugging mechanisms, and special features such as the virtual machine monitor in the PowerPC version of the kernel.
Section 6.1. xnu Source
Section 6.2. Mach
Section 6.3. A Flavor of the Mach APIs
Section 6.4. Entering the Kernel
Section 6.5. Exception Processing
Section 6.6. System Call Processing
Section 6.7. System Call Categories
Section 6.8. Kernel Support for Debugging, Diagnostics, and Tracing
Section 6.9. Virtual Machine Monitor
Section 6.10. Compiling the Kernel

Chapter 7, "Processes," describes abstractions such as tasks, threads, and processes, the various forms in which they exist in Mac OS X subsystems, and processor scheduling. The discussion includes using various kernel-level and user-level interfaces for manipulating the aforementioned abstractions.
Section 7.1. Processes: From Early UNIX to Mac OS X
Section 7.2. Mach Abstractions, Data Structures, and APIs
Section 7.3. Many Threads of a New System
Section 7.4. Scheduling
Section 7.5. The execve() System Call
Section 7.6. Launching Applications

Chapter 8, "Memory," describes the Mac OS X memory subsystem's architecture, including discussions of the Mach virtual memory architecture, paging, the unified buffer cache, the working-set detection mechanism, kernel-level and user-level memory allocators, and support for 64-bit addressing.
Section 8.1. Looking Back
Section 8.2. An Overview of Mac OS X Memory Management
Section 8.3. Mach VM
Section 8.4. Resident Memory
Section 8.5. Virtual Memory Initialization during Bootstrap
Section 8.6. The Mach VM User-Space Interface
Section 8.7. Using the Mach VM Interfaces
Section 8.8. Kernel and User Address Space Layouts
Section 8.9. Universal Page Lists (UPLs)
Section 8.10. Unified Buffer Cache (UBC)
Section 8.11. The Dynamic Pager Program
Section 8.12. The Update Daemon
Section 8.13. System Shared Memory
Section 8.14. Task Working Set Detection and Maintenance
Section 8.15. Memory Allocation in User Space
Section 8.16. Memory Allocation in the Kernel
Section 8.17. Memory-Mapped Files
Section 8.18. 64-bit Computing

Chapter 9, "Interprocess Communication," describes various IPC and synchronization mechanisms available in Mac OS X. In particular, it discusses the implementation and usage of Mach IPC.
Section 9.1. Introduction
Section 9.2. Mach IPC: An Overview
Section 9.3. Mach IPC: The Mac OS X Implementation
Section 9.4. Name and Bootstrap Servers
Section 9.5. Using Mach IPC
Section 9.6. MIG
Section 9.7. Mach Exceptions
Section 9.8. Signals
Section 9.9. Pipes
Section 9.10. Named Pipes (Fifos)
Section 9.11. File Descriptor Passing
Section 9.12. XSI IPC
Section 9.13. POSIX IPC
Section 9.14. Distributed Objects
Section 9.15. Apple Events
Section 9.16. Notifications
Section 9.17. Core Foundation IPC
Section 9.18. Synchronization

Chapter 10, "Extending the Kernel," describes the I/O Kit, the object-oriented driver subsystem in Mac OS X.
Section 10.1. A Driver down the Memory Lane
Section 10.2. The I/O Kit
Section 10.3. DART
Section 10.4. Dynamically Extending the Kernel
Section 10.5. Communicating with the Kernel
Section 10.6. Creating Kernel Extensions
Section 10.7. A Programming Tour of the I/O Kit's Functionality
Section 10.8. Debugging

Chapter 11, "File Systems," describes the overall file system layer in Mac OS X, including brief discussions of each file system type. The discussion also covers partitioning schemes, disk management, and the Spotlight search technology.
Section 11.1. Disks and Partitions
Section 11.2. Disk Arbitration
Section 11.3. The Implementation of Disk Devices
Section 11.4. Disk Images
Section 11.5. Files and File Descriptors
Section 11.6. The VFS Layer
Section 11.7. File System Types
Section 11.8. Spotlight
Section 11.9. Access Control Lists
Section 11.10. The Kauth Authorization Subsystem

