| You don’t have to see too many of those ubiquitous “Mac versus PC” ads to get the basic idea: Macs are intuitive, easy to use, and they just work. That’s all true, certainly, but it misses something important about the Mac, and particularly about Mac OS X, the Mac operating system: easy is not the same as simple. Easy means that you can accomplish tasks (and, importantly, figure out how to accomplish tasks) with a minimum of fuss and with no sign of bother. Simple, on the other hand, implies a kind of shallowness, a superficiality where all you get is a pretty interface. It implies, in other words, that Mac OS X has no depth.
Friend, I’m here today to tell you that Mac OS X most definitely has depth. We’re talking here about one of the world’s most sophisticated operating systems, with millions of lines of programming code behind it, dozens of free and powerful applications installed by default, and hundreds, nay thousands of options, settings, and preferences to warm the cockles of any system tweaker’s geeky heart.
However, Apple has spent untold millions of dollars and tens of thousands of man (and woman) hours designing an interface that seems to serve just one purpose: to hide the depths of Mac OS X from view. That’s fine if you just want to use your Mac to accomplish a few simple goals, such as surfing the Web, managing email, sending texts, and perhaps writing a thing or two. But if your goal is to get the most out of your Mac investment and to make your computing life more efficient and more effective, you need to get beyond the surface of Mac OS X and dive head-first into its depths. And the best way to do that is to have a guide at your side to show you the nooks and crannies, light up the dark corners, and dig up the buried treasures. This book is your guide to hidden depths of Mac OS X. |
