Both Mac and Windows fans have spent years collecting bits of lore-a keyboard shortcut here, an undocumented double-click there-and then Mac OS X 10.2 came along. It may be the world's best operating system, but it has a personality all its own.
As it turns out, Mac OS X harbors just as many delicious secrets as any system that came before. You just have to know where to find them. And Mac OS X Hints: Jaguar Edition is the guide you need.
Inside, you'll find 560 high-octane secrets in every conceivable category:
Desktop and Finder. How to shut down using only the keyboard; use an animated screen saver as a desktop picture; and jump to System Preferences with a keystroke.
iApps. How to burn six hours of iTunes music onto a single CD; merge calendars in iCal; and prevent iMovie 3 from applying the Ken Burns effect.
Mac OS X programs. How unlock 32,000 secret Unicode symbols in each font; rename the System Preferences panels; add an "Email this page" button to Safari; and make Mail announce, in a cute British accent: "Mail has arrived, O all-wise master."
Mastering the system. How to share Web bookmarks between Mac OS X and Classic; connect to your Mac from the road; and make your iDisk work ten times faster; and.
Terminal. Unix fiends have never seen anything like the 105 pages of Terminal brilliance in this book. They explain how to save Terminal commands as Finder icons; put background programs to sleep; wake a sleeping Mac via the Internet; unearth the secret emacs adventure game; set up a message board on your Apache-based Web site; and more.
With authority, humor, and 440 illustrations, Mac OS X Hints: Jaguar Edition brings you insight, surprise, and delight at every turn. And that, after all, is what the Mac is all about.
Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. This book was written and edited on various Macs around the country using Word X and its indispensable revision-tracking features, with iTunes occasionally providing background entertainment. The screenshots were captured with Ambrosia Software's Snapz Pro X (www.ambrosiasw.com), and Adobe Photoshop Elements (www.adobe.com) was called in as required for touching them up.
The book was designed and laid out in Adobe PageMaker 6.5 on a PowerBook G3 and Power Mac G4. The fonts used include Formata (as the sans-serif family) and Minion (as the serif body face). To provide the apple logo and figs command symbols, a custom font was created using Macromedia Fontographer.
The book was generated as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file for proofreading and indexing, and final transmission to the printing plant in the form of PostScript files.
This book is the greatest! I have to say I was impressed with all of the great hints for making your Mac your own. The one thing I hear from people about OS X is it is not as customizable as the old OS was. With this book Rob Griffiths has settled that argument once and for all. I admit there are some things that are a bit risky if you don't pay attention, but, with this book you can do it all. You may have to get your hands dirty with UNIX once and awhile, but if you take the plunge you wont be disappointed.
He has taken a lot of the fear out of UNIX with this book. I have recommended this book to everyone in our User Group and would do the same to everyone else. Great job!
6/1/2003
5.0
Mac OS X Hints: Jaguar Edition Review
By Brian Redman
from Undisclosed
Comments about O'Reilly Media Mac OS X Hints:
As a long time Unix user, OS X devotee, and one who reads sites and forums like macosxhints.com every day, I didn't think I would learn much from Mac OS X Hints: The Book. I was wrong. Even for a know-it-all such as myself, a third of the hints (190) were new and interesting (I skipped entire sections like tips on editors and browsers I don't use). The aha to uh-huh ratio is very high.
You'll start using the hints as soon as you read them and it makes a great reference book. If you're like me you'll come across a situation after you finish the book and remember "there was a way to do that in OS X Hints". And you'll be able to find it easily because every hint is listed in the table of contents and the index is first rate.
On top of the excellent technical content the prose is fun to read -- thanks no doubt to The David Pogue Factor. The whole tone of the book seems to credit the reader with some intelligence. The jokes are subtle and the hints are straight to the point.
This book is a must-have for everyone with a Mac.
5/17/2003
4.0
Mac OS X Hints: Jaguar Edition Review
By Jon Bjornstad
from Undisclosed
Comments about O'Reilly Media Mac OS X Hints:
I have not purchased this book yet but from the look of
the sample chapter it looks like a total winner!
How were we supposed to learn about the wonderful
features of OS X without the great books from O'Reilly?
I find the on-line help difficult to maneuver around.
