Mac OS X Disaster Relief

• Ted Landau
• Peachpit Press
• 032116847X

Order (or just read more about) Mac OS X Disaster Relief  from Amazon.com

This is one of those tough ones. On the one hand, there's a lot of good stuff here. On the other hand..

The problem here is that a LOT of this book was written about early versions of Mac OS X. Too many things talked about have changed and either work differently or don't work at all. In fairness, there is a section at the end that is newer than the rest of the book that does cover most of that, but if you are reading front to back you will have some disorientation.

Some of the problems just come from lack of basic Unix knowledge. I don't mean that there's anything too horrible here, just a few minor misconceptions and a general feeling that the author wants to avoid the command line at all costs. On the other hand, if you share his apparent dislike of command line work, you'll be pleased to find his more graphical workarounds.

The focus of this book is troubleshooting, and even with the problems I have mentioned, it does cover all manner of problems, and attempts to give enough technical background to be interesting and educational - it's not just "Command Option blah blah fixes that"; the author does make the effort to explain what's going on underneath.

So, while I can't heartily recommend that you drop everything and rush out to buy this, it is a book you will find value in.

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