Mac OS X Hacks
100 Industrial Strength Tips and Tricks
Rael Dornfest & Kevin Hemenway
O’Reilly
ISBN 0-596-00460-5
406 pages
US $24.95 CA $38.95
The tide of Mac OS X “hacks” books is rising with the O’Reilly’s publication of Mac OS X Hacks 100 Industrial Strength Tips and Tricks. This trade paperback-sized volume is stuffed full of very useful suggestions to improve your OS X skills. While hard-core Unix converts to OS X may scoff at the some of the beginner-level “hacks,” there are plenty of fun tricks for novices to intermediates, and challenging techniques for intermediates to experts. The varying range of hack sophistication and difficulty is one of the best aspects of this book: you can start with the easy tips, move on to the moderate tricks, and hope someday you’ll be geeky enough to work the magic of the most exotic Unix-based feats of skill and daring.
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eMedia Intermediate Guitar Method
Company: eMedia Music Corp.
Price: $59.95 US
http://www.emediamusic.com
I have been playing and teaching beginner and intermediate level guitar for over 40 years. Learning this instrument is easy for most people who practice regularly.
Music students pay $15 – $50 per guitar lesson, and a lot of that money covers instruction and repetition that self-starters and motivated self-learners don’t need to spend. At under $60 US for comprehensive instructional and reference material, eMedia Intermediate Guitar Method provides exceptional value for these students.
I remember being lukewarm to positive in my appraisal of Volume One, the beginner CD in this series. It has been revised since then. If it’s as good as this Intermediate CD (Volume Two), beginners now have a much better chance of learning from scratch.
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Mac OS X In A Nutshell
Jason McIntosh, Chuck Toporek & Chris Stone
O’Reilly
ISBN 0-596-00370-6
US $34.95 CAN $54.95
768 pages, not including index
The nutshell series of books from O’Reilly is well known to the Unix crowd, and so it is with a certain degree of satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment that we now have Mac OS X In A Nutshell. It’s as if we are assured that Mac OS X is not only here to stay, but is here to be explored, worthy of mastery, and willing to make itself a useful and productive part of your computing environment.
In honor of this “achievement” I think it fitting that I should be writing this review using OpenOffice, (a Microsoft Office-wanna-be suite of apps but at an affordable price) running in Apple’s beta X11 environment, rather than MS Word or Apple Works. In addition, the software is not actually installed on this iMac, but rather on a remote iMac that happens to have the software installed as well as a VNC (Virtual Network Console) server that allows me to take full control of the system from a distance. I’m listening to my iTunes library as it streams from that remote system running a free mp3 server. The actual steps to doing these types of gymnastics have been available for Unix systems for some time, but not until Mac OS X came on the scene, have they entered the realm of one-click installations with GUI (Graphical User Interface) controls and preferences.
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Audio Hijack Pro 1.0
Company: Rogue Amoeba Software
Price: $30.00
$16.00 for owners of Audio Hijack
http://www.rogueamoeba.com
I reviewed the original Audio Hijack for MyMac.com soon after its original release, and found it to be a splendid little tool for capturing (hijacking, in Rogue Amoeba parlance) audio streams. Best of all, Audio Hijack is able to hijack RealAudio streams to disk, which no other application is able to do.
After stewing in their own juices for several months, the programmers at Rogue Amoeba have come up with Audio Hijack Pro, a substantial improvement to Audio Hijack. AH Pro addresses some of the shortcomings found in the original, and adds several neat features.
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Mac OS X Disaster Relief
Troubleshooting techniques to help fix it yourself
Ted Landau with Dan Frakes
Peachpit Press
ISBN 0-321-16847-X
684 pages
US 34.99 CA $54.99
I usually have a tall stack of books in the MyMac.com review pipeline, and new additions are added to the bottom of the pile. Sometimes it takes titles a while to surface, but when Ted Landau’s Mac OS X Disaster Relief arrived, it went promptly to the head of the pile.
When I began reading the actual troubleshooting sections, I began to worry.
“Did I make a mistake upgrading to Mac OS X?”
When I was half finished with the troubleshooting sections, I worried some more.
“Maybe I made a mistake owning a Macintosh.”
By the time I finished the book, I was really worried.
“Maybe I should just get rid of all my computers!”
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Our friend at DealMac.com, Bill Schlosser (Director of Marketing) sent us this really cool comparison. We thought you would enjoy it!
At dealmac, we’ve seen some dramatic price changes since our founding six years ago. To mark our anniversary and the thousands of deals that have crossed our pages, we’ve put together an entertaining summary of some of the best examples of how things have changed — mostly for the better, but sometimes not.