Chapter 12, "The HFS Plus File System," describes the internals of the HFS Plus file system. The discussion is aided by the use of a custom file system debugger written for this chapter.
Section 12.1. Analysis Tools
Section 12.2. Fundamental Concepts
Section 12.3. The Structure of an HFS+ Volume
Section 12.4. Reserved Areas
Section 12.5. The Volume Header
Section 12.6. The HFS Wrapper
Section 12.7. Special Files
Section 12.8. Examining HFS+ Features
Section 12.9. Optimizations
Section 12.10. Miscellaneous Features
Section 12.11. Comparing Mac OS X File Systems
Section 12.12. Comparing HFS+ and NTFS

Appendix A, "Mac OS X on x86-Based Macintosh Computers," highlights the key differences between the x86-based and PowerPC-based versions of Mac OS X. Besides this appendix, the book covers the details of several key x86-specific topics, such as EFI, GUID-based partitioning, and Universal Binaries. Most of Mac OS X is architecture-independent, and consequently, the majority of the book is architecture-independent.
Section A.1. Hardware Differences
Section A.2. Firmware and Booting
Section A.3. Partitioning
Section A.4. Universal Binaries
Section A.5. Rosetta
Section A.6. Byte Ordering
Section A.7. Miscellaneous Changes

This book will be useful to anyone curious about the composition and working of Mac OS X. Application programmers will develop a better understanding of how their applications interact with the system. System programmers can use the book to construct a better picture of how the core system works. It truly is an elegant piece of work on modern operating system design, even if you are not specifically interested in Mac OS X. However, whoever reads this book should know how to program in C so that they can appreciate all of the code included with the book. I highly recommend it.

Good for very specific, low-level needs.......2006-12-20

I bought this book because I'm an experienced programmer, but new to OS X development, and have seen it recommended as _the_ definitive OS X technical reference. And while I would say, yes, it is the definitive technical reference, that needs some qualification. If you need very low-level information about the boot process, the executable loading process, kernel extensions, how things work inside the kernel at a point below most user APIs--and other such topics--then this is the book for you. That level is below where you'll be operating if you're using Cocoa or even POSIX functions. So I'd call this book a must-have if you're working on the kernel itself, writing device drivers, trying to port OS X to new hardware, or like the kind of gritty detail in operating system textbooks. If you're wanting a book about actually programming for OS X, even at the UNIX level, then this isn't it.

Excellent all around.......2006-09-03

This is the first Mac programming book that has been released since OS X's debut that is actually worth buying. It is such an amazingly detailed tour of everything that makes the OS tick that I am honestly amazed by the thought of one person writing the entire thing. It's not going to put on a stupid looking cowboy hat and teach you Objective-C or hold your hand through building your first Cocoa project, but it will show you how to actually do something interesting once you progress beyond re-inventing the text editor and to-do list.

If I have anything negative to say about this book it's just that it's incredibly sad that a guy from Google wrote it before anybody at Apple did. It's like nobody in the company even remembers how nice the Inside Macintosh series was anymore.

An awesome comprehensive programmer's pal.......2006-08-27

This is a great book. It covers device access, iokit, debuggers, compile flags, processor info, efi/bootx and nvram settings, universal/fat binaries, heritage of Darwin and the mach role, memory management and threading, and more. It's thicker then the bible, but none of it is fluff. Well written easy to follow, and has tons of good examples.

A remarkable achievement.......2006-08-08

Amit Singh's Mac OS X Internals book is, for all intents and purposes, a flawless treatment of the subject matter. The breadth of coverage crosses all major kernel subsystems (processes/threads, virtual memory, etc), extentions, a history of Mac OS X, programming/developement environments, hardware architecture (including PPC details) and system firmware. I can't think of anything that Mr. Singh did not cover.

And the depth! Fantastic! A brilliant top-down approach to the individual subjects, getting into all the detail one could want, all the while maintaining a wonderfully readable style. It is not trivial to make such subject matter a pleasure to read, but Mr. Singh has stepped to the task. I feel like I learned something on almost every page!

There are general computer science gems sprinkled throughout the text (the "systems" approach), so for those relatively new to operating systems, microprocessor design features (e.g. caches and cache types), programming constructs (stack management, recursion, etc), virtual memory, etc, you will extend your knowledge in areas beyond that of Mac OS X implementation details. You'll get the bigger picture.

