Mac OS X Leopard Edition: The Missing Manual 130
jsuda writes "The preeminent general reference source for Mac OS X has always been the Missing
Manual Series written by David Pogue. The latest iteration in the series
is its Mac OS X Leopard Edition, completely revised, and it is the biggest,
most comprehensive, and most useful of all the editions in the series. It covers
the Mac OS X desktop and file system, the free applications included with the Mac OS
X installation, the system components and technologies, networking and online
features and components, and includes welcome appendices on installation, troubleshooting,
Windows/Mac comparisons, and a Master Keystroke list." Read on for the rest of John's review.
Every one of the editions has been exceedingly well-designed and written combining
serious treatment of subject content with style, wit, and humor, as well as honest
evaluation and critique of features of the Mac operating system. All of the OS
X Missing Manuals have addressed issues for a broad range of users, from the lightly
experienced, the intermediate, and for power users. For the most part, however,
the primary focus of each edition has been on the less experienced users. This
has changed with the Leopard edition.
Mac OS X Leopard Edition: The Missing Manual | |
author | David Pogue |
pages | 893 |
publisher | O'Reilly Media Inc. |
rating | 10 |
reviewer | John Suda |
ISBN | 9780596529529 |
summary | Great Manual for all levels of users |
There seems to have been a deliberate effort to make the book more appealing and useful to upper-end users without losing any utility at all for others. There seems to be more material for power users- -there are more Power Users Guides providing advanced information and techniques, more UNIX references for those willing and able to take avail of the UNIX kernel underlying the operating system, more identifications of keyboard shortcuts, and more disclosure of undocumented and advanced features than in previous editions.
For example, Pogue itemizes and describes at least 20 UNIX utilities that only power users would want to use, explains how to configure preferences for the Terminal application, explains how to deal with the file and folder permissions system using UNIX commands, and even notes the existence of the venerable Eliza therapist emulator program hidden in a part of the emacs text editor. At each juncture of describing operating system features, Pogue explains from the perspective of different levels of users, including the power user, like himself. Unlike in many other books purporting to cover a broad range of users, this one does not short on the higher-end.
This is all well and good as casual users are still widely well-taken care of by the thorough and well-organized explanations of nearly every feature of OS 10.5. The book is illustrated profusely with screenshots of system features, configuration processes, comparison of the Mac OS X versions, comparisons of Mac OS X to Windows features, and more. Nearly every page is loaded with Tips, Notes, FAQs, lists, tables, and sidebars. Throughout, there are nuggets of insight and technical arcana that even Mac veterans will be surprised to learn about. I learned, for example, that the one-button Apple Mighty Mouse has a secret 2-button feature. Also there is a similar way to operate a laptop with a two finger trackpad technique. There are a lot of tips and tricks like that in the book. Even beyond description and explanation, Pogue provides useful recommendations for configurations of the Dock, recovery from common errors, and using Automator to design practical workflows for common tasks.
The subject content builds upon that of previous editions and updates it with material relating to the 300-plus new features of Leopard. Much of the new material covers the Leopard update highlights the backup program called Time Machine, a desktop switching application called Spaces, the Stacks organizing feature, the file previewer, QuickLook, and the feature enhancements in iChat, Mail, and especially Spotlight, the search tool.
Spotlight is much more than a mere search tool although it is a great one. A whole chapter is devoted to it alone. Pogue explains how to use it not just for casual and advanced searching (using over 125 types of data and metadata) but as a quick launcher of files, folders, and applications; as a calculator; and as a dictionary. Sophisticated query languages can be used and Pogue lists a series of power user keyboard shortcuts for Spotlight use.
I see the book as especially useful for those Windows users of all levels gravitating to the Mac platform. Not only is the treatment of the Mac OS done well, but at nearly every juncture, Pogue takes the perspective of a Windows user and provides practical comparisons and contrasts of operating systems.
