Comprehensive How-To Guide for Mac OS X

This book is packed with useful how-to and background information about Mac OS X 10.4. It is especially strong on Unix -- it has the best description of Unix on Macintosh I've ever read.

The book covers the Mac OS X itself and the iLife applications, but not any third-party applications. It has been updated for Tiger but most of the information is applicable to Panther (Mac OS X 10.3).

It is sold as a troubleshooting book, and it does have a lot of information about solving specific problems, but that's not really where the emphasis is. Most of the information is "how to" do various things, such as installing, updating, configuring, turning features on or off, and where things are stored in Mac OS X. It is written as a narrative rather than a book where you primarily look up things. The authors did this deliberately because they believe "the best way to effectively troubleshoot is to understand what is going on, rather than blindly following a set of steps that fix the problem." There is not an emphasis on error messages or tables of symptoms. The book does have a good index and a detailed table of contents, so I think most problems would be easy to look up.

The book is clearly written and explains each topic from the beginning, but it is a fairly advanced book, oriented towards less-common tasks and situations rather than everyday activities. Techies will get the most benefit from it. A good book for beginners is David Pogue's Mac OS X Tiger: Missing Manual.

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