#Learn unix on mac for mac os x
Learning Unix for Mac OS X is written for beginners, who can buy another, more advanced book when they feel ready.Īll true…but the typical Mac user does not have a system administrator to get help from when he needs it: Macs are found most often in homes or small businesses, where they are chosen because they don’t need a guru to maintain them. At a short 139 pages, of course there are topics that can’t be covered. The authors often “suggest that beginners get help from experienced users…” or “ask your system administrator for advice first…” There is a reference to “a very powerful command history syntax built into tcsh that allows you to recall a previous command by number,” but it is never elaborated on.Īt this point, I expect to be told that I’m missing the point of the book.
It seems as if Dave Taylor and Jerry Peek came up with an answer like this: the book is written for someone in an office environment, with access to a system administrator, who doesn’t really need to use Unix for anything that can’t easily be done from Aqua, and who wants only to use Unix, not to understand it.Įspecially in early chapters, the book is peppered with phrases like “The details are more than we can cover in an introductory book.” In many places, only a few options for a particular Unix program are offered, the others silently ignored. The first step in writing any instruction book is asking, what is my target audience? To whom is this book going to appeal? What kind of user? What will he/she want to know? What resources will he/she already have?
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