Weaving all of these perspectives into a harmonious, readable manual is a fine achievement. The content discussions and explanations are never abstract but written from the viewpoint of the thoughtful and practical user and no one is better at this than David Pogue who has been cited before as one of the worlds best (technical) communicators. The denseness of the treatment of the subject content diminishes somewhat from the readability of the book compared to prior editions and there is a bit less wit, humor and style. That is the trade-off, I presume, for the increased breadth and depth of the content treatment but this Missing Manual is still as well written as a computer manual can be expected to be.
You can purchase Mac OSX Leopard Edition: The Missing Manual from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I'd buy it... (Score:2)
Re:I'd buy it... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.macinstruct.com/node/213 [macinstruct.com]
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Re:I'd buy it... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:I'd buy it... (Score:5, Informative)
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Yuk yuk yuk. Your wit is painful to witness.
Yeah, remove Application Enhancer before installing Leopard. That always does the trick.
iPhone edition (Score:2)
Re:iPhone edition (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Does OSX documentation go out of print so fast? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because Microsoft can't come out with OS updates but once or twice a decade doesn't mean that Apple isn't providing significant updates to their OS more regularly. People see a reason to spend $130 for Leopard; there must be something new there.
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Not necessarily. Because Leopard is a major upgrade, the Tiger edition might be OK for the basics, but there's always going to be that 10% that will mess people up because it doesn't work that way anymore. For example, the networking, sharing, and printing UI was completely revamped. Also, many of the Spotlight capabilities mentioned in the article summary are new to Leopard. They wouldn't be covered at all in th
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Users would of course find that many things from the Tiger "missing manual" would still apply. Obviously, though, anything that changed between Tiger and Leopard would be different. Why wouldn't O'Reilly want to stay up to date?
This really isn't a tough logic problem.
Re:Does OSX documentation go out of print so fast? (Score:5, Informative)
No, but it does become obsolete that fast. Features new to Leopard that were not in Tiger include:
Yes. 10.n to 10.n+1 is major upgrade akin to going from XP to Vista. As one of those people who doesn't read the manual before diving into something, I'm still finding new features and I've had it for months. Just yesterday I noticed in an e-mail a friend sent me about a concert he was going to downtown "next friday at 9:00", that right clicking on the time, gave me the option of automatically creating an event in the calendar program for that day at that time labelled with the concert name. That's exactly the kind of stuff a book about Leopard is nice for finding out about.
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I'm glad they are starting to bring it back. I'm hoping that they make the APIs available to other applications in the next release.
Next tech I'd wish they'd bring back? OpenDoc!
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Trust me, if you expect "Spaces" to be like the virtual desktops you're used to in Gnome or KDE -- it isn't. It's practically useless in fact being based on the notion of application partitioning rather than task partitioning. This means if you try to spread out windows from one program over several desktops, you're in for some confusing behavior. And if you used forwarded X sessions over X11 via ssh -- get ready for really crazy behavior unless you keep all your windows on one deskt
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You mean the broken Dtrace?
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/22/2156244&from=rss [slashdot.org]
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If you want to buy it, do so. If not, don't.
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Bad ISBN (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Bad ISBN (Score:5, Informative)
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what about wireless? (Score:1, Interesting)
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Mouse Acceleration (Score:2)
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But thanks for *your* contribution.
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Is there an app that works better under it? Tablet use? Fine(st) grained control?
If it's just personal preference, fine.
Re:Mouse Acceleration (Score:4, Informative)
Then, I installed Logitech's all-in-one OSX utility (the Logitech Control Center). It recognized my Logitech USB mouse and - voila - the awful acceleration was gone, swept aside by using the hardware vendor's driver instead of the one that ships with the OS.
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Iam using an LG mouse with default driver and it sucks.
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http://www.usboverdrive.com/USBOverdrive/News.html [usboverdrive.com]
Jump to End of Line (Score:1, Troll)
I have never seen that done on a Macintosh computer before. For those of us with a real computer, the 'home' and 'end' keys perform this bit of magic quite universally.
