Mac OS X in a Nutshell

How This Book Is Organized

This book is broken down into 5 parts, 25 chapters, and 1 appendix:

Part I

Chapter 1

We begin our exploration of Mac OS X at its surface, by describing and documenting Aqua, the system’s liquid-themed graphical user interface. This chapter covers the visual metaphors and window features that every native Mac OS X application uses, as well as onscreen objects that are available from every program, such as the Dock and the menu bar.

Chapter 2

The Finder is Mac OS X’s graphical file navigation application, which presents your computer’s filesystem through the familiar visual metaphor of folders and files. This chapter explores this application, including a wealth of subtle tips and tricks.

Chapter 3

Meant especially for longtime Mac veterans, this chapter covers the major differences between Mac OS X and its predecessors, of which Mac OS 9 was the final version.

Chapter 4

This chapter provides a quick index of common operating system activities in a question-and-answer format.

Part II

Chapter 5

This chapter covers the System Preferences application as it appears in Mac OS X Version 10.2, and details how it works as a frontend to the file-based preferences system.

Chapter 6

Mac OS X comes with a wealth of core applications, more than any Mac OS before it. This chapter lists the contents of a fresh Mac OS X installation’s Applications folder and discusses the system’s unique approach to application integration, as well as ways to install new programs onto your Mac.

Chapter 7

This chapter covers the user’s part in establishing and using a network connection with Mac OS X centering on the system’s Network preferences pane and touching on the programs one uses to take advantage of an active connection.

Chapter 8

This chapter details the Mac OS X printing system. It covers printing documents through the standard Print dialogs (as well as through a handful of command-line programs), and discusses configuring the printing system.

Chapter 9

Like any Unix system, much of Mac OS X’s functionality is based on its filesystem layout. This chapter tours the various folders found on a typical Mac OS X volume, including the Unix-centric directories that the Finder usually keeps out of sight.

Chapter 10

This chapter covers the various ways one can run Java programs in Mac OS X, either as full-fledged Aqua applications, JAR files that provide their own interfaces, or even command-line programs.

Part III

Chapter 11

Now that Macs are actually Unix machines at the core, it pays to know the fundamentals of administrating a multiuser system (even if you’re the only human user on it). This chapter also covers the basics of monitoring and maintaining your Mac’s network connections, whether they are to a LAN or the world-wide Internet.

Chapter 12

This chapter details the ways Mac OS X stores and accesses its administrative information, ranging from the NetInfo system of network-linked databases to the “old-school” file-based system familiar to Unix administrators.

Chapter 13

Mac OS X’s suite of open source Unix software includes a full complement of network services programs (what the Unix wizards call daemons). This chapter details the major categories of services Unix supplies, including web servers, file sharing, and mail servers. This chapter also covers the control that Mac OS X gives you through either the Sharing preferences pane or the command line.

Chapter 14

This chapter shows you how to set up and configure a web-publishing system using DAMP: Darwin, Apache, MySQL, and Perl/PHP/Python.

Part IV

Chapter 15

Mac OS X is a developer’s dream come true, and each new Mac and system comes with Apple’s own Developer Tools. This chapter provides a basic overview of the applications and tools that ship as part of the Developer Tools, including Project Builder and Interface Builder, the integrated development environment (IDE) for programming Cocoa-based applications for Mac OS X.

Chapter 16

The Mac’s native scripting language, AppleScript, gives you control over the environment and the applications on your system. This chapter introduces you to AppleScript, describing Apple Events and showing you how to use the Script Editor to write AppleScripts.

Chapter 17

Like all Unix systems, Mac OS X is driven by text files. Between various programs’ text-based configuration and preference files (often rendered in XML), program source code, the Makefiles, and source code of freshly downloaded software, it pays to know your options with opening, editing, and creating text files. This chapter covers Mac OS X’s attitude toward text files and the many editors it includes to help you create and edit them.

Chapter 18

CVS, the concurrent versions system, gives users and developers an easy way to manage changes made to project files. Under CVS, each person working on a project gets their own “sandbox” copy of every file involved, which they can modify and experiment with however they please; a central, untouchable file repository keeps the canonical files safe. This chapter introduces you to CVS and includes both the administrator and user commands.

Part V

Chapter 19

With Mac OS X, there’s only one way to gain access to the Unix core: the Terminal application. This chapter introduces you to the Terminal application and shows you how to issue commands and tweak its settings.

Chapter 20

A number of Unix text-processing utilities let you search for, and in some cases change, text patterns rather than fixed strings. These utilities include editing programs like vi and Emacs, programming languages like Perl and Python, and the commands grep and egrep. Text patterns (formally called regular expressions) contain normal characters mixed with special characters (called metacharacters).

Chapter 21

This chapter covers the shells included with Mac OS X, with the focus placed on tcsh, the default user shell. Also included in this chapter is an overview of tcsh’s commands, for use in programming the shell to perform various system-related tasks.

Chapter 22

Like the old saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. In this case, the cat we’re skinning is Jaguar. When you configure your system or an application to your liking, those preferences are stored in what’s known as the defaults database. This chapter describes how to gain access to and hack these settings via the Terminal application and the defaults command.

Chapter 23

As most Unix developers quickly learn, the X in Mac OS X doesn’t stand for the X Window System. This chapter describes how to install OroborOSX and XDarwin (a version of XFree86) on top of Mac OS X.

Chapter 24

While Mac OS X is Unix-based, most Unix applications need a little help to get them installed and running. This chapter describes some of the issues you’ll run into when installing a Unix application on Mac OS X, and guides you through what’s needed to make them run.

Chapter 25

This final chapter lists descriptions and usage terms for nearly 300 of the Unix commands found in Mac OS X. The commands have been painstakingly run and verified against the manpages for accuracy; this is the most complete and accurate Mac-based Unix command reference in print.

The book also has one appendix:

Appendix A

This appendix is a listing of resources for Mac users, including books, web sites, and mailing lists applicable to Mac OS X users, developers, and administrators.