One of my overall favorite operating systems books of all time. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Operating Systems and/or Mac OS X.

Apple Training Series: Mac OS X Support Essentials (Apple Training)

Average customer rating:

Excellent for ACHDS Exam Preparation
Better Than a $1500 Apple Class!
Great Book for preparing for the ACHDS test !

Apple Training Series: Mac OS X Support Essentials (Apple Training)
Owen Linzmayer
Manufacturer: Peachpit Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Apple Training Series: Mac OS X Server Essentials (Apple Training)
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Learning Unix for Mac OS X Tiger

ASIN: 0321335473

Book Description

The only Apple-certified book on Mac OS X, this updated best-seller will take you deep inside the latest big-cat operating system, covering everything from networking technologies to system administration, customizing the operating system, command-line programming, and more. Whether you're a support technician or simply an ardent Mac user, you'll quickly learn and master the 150+ features new to Mac OS X Tiger, including the innovative Spotlight search system, a Dashboard filled with customizable Widget mini-apps, the Automator application for building customized workflows, and more. Following the learning objectives of the Apple Certified Technical Coordinator certification exam, this self-paced book is a perfect supplement to Apple’s own training class and a first-rate primer for computer support personnel who need to troubleshoot and optimize Mac OS X as part of their jobs. Chapter review sections and quizzes summarize and reinforce gained knowledge.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent for ACHDS Exam Preparation.......2007-04-07

I needed a resource to help me prepare for the Apple Certified Help Desk Specialist exam. Period. And this book fit the bill. After reading through the book, I took the exam and earned an 89%! It worked for me. One word of caution: The exam is updated periodically for the latest incremental version of Mac OS X. Only very rarely did I find an exam question that wasn't covered by the book due to incremental Mac OS X updates since the book's publication. However, you CAN supposedly download updates from the publisher's website. I didn't learn about that until after I took the exam, but the website is on the back cover or back few pages, I believe. Awesome resource.

Better Than a $1500 Apple Class!.......2006-09-16

Peachpit just got the rights to start publishing Apple Certified materials. You used to have to take a $1500 class from Apple to get this same information!

Written in a casual and human tone, even the newest to new (myself) can understand this book. In fact, this has to be one of the best networking books I have ever read. Would you expect less from Apple?

Hand down, this book gets a 5 out of 5 for saving me $1451 dollars and teaching the ideas of supporting a Mac network and operating system. Buy it and make it part of your library!

Great Book for preparing for the ACHDS test !.......2006-09-02

I think this a must have book for anyone wanting to learn how to learn more about Mac's and how to support them. It's easy reading and you gain a lot of knowledge on how to use the operating system.

The best part about this book is that it prepares you for the ACHDS test. The contents of this book follows the same material as the recommended course at Apple for passing the ACHDS. If you read this book and follow the excercises, then I am confident that you will be able to pass the test. I got a 96% =)

Now if you want to be a power mac user, then you probably need to get another book--this is not a mac os x bible.

Average customer rating:

You want tips, this is the book for you
Generally I don't praise killers but .....
not worth the money
S.Kelby does it again! Wonderfull !!
The Book For All Mac People

Mac OS X Tiger Killer Tips
Scott Kelby
Manufacturer: New Riders Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Mac OS X Tiger: Missing Manual
Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition
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Teach Yourself VISUALLY Mac OS X Tiger (Teach Yourself VISUALLY (Tech))
The Mac OS X Tiger Book

ASIN: 0321290542

Book Description

Tips rule!

Have you ever noticed that in just about every Mac book, the author will include a couple of tips in each chapter (you'll usually find them in the sidebar, or at the bottom of the page in a tinted box). Sometimes it's a shortcut, a faster way to do something, or a clever workaround that just makes your life easier. People really love those tips, but there's only one problem--there's never enough of them.

That's why Scott Kelby, bestselling author and Editor-in-Chief of Mac Design magazine came up with the idea to create a book that's nothing but "sidebar" tips. That's right--this entire book, cover-to-cover is packed with nothing but those cool inside secrets, slick workarounds, undocumented shortcuts, and sneaky little tricks that will make you faster, better, and have more fun using Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger).