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apple + right arrow (end)
get a mac before you complain about how its not a "real" computer.
Re:Jump to End of Line (Score:5, Informative)
I'd say that's enough *real* features whatever that means...
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Help key doesn't do anything either.
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Fixing that was pretty important to me in my mac migration.
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On older keyboards it's command+left / command+right. Alt+left/right goes between words.
I think the newer keyboards do have end/home keys, as well as an fn key and better-labelled page up, down and command keys.
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^E: simple emacs bindings are supported (Score:3, Informative)
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Apparently it's command-left/right. Skipping a single word is option-left/right. Unless you are in a Qt app, in which case it might be control, because Qt developers wouldn't know interface consistency if someone beat them to death with it (not sure if this has been fixed in recent versions of
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Command-LeftArrow, Command-RightArrow has always worked fine for me.
Yaz.
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Additionally, most standard EMACS key bindings are supported. Is that 'real' enough for you?
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One need only watch a Mac user work for 5 minutes to recognize that its POSIX compliance means nothing. The OS seems to miraculously turn even previously reasonable savvy computer users into specific-application-using near-luddites. Happened to my best friend. Seriously.
As for me, I use Linux.
ELIZA !== emulator (Score:1)
Wrong ISBN ! (Score:2, Informative)
ISBN-10: 059652952X
ISBN-13: 978-0596529529
Re:Wrong ISBN ! (Score:5, Funny)
- We can still go years with the existing ISBN-10 system.
- We can gain even more years if large publishers were to return unused parts of their ISBN-10 space.
- The ISBN-13 system will require vast changes to existing libraries costing billions of dollars.
- In fact, BAT ("Book Address Translation") is good enough for most users.
- BAT provides an extra layer of security that ISBN-13 just doesn't have.
- The extra digits are inefficient and take up needless space.
- None of the problems with ISBN-10 are fixed by ISBN-13.
- Noone can remember ISBN-13 numbers, they are just too long.
Did I miss any?
And while I'm here anyway, just who is misplacing all those manuals anyway and why is that newsworthy?
What's next on slashdot? "Cowboy Neal: the Missing Carkeys"?
Will it tell me how to fix these bugs? (Score:3, Insightful)
* Looooong wait times for wake-from-sleep (15 seconds typical) with no indication whether it's going to wake from sleep at all (e.g. if the battery is drained)
* sometimes doesn't sleep when lid is closed (until the battery drops to emergency levels, see above)
* sometimes doesn't recognize monitors when waking from sleep. Sometimes the monitor it doesn't recognize is the macbook's own.
* Fucks up screen geometry when plugged into a 1600x1200 external monitor (menu bar moves to external monitor as needed, but stays at the native-screen width; X windows and most applications silently ignore clicks near the lower or right edges of the external monitor
I'm sorry I ever upgraded to Leopard -- it's such a buggy piece of crap that I'm beginning to feel like I'm using a Microsoft product.
Re:Will it tell me how to fix these bugs? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I went to Leopard a little early; but with 10.5.2, it is a lot better. There was a graphics update at the same time that probably did the actual fixing.
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* occasional graphic system hangs (background processes work fine, keyboard and mouse stop working, firing up a new dialog box causes a process to hang)
I haven't seen that one, so I can't comment.
* Looooong wait times for wake-from-sleep (15 seconds typical) with no indication whether it's going to wake from sleep at all (e.g. if the battery is drained)
Heh, I wish my Windows machine was as fast waking as a broken OS X machine. :) I've seen this one occasionally when running old carbon applications that have not been recompiled since 10.1. I think it has to do with a conflict when there is a runaway LaunchCFMApp process and the system is suspended and you require a password to wake from sleep. Or maybe you're seeing a different issue. Anyway, that does not seem fixed in 10.5.2
* sometimes doesn't sleep when lid is closed (until the battery drops to emergency levels, see above)
I had this problem with an ol
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Needs to be tagged "Apple"... (Score:4, Insightful)
Will it tell me (Score:1, Funny)
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"secret 2-button feature"???? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/ [apple.com]
Also, it's prominent in the picture at the top of the page.
