Running Mac OS X Tiger

Preface

Mac OS X is the first real operating system for the 21st century. A stunning achievement not to be confused with Mac OS 9 and its predecessors even as it builds on their legacy, Mac OS X redefines our expectations of what a computer should be. On the surface, Mac OS X has a graphical user interface (GUI) with usability that can’t be touched by any other OS on the planet. Under the hood, it has a powerful Unix engine known as Darwin, which was developed through Apple’s open source initiative and based on the FreeBSD 5.0 Unix distribution and the fully buzzword-compliant Mach 3.0 kernel. This combination of features gives the system its smooth multitasking behavior and virtual memory management.

This strong foundation provides with the system the stability it needs to amaze, intrigue, and serve you. It is also this foundation that lets you run the Apache web server, the Postfix mail server, and X11 applications next to Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, and Macromedia Dreamweaver—a feat that nobody thought possible a few years ago. For many, Mac OS X has replaced the dual boot systems that they used to have: one partition for Windows so you could run Office and another for Linux for doing Unix-related work. Now, it’s all under one roof.

Even better, Mac OS X continues to improve. Each release brings new features, speed improvements, and more polish. This book, Running Mac OS X Tiger, will help you master the latest version of Mac OS X. You’ll learn how to get the most out of the pretty GUI as well as how to dive into the Unix layer of the system to take fine-grained control when you need to.

Audience

This book is written for users and power users of Mac OS X and assumes that you already have some experience with Mac OS X and with computers in general. For example, this book assumes that you have found and used the System Preferences application, have discovered how to change the way that your windows minimize and how the Dock works, and that you’ve figured out how to change your desktop background. I’m going to speak to you as somebody who wants to truly master what is going on with your system. Maybe you want to turn your Mac into a web server. Or maybe you want to know the pros and cons of the various filesystem choices that you have. Possibly you want to understand how Mac OS X’s networking subsystem makes it possible to switch effortlessly between wired and unwired networks as well as letting you share your connection with others.

The command line will be covered extensively in this book and, while I expect that you are at least comfortable with the idea of the command line, one thing I won’t assume is that you are a Unix guru who is knowledgeable about all of the shell’s dark corners. I’ll give you enough help and explanation of how the command line works so you can accomplish everything you need to. If you decide you like the Unix side of Mac OS X, you can learn more about it by reading Learning Unix for Mac OS X Tiger, by Dave Taylor (O’Reilly).

On the other hand, if you are a Unix guru, you may be interested in Mac OS X Tiger for Unix Geeks, by Brian Jepson and Ernest E. Rothman (O’Reilly), as a companion book that serves as a magic decoder ring describing the differences between Mac OS X’s internals and those of Linux, Solaris, and other variants of Unix.

And, if you really do want to learn how to set your desktop pictures and how to use Stickies, iChat, and iTunes, I suggest you put this book down and pick up Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition, by David Pogue (Pogue Press); surely it’s located somewhere nearby in the bookstore. Better yet, buy it at the same time you pick up this book. The two books go well with each other.

There are two other books that you should consider as companion books to this one:

• Mac OS X Tiger in a Nutshell, by Andy Lester (O’Reilly), serves as a quick reference to many of Tiger’s features.

• Mac OS X Tiger Pocket Guide, by Chuck Toporek (O’Reilly), squeezes the most- used features into a pocket-sized quick reference guide.