Products 1997 – Present Continue reading »
2x-speed CD burner cost…….. $388
48x-speed CD burner…….. $10
Google Hacks 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools
Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest
O’Reilly & Associates
US $24.95
CA $38.95
ISBN 0-596-0447-8
329 pages
Google is currently the most popular Internet search engine. While almost every Internet searcher is familiar with basics of Google searching, there’s far more to Google than meets the eye. Google Hacks tells individual Web searchers and Web site programmers how to best take advantage of Google’s tremendous amount of searching power and flexibility.
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MacRelevant – My Cell Phone Number
Tim Robertson
Publisher/Owner, Columnist, MacRelevant
Friday, 4/18/03
Not many people are aware of this, but the Federal Communications Commission (The FCC, for those of us who love our acronyms) has set a November 24 deadline for a rule that would allow you to keep your cell phone number, even if you switch cell phone companies. More, you will even be able to carry your land-based phone number over to a wireless company.
Guess who is not happy about this? You guessed it; the cell phone and landline based phone companies. They are in the process of lobbying hard to keep this requirement from happening. Actually, that date has been pushed back three time already by a complaining cell phone industry. But it appears that this time, the Nov. 24th deadline will stand.
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Our first reader letter arrived shortly after the review was posted.
Mr. Nemerovski, you wrote that:
“Downloading Intuit’s latest updates took under seven minutes at moderate broadband speed.”
Not being a highly-paid journalist, *I* am on a 56 Kb dial-up. It took me over two hours to download the required TurboTax updates (two nights ago). There was no message in the update process indicating the total size of the files that needed to be downloaded, so I sat at my desk, waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
While I am grateful that Intuit is doing a thorough job of making sure that the software is accurate, I feel that your glowing review needs to be taken down AT LEAST ONE NOTCH until Intuit provides one of two things as a courtesy to their paying customers:
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There is a little known curse that comes with teaching Critical Thought. It is especially bad if you also teach History. It is that your thoughts do not always go where you want them to go. Sometimes they bring you to conclusions that you would rather not think about.
I have not written in a while. Events happen, or rather transpire, and the writing sometimes gets pushed aside. However, that does not mean that the thinking goes away. Watching events play out on the world’s stage lately have transfixed us all, especially since 9/11. You know what I mean? This whole interplay between America and the rest of the world seems to be something brand new, and most people are unsure of what to think about it.
The fact is America has been, and is now, in the position of being not just the world’s benevolent leader, but the world’s dictator. In other words, America could become an Imperium like Rome was in its days of glory. The reason this has never happened is because our leaders have been patriotic Americans who have been fairly well reasoned individuals who were more intent on using diplomacy to solve the world’s problems. Our leaders generally have also had the check and balance of Congress to oversee their decisions.
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Back Office
Company: Shaun Jackson Design
Price: $149.95
http://www.sjdesign.com
Steve Jobs has called this the year of the laptop. I agree, I rarely touch my G4 tower preferring my iBook owing to the addition of a wireless router. Of course once you have semi splurged on a laptop you are going to want to take it with you somewhere. You may find yourself with the urge to take it on the road, you may want to haul it to the local coffee shop, heck you might not need to take it anywhere you might just want the status of hauling around a laptop because cell phones are so passe. Whatever the reason you’re going to need something to haul said miracle of compact computing and here your choices are nearly limitless. You can use anything from a free brown paper sack to a finely crafted leather satchel costing…well if you have to ask you can’t afford it.
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Review – I-VOLUTION for 20GB iPod
Tim Robertson
Publisher/Owner, Columnist, MacRelevant
Tuesday, 4/15/03
I-VOLUTION for 20GB iPod
Company: VAJA Corporation
Price: $69.90 US
http://www.vajacases.com
I really do enjoy my 20GB iPod, and I really do want the best for it. When it comes to cases, I want something that feels as well built and sturdy as the iPod itself. I recently reviewed the FlipStand iPod case, and while I liked the plastic case / stand, it would be unfair for me to compare that unit with the Vaja case. While well built, there is really a matter of craftsmanship missing from the FlipStand, and that is very evident the first time you slide your iPod into the Vaja case.
Have you noticed some Mac sites that really do nothing more than talk about how many hits they get? Is that as boring to you as it is to me? Or how long they have been publishing. Or how many “pages” they have on their site. Yawn…
So one of my fellow MyMac-ers suggested I do a similar column, to show we get more hits than they do, have been publishing for almost eight years, you know the drill. Nahh…
(I guess I did do just that for a moment there, didn’t I? DOH!)