Nothing but the tips!

You're not going to find complicated descriptions on how to configure a network, how to partition a hard drive, or lines and lines of scary-looking UNIX code--instead this book is nothing but cool tips--and it's all written in Scott's casual, plain English style so you can start using these tips today. Plus, this book does the standard "sidebar tip" one better by including a clear screen capture with nearly every tip, so you can see exactly how it's all done.

Not just tips. Killer tips!

To be in this book, every tip has got to be a "Killer Tip" (the kind of tip that makes you nod and smile, then call all your Mac buddies to tune them up with your new-found power). Scott's a total "hip hound" (in fact, it was Scott who created the entire smash-bestselling "Killer Tips" book series), and he doesn't hold anything back--it's all here from the man who literally "wrote the book" on cool productivity tips.If you like doing things the easy way, if you like getting twice the work done in half the time, and if you get a kick out of knowing all the "inside secrets and undocumented shortcuts" that will wow your friends and coworkers, you're absolutely going to love this book.

Customer Reviews:

You want tips, this is the book for you.......2007-05-12

Very good book for getting hints that are not only helpful and productive, but just increase your knowledge.

Generally I don't praise killers but ............2007-02-07

Great tips delivered with a terrific sense of humor

not worth the money.......2007-01-15

Most 'killer' tips are basically only telling what is in the menus of the application. They are of the kind: "Did you ever wonder how to create a new Document? Here is the secret killer tip for doing this: got the the 'file' menu and select 'new document'!" --> total worthless ... I can read the menu myself. There are two or three ok tips in there, but not worth buying the book. Other killer tips are plain dangerous: They recommend as power tip not to do any automatic security updates or not to use a administrator password because it is too annoying to remember it --> this is just asking for trouble .

S.Kelby does it again! Wonderfull !!.......2007-01-10

You can immediately see that this very fine edition is a product of true love,from a writer whose writings the last few years do nothing else but illuminating us all on how to make the best out of our MACS.

The Book For All Mac People.......2006-11-12

This book promises killer tips and that's just what you get: every possible tip, shortcut, convenient action that the Mac user might need - and won't find anywhere else!
A great book with an interesting presentation!

TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac (Pragmatic Programmers)

Average customer rating:

The Power of Textmate
Become A TextMate Power User Today!
Great book on a fantastic product
Worth every penny
Great book

TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac (Pragmatic Programmers)
James Gray
Manufacturer: Pragmatic Bookshelf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Everyday Scripting with Ruby: For Teams, Testers, and You
Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic Programmers)
Ajax on Rails
The Ruby Way, Second Edition: Solutions and Techniques in Ruby Programming (2nd Edition) (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series)
Rails Cookbook (Cookbooks (O'Reilly))

ASIN: 097873923X

Book Description

TextMate is a powerful tool for programmers, web designers, and anyone else who regularly needs to work with text files on Mac OS X. TextMate focuses on pragmatic automation, which means it will save you time time that's always in short supply. See how your lowly text editor can become a hard working member of your staff.

TextMate is a full-featured text editor available for Mac OS X that can greatly enhance your text manipulation skills. TextMate is actually a thin shell over a personalized team of robot ninjas ready to do your bidding. Let's face it, who doesn't want their very own team of robot ninjas?

With TextMate you can do your normal work, but signal the ever-watchful ninjas as you go. At your command, they will launch into action, slicing through text, building repetitive structures of data in the blink of an eye, and much more. They will even post to your blog, handle your IRC conversations, and read your email.

Inside this book you will learn how to teleport instantly to the exact line of the file you need to be on, edit the data with the briefest incantations of power, and banish the end result to the land of your choosing. It's magic, as you can plainly see.

Leave the days of dull work behind. Learn your spells, gain access to your team of robot ninjas, and you too will be able to edit text so effortlessly that everyone watching over your shoulder will be forced to ask, "Wait, how did you do that?"

Customer Reviews:

The Power of Textmate.......2007-05-28

This book is the perfect primer for what I have found to be one of the most indispensible Mac OS X applications - TextMate. If you are a software developer or web designer or anyone else that edits text on a frequent basis and you have not already discovered TextMate, stop right now and visit http://www.macromates.com.

