Seeking advice on book-purchase

kanogil

I'm thinking purchasing an iMac g5 nowadays. I want to get the best experience possible, so I'm looking at a sortment of books to get me started.



As the purchase of a mac will be my first "real" mac experience, I want a book to teach me the basics sort of...

For that, I've looked at one title that has recieved good reviews:



"Mac os X Panther - The missing manual"



It looks like this book will give me a good start. Any opinions?



Well, I've also looked at a larger book called "Mac os X Panther Unleashed"



Of what I can tell, this looks like a book that will go more in-depth than "missing manual". I want to learn more advanced "mac-ing" when I've gotten comfortable with the basics, so I want a book that covers a bit more advanced stuff. I have a dream of once knowing AppleScript pretty well and maybe comprehend some Unix-commands etc. (I know this sounds like a huge project...) .



I checked "Unleashed"'s "table of contents" on amazon and it says it covers "mac os x basics" as well. coud it be that "unleashed" is the only book I'll need, or would you suggest purchasing both (wich was my idea), or maybe you have some other suggestions? .



I also want to get a book that goes in-depth in iLife 04, so I can enjoy iTunes, iMovie, GarageBand and iDVD to the fullest. Any recommendations?

towel

I own the previous editions of both of those - Missing Manual and Unleashed. I got them both right after getting my first OSX Mac. They're both great books, and I'm glad I got both of them. Which you'd like more depends what you want to get out of them. Missing Manual is all about how to use OSX. It's written for the more-or-less novice user, not that "which is the any key?" type, but someone who is new to OSX and UNIX. It emphasizes the surface features of OSX, and spends a lot of time talking about the applications (including Finder) in which you'll spend most of your time. If you want to learn about iLife, this is the place. It was invaluable when I first started, and I actually did read it cover-to-cover, it's that well written.



But I haven't cracked Missing Manual in some time, while I still consult Unleashed on occasion. If Missing Manual emphasizes the surface, Unleashed emphasizes the underpinnings. It glosses over most of the stuff that you'll spend most of your time doing - don't come here to learn iLife. But it covers almost every UNIX-related topic in at least moderate detail. Everything from the shell to cron jobs to scripting to MySQL to Perl. It's not quite a cover-to-cover kind of book, since it goes into very gory detail on some topics, but I at least read all of the overviews. Since I wanted to learn about the UNIX-y power of OSX, and wanted to unleash some of that power on my work, it was a fabulous smorgasboard of introduction. It covers everything, in just enough detail to give you an idea where to go next.



I guess my conclusion is that they're both good. You'll feel a little lost diving right into Unleashed, while you'll feel a little unsatisfied after finishing Missing Manual. Especially if you're brand new to the Mac and to UNIX, I think both are worth getting.

kanogil

Thanks a lot buddy!! Your advice was exatcly what I needed!