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Books
@ Applelust
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| Book
Review: O'Reilly's "Mac OS X Unwired"
and "Inside .Mac"
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© 7-9-04 Dr. Neale Monks
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- Book: Mac OS X Unwired: A Guide for Home,
Office and the Road
- Author: Tom Negrino & Dori Smith
- Publisher: O'Reilly
& Associates, Inc.
- Publication Date: December 2003
- ISBN: 0-596-00508-3
- Info: xiv + 210
- Price: $24.95
- Book: Inside .Mac
- Author: Chuck Toporek
- Publisher: O'Reilly
& Associates, Inc.
- Publication Date: May 2004
- ISBN: 0-596-00501-6
- Info: xxii + 362
- Price: $19.95
Modern computing is increasingly an activity no
longer bound to the desktop and printer in your home
or office. The Internet has switched the focus of
a lot of our work from documents we print off locally
and then snail mail to clients and colleagues; to
the production of electronic files we share using
local area networks or the Internet. Two enabling
technologies spurring the growth of this trend have
been the wide adoption of web-based services including
e-mail and online disk storage space, and wireless
networking that makes it possible to do access and
send electronic files on the road.
Mac OS X Unwired
Airport base stations and wireless cards in iBooks
and PowerBooks typify wireless networking for many
Mac users, but replacement of traditional Ethernet
cables only taps into part of the technology's potential.
The biggest advantage to wireless networking is the
mobility it allows. Airport (and its successor Airport
Extreme) are brand names for a standard technology
used by Windows as well as Macintosh computers, and
so any network set up for the one generally works
for the other.
Perhaps the most important sections cover the actual
networking hardware and its configuration. Apple's
own Airport base stations will naturally be the ones
that Mac users will be most familiar with, but they
certainly aren't the only options. Negrino and Smith
cast their net widely to ensure that other manufacturer's
technologies and products are included. Substitutes
such as the popular and inexpensive Linksys units
are described from both the physically assembly and
the software configuration points of view, and this
approach works double duty for those readers wanting
to user their Macs in an otherwise Windows-only wireless
network. There are some important differences in
the way Apple's own base stations are set up when
compared to Windows ones, in particular the fact
that Airport base stations are configured using software
programs built into OS X whereas base stations designed
for the Windows market are meant to be accessed through
a web browser.
Wireless networking cards designed for Windows laptops
are never mentioned in the standard Apple literature,
but are an effective but inexpensive way for savvy
Mac users to put PowerBooks with PC-card slots on
wireless networks, particularly older ones like the
G3 PowerBooks that still have a lot of life in them
but can't accept the standard Apple Airport card.
Negrino and Smith tackle this topic nicely, naming
the brands that work with Mac portables and describe
the additional software that may be needed. Other
helpful tips for PowerBook users come in the form
of techniques and accessories for enhancing wireless
reception.
Negrino and Smith tackle connecting Windows computers
to a Mac-oriented Airport network fairly thoroughly
as well, though this is of course a book for OS X
users. The main gap is the lack of information on
setting up peer-to-peer (or ad hoc) networks between
a Macintosh and a Windows laptop. This is actually
a pretty useful trick if you want to share large
files or play multiplayer games. On the other hand,
they do deal with this subject for Mac-to-Mac situations
in depth.
Besides descriptions and discussions of the hardware
and software, Negrino and Smith go into the history
of wireless network in significant depth, including
the ethics of things like "warchalking",
that is, the active searching and marking of open
wireless networks. They wind up the wireless networking
section of the book with chapters on using the technology
and how to maintain network security. There are some
great tips on how to find wireless hotspots before
you make your business trip and what consumer packages
exist to plug your networking needs if you can't
find a public network in your area.
Although Airport wireless networking will be the
big-ticket item in the book for many readers, it's
really only half the book. The rest is about other
ways computers can communicate with other devices
without the need for Ethernet cables or a modem.
Really only one of these methods actually does deliver
something like the functionality of proper wireless
networking and is actively supported by Apple, and
that is cellular (or mobile telephone) networking.
For many Mac users this is a prohibitively expensive
approach to getting onto the Internet, but for some
road warriors turning a cellphone into a modem can
be the only way to send and receive files and messages.
For these users, the sections describing the connection
and configuration of Bluetooth and data-cable equipped
cellphones will be indispensable.