The Pragmatic Programmers' book, TextMate Power Editing for the Mac is a thorough introduction to TextMate. Edward Gray II has written a very accessible book, that covers the product very well.

The first third of the book is devoted to the basics - things you do every day in your text editor. The second third of the book dives into the details of some really sweet features of TextMate that you'll find yourself using all the time: bundles, snippets, macros and UNIX shell commands.

TextMate ships with over thirty 'bundles'. Each bundle is a directory of related files that provide additional functionality to TextMate. Let's say you're working on an HTML file. The HTML bundle will help you with loads of things related to your document: validate the syntax of the document, open the document in the default browser, refresh the document in the current browser session, insert open/close tags for the current word, strip all HTML tags from the document - just to name a few. Each bundle provides functionality that applies not only to the syntax of the language you're currently working with, but repetitive tasks that would apply as well.

As I mentioned, a couple dozen bundles ship with TextMate and many more are available for free download from various websites. You can even create your own bundles to extend the product in ways that only you can imagine. Here are a few of the bundles that ship with TextMate: Blogging, CSS, HTML, Java, Markdown, Objective-C, Python, Rails, Ruby, SQL, Subversion, Text, Textile, Xcode and XML. Bundles provide you with lots of help editing files and performing related tasks.

Snippets are a smart completion mechanism that go way beyond the simple concept of 'finish this word'. For example, if you are editing a Ruby file and you type array_object.ea followed by the TAB key (where 'array_object' is an arbitrary Array object), the snippet feature will automatically fill in the skeleton of the 'each' iterator, including the opening and closing curly braces, the text '|e|' with the letter 'e' highlighted. You simply type the name of the variable you want to represent the next element (or simply leave it as it is), hit the TAB key again and the cursor will be placed between the closing '|' character and the closing '}' character, ready for you to type in an expression. Very cool. This same trick works for dozens of different scenarios in your Ruby code. And that's just the snippets that apply to Ruby code. There are snippets that apply to a large number of file types.

You've probably seen macros in other editors and TextMate's macro facility works as you might expect: you start recording a macro, perform some actions and save the macro. TextMate saves the macros as XML files, so it's a snap to edit a macro after recording if you need to tweak it a bit.

The ability to fire off UNIX shell commands from within TextMate gives you another powerful tool to use while editing files. You can fire off one-liner shell commands by simply pressing the ^R key on a line containing a shell command. You can also use shell commands to act on all or part of the current document.

For the advanced TextMate user, the tail end of the book shows you how to create your own language syntax for use in TextMate, including how to describe the grammar of the language in terms TextMate will understand. So, if you program in some far out funky language that TextMate doesn't support out of the box, you can add the language grammar to TextMate and program away!

Overall, I found this book extremely useful and easy to read. TextMate ships with an excellent help system that will answer many of your questions. The TextMate Power Editing for the Mac book will take you beyond the built-in help and give you an in-depth guide for this great Mac application.

Become A TextMate Power User Today!.......2007-05-25

For anyone that tells you that you can't so solid code and script development on a Mac, they haven't been introduced to the application TextMate. There are several good options for doing power editing on the Macintosh and TextMate is one of those POWER options.

'TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac' by James Gray is a perfect companion manual for all TextMate users that want to lift the hood off of this power app and get to the nuts and bolts. If you develop on a Macintosh on a daily basis for work or fun and want to learn more about what you can do to make your life easier, pick up this book and you won't be disappointed. Written well and coming in at ~200 pages, there are 12 chapters which will teach you goodies in TextMate like how to create and use Macros, using Find & Replace to quickly edit text, and much, much more!!

The Mac is a great tool for developing code and TextMate is a great app for writing it, make yourself a more efficient coder today!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Great book on a fantastic product.......2007-05-13

Books on editors are tricky things... I'm (still) a big fan and user of vi, but textmate is my tool of choice for more project level work for its capabilties. This book has brought me closer to to the keyboard level of productivity that vi allows for with its two modes.

Worth every penny.......2007-04-02

I purchased this book as I always felt that I was not using the full potential of TextMate and wanted a way to catch-up. After reading the first half of this book I was using more features of TextMate than before. I highly recommend this book to anyone who uses TextMate on an even semi-regular basis.

