Mac OS X Advanced Visual QuickPro Guide

Maria Langer

Mac OS X Advanced Visual QuickPro Guide shows how to use Mac OS X--and shows is the correct word, because the layout leans heavily on illustrations to communicate concepts and procedures to readers. After locating in the index the subject that interests you, you'll find that it's explained with a step-by-step procedure that appears next to (and makes frequent reference to) a series of adjacent illustrations. Maria Langer, a respected authority on Mac matters, shows how to do many tasks that will interest people who use Mac OS X in the home or office.

Truth be told, the word Visual figures in this book's title for a reason. The reason is that the format was developed to illustrate how to get things done with graphical user interfaces (GUIs), like those of the traditional Mac environment and of Windows. The format works very well for that purpose. It kind of falls down, however, when it's applied to the command-line interface of Mac OS X (this alternative interface, which reflects the operating system's Unix-based core, is called "Darwin"). The very small screen shots that work well for GUIs inspire eyestrain when applied to terminal windows. Fortunately, though, the Darwin material makes up less than 10 percent of this book, and the text that accompanies the illustrations generally makes up for their diminutive size. --David Wall

Topics covered: Mac OS X for users of the operating system. Sections show how to configure multiple users, set up a network, and use the native utilities. There's a fair bit of coverage on the system's Unix-like underpinnings, as well.

1 David Weeks MyMac.com Book Review
Maria Langer's Mac OS X Advanced Visual Quickpro Guide is another addition to Peachpit Press's Visual Quickpro series. The Quickstart and Quickpro series are designed to fill a specific niche: books that tell you how to accomplish specific tasks using short textual explanations and graphics.

If you are the kind of computer user who want a book that will tell how to perform a specific task, and does not want to wade through a 678 page textbook to find the answer, this is the kind of book for you.

Langer covers the fundamentals of OS X with pithy explanations and screen snapshots. She does not waste your time with how to use Mail, Sherlock II, the Apache web server, or any other major OS X applications. She focuses like a laser on using the core parts of OS X.

You'll get a short description of OS X components, the Classic environment, Unix basics, networking, multiple users, AppleScript, and the various System preferences. The OS X utilities (Disk Utility, etc.) are also covered.

Langer has outsourced the chapters on Unix basics and Applescript to two outside writers. Unix is a fundamental part of OS X, and Langer clearly needs to devote some space to it. Ron Hipschman's discussion of Unix is the more challenging of the two. Unix can be a daunting topic for those of us who love the Macintosh user interface. Hipschman covers the fundamentals, but he makes it somewhat more complex than need be. I found that he sometimes neglects to define his terms (operand, syntax, etc.), and that made me reach for a dictionary.

But while the power of Unix is undeniable, I find it hard to imagine that the target reader for a Visual Quickpro book would be paging through the section on Unix permissions, and applying Terminal commands in a "cook-book" fashion to try to fix a permission problem. Hopefully, such a reader would realize that a little Unix knowledge can be dangerous, especially when used under pressure (like trying to fix a problem while under a deadline.) If readers truly want to become comfortable with Unix, then they should get a book more suited to learning Unix from scratch.

Ethan Wilde's AppleScript chapter is easier to digest, partly because the material will be more familiar to the average Mac OS user. His discussion of the power of AppleScript uses useful, real-world examples. These scripts would have been even better if Langer's companion website had provided the scripts in downloadable form, so the reader would not have to type the script from scratch, with the attendant chance of errors.

Mac OS X Advanced Visual Quickpro Guide is laced with many screenshots, as befits its' name. Unfortunately, the small size of many screenshots make them difficult to read, especially those that contain text. Larger shots would save the reader much eyestrain.

To this reviewer, one drawback of the Visual Quickstart series is that it is so task oriented. Langer does not provide much background as to why things are the way they are. You learn how to do specific tasks, but you don't learn how to apply that knowledge to other areas. However, because Visual Quickstarts are small books, you don't have to spend hours trying to find the right fix for your problem in some OS X book that is big enough to be a boat anchor.

So, if this the kind of computer book for you, Maria Langer's Mac OS X Advanced Visual Quickpro Guide is one of the better books in the field.

MacMice Rating: 3.5 out of 5

2 Help files in a book
I wasn't very impressed with this book. I bought it hoping that it would give me insight into some of the nitty-gritty "advanced" features that Mac OS X provides. Unfortunately, it didn't give me much more information that I got in the help files. The author spent too much time (and page space) showing me how to navigate through various dialogs and almost no time talking about how OS X works.

Quite a bit of time is spent talking about how to use UNIX commands like ls, chmod, cat, etc. but then there's nothing further about what to do with them. How about explaining all those directories like /etc and /usr/ that only show up in the terminal? What about configuration files, what they do, and how to change stuff from the command line?

The Applescript section is good, but it seems like it's aimed at people who already know Applescript. (If I already know Applescript, don't you think I might be able to figure out how to change my dock preferences)? If I buy a book on OS X Advanced, I want to know how to use NetInfo Manager, not that I should avoid it because I could break my system. That's for the beginner guides to tell me.

This book may be helpful to people who know ealier versions of Mac OS inside and out, but it doesn't really give you an "advanced" look at OS X and it certainly doesn't provide any more information than is found in help files.

3 Excellent Niche book
When Ms. Langer authored the Visual Quick Start Guide to Mac OS X, I wondered who the audience would be. It is a very, very basic book. Now she offeres this book for the intermediate to advanced Mac OS X user and nicely fills out her coverage of the new OS. This book is current with version X.1 and offers a nice introduction to the deeper and darker corners of OS X's unix underpinnings. There is a good introduction to the command line and the most current tutorial on paper of AppleScript for OS X. Good stuff. She also covers the obscure tools in the utilities directory of the Application folder. This book won't make you a Unix guru but will open the door to that world if you want to go there. There is also enough (but concise) of a rehash of her previous book to enable the old style mac power user to start right in.