Scott Knaster is a legendary Mac hacker and coauthor of Mac Toys, also published by Wiley. His book How To Write Macintosh Software was required reading for Mac programmers for more than a decade. After Macs, Scott’s next great love is Mad magazine.

This serious, but fun, down-and-dirty book will let you make Tiger purr, ensuring that your Mac’s appearance, speed, usability, and security settings are what you want. The author Scott Knaster: shows you how to speed it up, lock it down, or pull back the curtains; dives into default system settings, unlocks hidden gems, and includes original Mac OS X programs with full source listings and explanations; also shows heavyweight hackers the tricks and modes of OS X booting, tweaks for login screens, and how to customize or even kill the Dock; offers the inside scoop on Dashboard and Spotlight, including two sample widgets and one Spotlight importer, all with fully annotated source listings; and, demonstrates how to install and use Unix and X11 applications, take advantage of command line tools, and create system services and active Dock badges.

This serious, but fun, down?and?dirty book will let you make Tiger purr, ensuring that your Mac?s appearance, speed, usability, and security settings are what you want. Author Scott Knaster:

• Shows you how to speed it up, lock it down, or pull back the curtains.
• Dives into default system settings, unlocks hidden gems, and includes original Mac OS X programs with full source listings and explanations.
• Shows heavyweight hackers the tricks and modes of OS X booting, tweaks for login screens, and how to customize or even kill the Dock.
• Offers the inside scoop on Dashboard and Spotlight, including two sample widgets and one Spotlight importer, all with fully annotated source listings.
• Demonstrates how to install and use Unix and X11 applications, take advantage of command line tools, and create system services and active Dock badges.

Order your copy today.

This serious - but - fun, down-and-dirty book dives into default system settings, unlocks hidden gems, and includes original Mac OS X programs with full source listings and explanations. Heavyweight hackers will learn the tricks and modes of OS X booting, tweaks for login screens, and how to customize or even kill the Dock. Find out the inside scoop on Dashboard and Spotlight, including two sample widgets and one Spotlight importer, all with fully annotated source listings. With tips to make Tiger purr, this book concentrates on tweaking the appearance, speed, usability, and security settings of Mac OS X, to get your Mac working the way you want. Speed it up, lock it down, or pull back the curtains. Find out how to install and use Unix and X11 applications on your Mac, take advantage of command line tools, and create system services and active Dock badges.

Hack your perfect Mac

Got a little maverick in you? Sure you do. That?s why you chose a Mac in the first place. And now there?s OS X Tiger, just begging you to get in there and create your dream machine. Here are serious hacks you won?t find anywhere else—ways to change the boot screen, unlock hidden Finder settings, enhance speed and performance, and really customize your Mac. Make your backups and start making tracks!

There?s something for everyone—basic user, advanced tinkerer, or serious programmer

Part I—Tips

• Clone dashboard widgets
• Dicker with the Dock
• Outsmart iTunes playlists

Part II—Mods

• Tweak application bundles
• Create Automator workflows
• Customize iChat

Part III—Hacks

• Badger your Dock
• Build a widget
• Go commando

Scott Knaster is a legendary Mac hacker and coauthor of Mac Toys, also published by Wiley. His book How To Write Macintosh Software was required reading for Mac programmers for more than a decade. After Macs, Scott?s next great love is Mad magazine.

Hack your perfect Mac Got a little maverick in you? Sure you do. That’s why you chose a Mac in the first place. And now there’s OS X Tiger, just begging you to get in there and create your dream machine. Here are serious hacks you won’t find anywhere else ways to change the boot screen, unlock hidden Finder settings, enhance speed and performance, and really customize your Mac. Make your backups and start making tracks! There’s something for everyone basic user, advanced tinkerer, or serious programmer Part I Tips Clone dashboard widgets Dicker with the Dock Outsmart iTunes playlists Part II Mods Tweak application bundles Create Automator workflows Customize iChat Part III Hacks Badger your Dock Build a widget Go commando

This serious, but fun, down-and-dirty book will let you make Tiger purr, ensuring that your Macs appearance, speed, usability, and security settings are what you want. Author Scott Knaster:

• Shows you how to speed it up, lock it down, or pull back the curtains.
• Dives into default system settings, unlocks hidden gems, and includes original Mac OS X programs with full source listings and explanations.
• Shows heavyweight hackers the tricks and modes of OS X booting, tweaks for login screens, and how to customize or even kill the Dock.
• Offers the inside scoop on Dashboard and Spotlight, including two sample widgets and one Spotlight importer, all with fully annotated source listings.
• Demonstrates how to install and use Unix and X11 applications, take advantage of command line tools, and create system services and active Dock badges.

Order your copy today.

* This serious-but-fun, down-and-dirty book dives into default system settings, unlocks hidden gems, and includes original Mac OS X programs with full source listings and explanations.

