Seeking advice on book-purchase
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?
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?
Comments
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.