Great book.......2007-04-01

I would highly recommend this book. It made me more productive with TextMate in less than 30 minutes. It will serve both the novice and expert equally well.

Learning the bash Shell (In a Nutshell (O'Reilly))

Average customer rating:

Mediocre material lacking truly useful examples
Good chapter on debugging.
Strong, gently-paced intro
Good introduction and reference resource
Essential linux skills.

Learning the bash Shell (In a Nutshell (O'Reilly))
Cameron Newham
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0596009658

Book Description

O'Reilly's bestselling book on Linux's bash shell is at it again. Now that Linux is an established player both as a server and on the desktop Learning the bash Shell has been updated and refreshed to account for all the latest changes. Indeed, this third edition serves as the most valuable guide yet to the bash shell. As any good programmer knows, the first thing users of the Linux operating system come face to face with is the shell the UNIX term for a user interface to the system. In other words, it's what lets you communicate with the computer via the keyboard and display. Mastering the bash shell might sound fairly simple but it isn't. In truth, there are many complexities that need careful explanation, which is just what Learning the bash Shell provides. If you are new to shell programming, the book provides an excellent introduction, covering everything from the most basic to the most advanced features. And if you've been writing shell scripts for years, it offers a great way to find out what the new shell offers. Learning the bash Shell is also full of practical examples of shell commands and programs that will make everyday use of Linux that much easier. With this book, programmers will learn:

How to install bash as your login shell
The basics of interactive shell use, including UNIX file and directory structures, standard I/O, and background jobs
Command line editing, history substitution, and key bindings
How to customize your shell environment without programming
The nuts and bolts of basic shell programming, flow control structures, command-line options and typed variables
Process handling, from job control to processes, coroutines and subshells
Debugging techniques, such as trace and verbose modes
Techniques for implementing system-wide shell customization and features related to system security

Customer Reviews:

Mediocre material lacking truly useful examples.......2007-06-07

This book has many drawbacks: its structure is deficient, the division of the material is sometimes outright confusing, the content lacks rigor and clarity, the examples are badly chosen and there is an overall lack of unity and consistence throughout the book.

Despite its many drawbacks, "Learning the Bash Shell" is still a useful book, simply because there are not that many alternatives. Moreover, the subject itself (i.e. the Bash shell, the Unix OS or both) is inconsistent and confusing.

Good chapter on debugging........2006-11-17

Good chapter on debugging. Good overview of the Bash shell, but I wish it had more examples. For a book with lots of examples, you might want to consider "Bash Shell: Essential Programs for Your Survival at Work" by Larry L. Smith.

Strong, gently-paced intro.......2006-10-24

The bash shell is now the most common and featureful command shell in the Unix world. It's full capability certainly isn't obvious to a beginner facing a command prompt, but is well worth exploring. This book is a great place for the novice to start. The first chapter addresses the most fundamental question: just what is a command shell?

The ideal reader already knows at least the names of the emacs and vi editors. That much helps understand the many features and two distinct feature sets available for command line editing. I consider fancy command line editing over-rated for fluent typists, but it's there in the second chapter for all who want it and anyone can benefit from at least a little knowledge of it. After that successive chapters pull the reader deeper into the bash feature set: aliases and shell variables, scripting and shell programming, and debugging when the shell programs or functions go awry.

Since this book is aimed at the novice, Newham and Rosenblatt skip lightly over a few of the more advanced subjects. For example, exceptions and trap handling get only cursory treatment, since they get into deep weirdness very fast. The authors are honest about this shallow treatment, though, and give enough information for a novice to recognize the basics and look them up in more advanced references.

This is nicely organized for the self-taught student. As a result, it's not laid out as a programmer's reference manual - anyone who wants that kind of reference just isn't looking at the right book. For its intended reader, though, it's a great book. It gets readers off to a fast start, and lets them decide just how much they want to bite off at a time. I recommned it very highly.

//wiredweird

Good introduction and reference resource.......2005-10-02

This is a useful introduction to the Bash shell used in unix, linux, and other *nix type operating systems. It takes you from a very basic introduction into deeper concepts including shell scripting and customization. Highly recommended for the niche market it is intended to reach. I found it clear, useful and detailed without being dull.