Bluetooth itself, as a method for transmitting data
files between a computer and some other electronic
device, is described in its own chapter in great
depth. Negrino and Smith also tackle radio and infrared
networking interfaces, though like Bluetooth these
are very much niche technologies, and many Mac users
could work productively for years without needing
to know very much about them, except maybe that they
make things like wireless keyboards and mice work.
Not so Rendezvous, the technology Apple is pushing
aggressively to make collaboration between devices
on a network easier than ever. Negrino and Smith
describe what Rendezvous is, what OS X applications
use it, and what you can do with it once it's up
and running. Rendezvous is being incorporated in
things as disparate as iTunes, instant messaging,
and printers, but remains an unfamiliar technology
to many Mac users, so this is undoubtedly a useful
chapter.
Mac OS X Unwired is a surprising book. It's much
more than just a manual or how to use an Airport
network. There's as much stuff to read for its sheer
interest as there is of practical value, it is thoughtful
and well researched, and few Mac users will find
nothing of use in its pages. Travelling Mac users
who rely on the technology described in its pages,
will find this book indispensable.
Inside .Mac
The other enabling technology that has loosened
the chains keeping Mac users bound to their desktops
are online services that provide storage and communications
that are available through any networked computer
and not their own Macs. Apple's .Mac package, which
I reviewed a few
weeks ago, is one such service. Many Mac users
find .Mac essential, but few ever use the full scope
of its abilities. Chuck Toporek aims to change that.
The prime focus of the book isn't really .Mac but
the Apple applications that interact with .Mac and
the system software: the Mail application, the iDisk
Utility, iSync, and so on. HomePage is covered in
great depth and rightly so, since this will be the
first step many Mac users will take towards developing
online content. HomePage is basically a collection
of themed web pages into which users can painlessly
slot in iPhoto albums, pieces of text, links to downloadable
files, even QuickTime movies exported from iMovie.
Toporek does a thorough job going over the steps
required to create your own HomePage from the templates
required, and includes some useful additional tips
to make your resulting work a bit more personalised
that might be the case using the generic HomePage
tools, such as how to create and add a "favicon"
to your page.
Another program that gives Mac users a way to express
themselves online is iBlog, a tool for creating weblogs,
or blogs, that are stored on the iDisk and can be
accessed via any browser. The documentation that
comes with iBlog itself is minimal, so the very detailed
description of how to use this program will be welcomed
by many readers. Two useful tools included in the
.Mac package that get a similarly through treatment
are Backup and Virex. Particularly useful are the
sections on what Backup can and cannot do, selecting
the important files for backing up, how to update
the Virex virus database, and accessing the Virex
command line through the Terminal.
Toporek rounds off the book with a look at the minor
iTools as well, things like the iCards. The Appendices
include some of the best stuff in the book, things
like iDisk error codes and how to access the iDisk
from a Windows PC. OS 9 users aren't ignored either,
and there are tips for getting your iDisk mounted
on older Macintosh computers that cannot run OS X.
Inside .Mac is aggressively priced given the amount
of material covered, and the writing style is clear
and thorough, leaning more towards the "Missing
Manual" end of the O'Reilly's spectrum than
"In A Nutshell" as far the expected knowledge
of the reader goes. The only real problem with this
book is that only a small proportion of Mac users
will ever use most of the stuff Toporek describes.
The average .Mac account holder places the e-mail
address as the top feature, and then use the iDisk
as a place to keep their personal web pages. These
are both topics that are amply covered elsewhere.
Since the Mail application built into OS X is so
popular, most Mac manuals cover it in great depth,
and so while Toporek handles the subject well describing
all its subtleties and hidden powers, that alone
won't justify buying the book. As for hosting web
pages, once you move beyond Apple's HomePage templates
and tools and onto real HTML content creation, then
your focus switches from the actual iDisk component
of .Mac to your web site development package -- BBEdit,
Dreamweaver, or whatever. In this case, much of what
Toporek covers here becomes redundant.
But there are many Macintosh users who prefer Apple
tools to third party ones, and regularly employ iMovie
and iPhoto for creating stuff you want to share with
others. For them, .Mac is incredibly useful, and
Toporek's book becomes significantly more relevant,
and certainly well worth checking out next time they're
at a bookstore.
- Dr.
Neale Monks
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