* Heavyweight hackers will learn the tricks and modes of OS X booting, tweaks for login screens, and how to customize or even kill the Dock. Find out the inside scoop on Dashboard and Spotlight, including two sample widgets and one Spotlight importer, all with fully annotated source listings.

* With tips to make Tiger purr, this book concentrates on tweaking the appearance, speed, usability, and security settings of Mac OS X to get your Mac working the way you want.

* Speed it up, lock it down, or pull back the curtains. Find out how to install and use Unix and X11 applications on your Mac, take advantage of command line tools, and create system services and active Dock badges.

Empowering your Mac in steps.
This book is most effective if you are sitting in front of your Mac system whether it’s a laptop or desktop. Work your way through the examples from start to finish, reading the chapter introduction before embarking on each adventure. While hacking is generally viewed as a more skilled or extremely geeky term, this book is clearly useful to experienced beginners who want to gain expertise in the functionality/usability of their Mac (as well as those who want to explore modifying their Mac more extensively).

Part I of the book is dedicated to a gentle introduction to the components that make up Mac OS: the finder, dashboard, dock, preferences, user interface, startup, iTunes, utilities, unix applications, terminal, and shell commands.

Part II is strictly for those ready for the "Advanced Mac" training.

Although most people see the GUI portion of the OS, keep in mind that the "engine" underlying the GUI is Unix and ’hacking’ the Mac will at some point descend into command line editing. Rather than be daunted by exposure to typing in your commands instead of having your desires constrained by what some application interface designer decided you could change with a GUI, embrace the power of the OS. Knaster slowly prepares the reader for the more advanced adventures as he introduces the Terminal in the "Quit the Finder" example. Seeing each following example you can build an idea of what you are doing by looking at the similarities of the commands. Rather than just limiting you to what he knows, Knaster is building up your understanding of how the underlying secret functionality works. For example if you look at the first few examples in Chapter 1 you will see the following pattern:

defaults write com.apple.finder Function optional flag yes|no
(for non geeks the | stands for OR ..)

If we translate this to English, defaults is clearly talking about the "default way I want this done", com.apple.finder is how to refer to the finder application, and then it finishes with a toggle for turning the function on or off. We see that this formula is consistent as we follow through with the next chapter with

"defaults write com.apple.Dock function toggle"

Part II of this book may be too advanced for beginners, but gives expert users exposure to more of these building blocks to understanding the power of the OS.

Overall, a very well written book with great introductions to topics and well thought out examples to modifying the Mac from beginner to advanced techniques. I highly recommend it to individuals who are interested in becoming more Mac proficient. At a bargain price of ~$17 on Amazon, compared to many technical books that sell at over $30 a piece this is a must have.

Good, Bad, Ugly
I found the first two sections of this book very useful. ie, I have come to LOVE Mac OS’s zoom feature, which I use all the time now to make small video boxes ’fill’ my 17" screen. There are other fun trick and tips in those first two sections.
It’s the third section that bewilders me. Without any transition, the book goes right hardcore into coding. I ended up having to use the ’help’ menu in Apple’s XCode developer application just to understand how to do some of the things the book instructs you to do. Then I spend all this time entering a bunch of tedious, rote code. Then what do I do? I don’t know. The book doesn’t tell you how to actually turn all that code you wrote in XCode into a useful application. Is there some icon I’m supposed to double-click now? I don’t know and the book doesn’t tell me.
Blah... Even in those first two sections, come to think of it, I would have been totally lost if I did not already read the "Missing Manual" guide to MacOSX and get an understanding of Terminal and Unix. Geez, would it have killed the author to have taken just a little bit of time and offered readers an explanation of what Terminal is, what Unix is, and how to use those to follow the instructions given in the book?
That’s my take and I’m sticking with it.

Great for Code Writers ONLY
I had to return this book, only because of my unfamiliarity with UNIX. Long gone are the days when I used to knock out code. I’ve been spoiled (ruined some might say) by years of GUI and the heavy use of utility programs.

If you like using Console on your MAC you’d probably get a kick from using this book.

I wanted to leave my review ’unrated’ because I consider myself unqualified to judge its utility, not because it is necessarily a poor manual, but the Review form required I supply some rating so I chose ’middle of the road’ 3 stars.

The perfect blend of tips and technique
I love clever tips, and Scott Knaster delivers a ton of them here, many seen nowhere else. But this tome goes way beyond tips, diving into the gnarly details of Tiger that others have glossed over, such as application internals, Widget construction, and Unix command language. So many Mac books are just a rehash of the surface of the user interface. Scott’s book is way ahead of the pack.

Decent collection of stuff including source code
I was looking for a book with medium to advanced info on Tiger and this one seemed to fit the bill. I was a little concerned at first when it started off with user tips which were handy, but I wanted more technical stuff. The latter parts of the book really delivered. There’s well done sections on Automator and Quartz Composer. The best part is the last chapters which have programs with source for Dashboard, Spotlight, dock badging, and a few more. My advice is skim the first few chapters and pay attention to the rest.