Essential linux skills........2005-07-23

This book (2nd. ed.) shows how bash shell programming exploits special capabilities of linux and unix. Shell programming manages other, more specialized, programs. So understanding the shell is essential to fully exploiting multitasking environments like linux.

This book comfortably covers a complex topic. As software evolves, these skills apply to the TCL shell and the Z shell, too. I am eager to get started on the 3rd. edition of this book.

Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (2nd Edition)

Average customer rating:

Great introduction for Windows Programmers
Excellent book for people new to cocoa.
How to work with COCOA made easy
The best book out there on a confusing topic
Great book!

Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (2nd Edition)
Aaron Hillegass
Manufacturer: Addison-Wesley Professional
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Programming in Objective-C
Advanced Mac OS X Programming (2nd Edition of Core Mac OS X & Unix Programming)
Step into Xcode: Mac OS X Development
Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach
Beginning Mac OS X Programming

ASIN: 0321213149

Amazon.com

There's a reason that a large slice of the open-source movement has defected from running Linux on its laptops to running Mac OS X. The reason is the Unix core that underlies Mac OS X, and the development tools that run on that core. Cocoa makes it easy to create very slick Mac OS X interfaces for software (as well as to create applications in a hurry), and this new edition of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X does an excellent job of teaching its readers how to put a Cocoa face on top of code (Objective-C code almost exclusively). If you know something about C and/or C++ programming and want to apply your skills to the Mac, this is precisely the book you want.

Author Aaron Hillegass teaches a Cocoa class, and his book reads like a demonstration-driven lecture in a computer lab. That is, the book takes a heavily example-centric approach to its subject, beginning with simple announcement windows and proceeding to cover the more advanced controls and object-oriented features of Cocoa and Objective-C. Throughout, he hops back and forth between descriptions of the goal to be accomplished, listings of the code that does the job, and instructions on how to use the Mac OS X development tools to speed the development process. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to write software for Mac OS X in Objective-C and, especially, with Cocoa. The new edition shows how to use NSUndoManager, add AppleScript capability to an application, do graphics work with OpenGL, and use Cocoa under Linux using GNUstep. As well, all the basic controls and design patterns are covered.

Customer Reviews:

Great introduction for Windows Programmers.......2007-04-17

I have been developing windows applications since 1987. I found this guide to be well written, and I was able to get my first few applications up and running in short order.

Excellent book for people new to cocoa........2007-03-02

This book does not go into deep details of Cocoa or Xcode but it does what it promises and that is to teach you enough to start building Cocoa programs. And it does that with great quality and makes sure that you understand the concepts that it is teaching. It does not go deep into Objective-C so I highly recomend for those with little C experience to grab a copy of "Programming in Objective-C" by Stephen Kochan. Those 2 books together are easily the most valuable books a programmer beginning Mac OS X programming can own.

The only thing I wished it had more of is to give a little bit more info on how to use various features of Xcode. look to "Beginning Xcode" for that info.

How to work with COCOA made easy.......2007-02-17

I just started that book. I'm using cocoa to program a naval architecture related software and I was a bit sceptical on how to do it at first. I knew that cocoa had a lot to offer and that XCode was really powerful, but I was getting lost on my own. This book make it quite clear on how to proceed. Higly recommended for people that are lost and need a clear map to carry on with programming...

The best book out there on a confusing topic.......2007-01-19

Cocoa can seem like a brave new world to those accustomed to pure programming, since Cocoa is a combination of programming in Objective-C and stringing together and customizing prefabricated visual components. So it was comforting to read this in chapter one: "Before going any further, assure yourself that you are up to the challenge and that some things are just hard." You should already know Objective-C before you read this book. If you don't, "Programming In Objective-C" by Kochan is a good book on the subject. Just be prepared for the difficulty level going through the book to be more like hills and valleys than one long ascension. This is not to say that the book is not a good one, it's just that since Cocoa is actually an umbrella for a number of technologies that it is really hard to start from the beginning since there really isn't one. There are plenty of examples though, and the author makes the subject as clear as is humanly possible.

Great book!.......2007-01-04

I am a begining Mac programmer and was recommended this book by a senior software engineer. It is a very good start if you want to learn the nuts and bolts of Cocoa programming.

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