Get APLawrence.com by RSSBig Book of Apple Hacks
2008/05/04
- Big Book of Apple Hacks
- Chris Seibold
- O'Reilly
- 9780596529826
This is the Mac book I've been waiting for! It's actually more than a "Mac" book; as the title implies, it also has content for iPods, iPhones and Apple TV - I don't happen to own any of those other things right now, but that's OK: this is a great book even if all you have is a Mac!
Wow - two exclamation marks in the first paragraph.. I don't do that very often.
But this compilation deserves it. This isn't the often silly or cosmetic hacks you'll find all over the web; some of that is here but there's a lot of real geekery included. The very first hack in the book covers booting your Mac from a USB thumb drive, the last covers (with pictures) disassembling and cleaning a Mighty Mouse. In between there's stuff about swapping out your drives to get more space or to boot an entirely different OS, using your Mac with X10 controllers and the like, building a small battery backup for your cable modem.. oh, it just goes on and on.
There are some mistakes here.. well, not necessarily mistakes, but old hacks. For example, this talks about enabling Safari's Debug menu. That option is gone now; the Developer Menu replaces it and that can be turned on or off in standard Preferences, no "hack" needed. But there is so much of value here we can easily forgive a small oversight like that!
I'd have to say that so far, this is my choice for "Best Book of the Year" in the geekish genre. You want this book if you own a Mac. Really. Click the link below now while you are thinking about it. You won't be sorry.
Tony Lawrence 2008-05-04 Rating:
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