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Photoshop 7 For Windows And Macintosh Visual QuickStart Guide
by Elaine Weinmann and Peter Lourekas
Peachpit Press
ISBN 0-201-88284-1, 556 pages
$24.99 US, $38.99 CN, £18.99 UK
When it comes to a Peachpit Press Visual QuickStart Guide, one can guarantee that a straightforward introduction to the subject matter is what they’ll get. That’s precisely the case with Photoshop 7 for Windows and Macintosh by Elaine Weinmann and Peter Lourekas.
This book is perfect for those readers uninitiated in the expanded depths offered by Photoshop 7, or for those who have never fired up any Photoshop software at all. Like other books in the Peachpit line, this is an excellent text for any classroom – since it starts quietly from scratch while building the proper mechanics for advanced Photoshop rigors.
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Nemo’s MyMac.com BOOK BYTES RATING SYSTEM:
MacMice Rating: 5 = AMAZING book, one of a kind, sensational
MacMice Rating: 4 = OUTSTANDING book through and through
MacMice Rating: 3 = GOOD book, worth every penny
MacMice Rating: 2 = OKAY, but nothing special
MacMice Rating: 1 = NOPE, forget it, and read something else
Special Edition Using Mac OS X v10.2
by Brad Miser
Que Publishing
ISBN 0-7897-2904-0, 913 pages
$39.99 US, $62.99 CN, £28.99 UK
TARGET AUDIENCE: Intermediate lever users and above with some Mac OS experience; may be slightly intimidating to novice Macintoshers.
COMPLETENESS: Very thorough.
READABILITY: Factual, and slightly dry.
ILLUSTRATIONS: Loaded with tables and screen shots; somewhat small in size but crisp in quality.
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Digital Video Essentials
by Erica Sadun
Sybex
US $29.99 CA $ 47.95
ISBN 0-7821-4198-6
252 pages including index, CD with demo software and training video included
Eria Sadun has a thing for digital imaging and video. A previous work, iMovie 2 Solutions Tips, Tricks, and Special, was reviewed last December with great notices.
Digital Video Essentials should be considered to be a prequel to her iMovie book, even though it was just published a few months ago. Why a prequel? Digital Video Essentials is a general overview to the entire digital video experience, whereas iMovie 2 Solutions is great exposition on mid-level to advanced iMovie-editing techniques. If you are just plunging into the digital video ocean, and have no experience with actually shooting video footage, than you need to walk before you run.
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I’ve never been any good at dating. I can be a good boyfriend once I get to that point, but the dating thing is beyond me. The entire pretense just doesn’t work for me and I think it shows. Halfway through dinner I usually continue the conversation in my own head. You know, the sort of things that you would normally answer, but don’t because you’re on your absolute best behavior. For example, when she asks you what you like to do in your free time, it is usually not acceptable to answer, “download computer porn and masturbate.”
Maybe I just never put the time into the practice of it, I don’t know. I simply never learned how to “be” on a date. I’m just not a good actor and I’m full of self-loathing so I can’t really fake the smooth talker guy, or the confident and charming guy. All of my serious relationships (all both of them) have been the result of not quite dating but more like hanging out gone awry.
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Secrets of the iPod, Second Edition
Author: Christopher Breen
Peachpit Press
ISBN 0-3211-16783-X
240 pages including index
US $21.99
CAN $34.99
Apple’s compact and elegant MP3 player is easy to use; that goes without saying. But just because the iPod has a slick user interface doesn’t mean Apple tells you how to actually use all the neat built-in features. Apple continues to ship the best MP3 player with skimpy documentation. New iPod owners usually scratch their heads trying to figure out how to get contact data, for example, from their email application into their new gadget. The new owner may know the iPod has the great feature of being able to do double-duty as a bootable FireWire hard drive, but is stuck because Apple says little about how to install OS X on it.
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Ilford Printasia Photo Paper
Company: Ilford
Price: $9.99 – 20 sheets of 8.5 x11 inch paper
Available internationally via retail and online stores, with dealer locator on the website
http://www.printasiafun.com
INTRODUCTION (VERY LONG, BUT WORTH READING)
My personal relationship with Ilford Imaging USA, a large UK-based international photography products corporation, goes back over twenty years. I was teaching myself to be a custom darkroom printer from color slides using Ilford’s Cibachrome (later called Ilfochrome) materials. I established a healthy long-term working relationship with local and corporate Ilford staff, and I contributed articles over many years to their Photo Instructor magazine.
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MyMac Podcast #385
MyMac Podcast #384