Slashdot needs better review guidelines (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be better, if different parts and aspects of the books were given separate ratings, and then a total rating was calculated from the parts. Please also look into how other publications rate books. I'm sure there's a lot to be learned.
Read on... (Score:2, Funny)
Next!
Reason to buy it (Score:1)
Re:$21 for something you would expect to be suppli (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you expect a comprehensive book written by a 3rd party to be supplied free with the OS?
If you want help from Apple, there's the built in help function, the section of their website, and their Discussions Forums [apple.com]
, not to mention the free call number available in almost all countries they officially sell in.Re:$21 for something you would expect to be suppli (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.apple.com/support/leopard/ [apple.com]
(and yes, they assume you can get to and read a web page).
I see ENORMOUS books on how to use Windows... or even Word for that matter. 600+ pages describing how to use a word processor.
Why doesn't Microsoft give those third-party books away for free?
You do realize this is a third-party book, right?
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Also - it's been a long time since I bought a copy of Windows XP, but I seem to recall that the "manual" it came with was basically a "Getting Started" guide, maybe 50 pages long or so, with big, easily-readable text on small pages. I don't really see that as much of an improvement over what Apple supplies.
Re:$21 for something you would expect to be suppli (Score:4, Informative)
if it was called "Secrets of OS X" instead of "The Missing Manual" nobody would bitch. People are more than happy to take any opportunity they can to take a shot at apple. My girlfriend recently bought a vista laptop. It didn't come with a vista manual (or even install/recovery disks)... but there is no "Vista: The missing manual (and recovery disk)"
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OK... I stand corrected [amazon.com]
There most certainly is a missing manual for vista.
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But you will have to do a fsck first.
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Quite, and that was my point (Score:2)
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As a recent switcher to Mac, and Windows and *NIX Power User, I am interested in this book. But can someone else tell me if the various ways to simulate right-clicking is really the extent of the "insight and t
VideoTips and Guided Tour too (Score:3, Informative)
you can subscribe to the videocast. While most video tips are things I knew about, some are truly useful and well hidden features (oops?). The best part is probably the short length of the videotips themselves: 1 minute per week is something I can afford.
And let's not forget the Guided Tour. 30 minutes, but worthed: http://www.apple.com/macosx/guidedtour/ [apple.com]
And while I'm a it, there's a new section this year: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/ [apple.com]
Re:$21 for something you would expect to be suppli (Score:2)
Re: $21 is too much? (Score:2)
It all depends on what Dickensian weasel words are worth to you.
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OK, I'll Bite (Score:4, Informative)
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Or, you could just start adding random characters to your folder name so they show up at the top of a list.
Or use that dock stacks thing.
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folder sorting (Score:2)
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You could always check out Path Finder [cocoatech.com], and use that instead of Finder. It offers this feature. I've been using it in place of Apple's Finder since 10.1 or 10.2. It offers a lot of things Finder doesn't. The only minus, if you're attached to Cover Flow, it does not have this feature yet (which is the only feature I'm aware of that Finder has and Path Finder does not). QuickLook works.
Although, you can use QuickLook from Terminal, also. Just add this to your ~/.bash_profile for added laziness:
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I finally broke down and picked up a second-hand machine (Mac Mini G4 1.42 MHz) with MacOS X Leopard installed. It'
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You may want to look into this, then: Classic on Intel [macos-user.com].
Set that up, and you won't need your 10.3 install anymore.
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I am doing my ph.d. on supercomputers. Linux in my field is not just a reality, its the rule. When its not linux, it is... well, solaris, sun os, and, well... mac os X.
Unix is not open source. BSD is. Unix is a property of Novell.
About the multimedia, well, windows is the king today. But the best pc you can run windows today is a mac. Be it a desktop or a notebook.
About easy upgradable computer, are you using intel chips recently? About the media and the ipods, you are wrong, completely wron
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