Press Release

June 8, 2005

"Mac OS X Tiger for Unix Geeks": A Survival Guide for Taming the Unix Side of Mac OS X

Sebastopol, CA--Even while Apple has used its line of Mac OS X cats to pounce on business owners tired of Windows security flaws, and consumers tempted by the fun and creativity of its iLife Digital Hub, the company has quietly captured another constituency. The Unix and Linux developers attracted to Mac's guts rather than its glamour, along with many hardcore Perl developers and those who program in Java and XML, have also switched to Mac, but for a very different reason: Mac OS X's BSD Unix core.

With Apple's release of Tiger, Mac OS X 10.4, Mac OS X Tiger for Unix Geeks (Jepson and Rothman, O'Reilly, US $34.95), the latest edition of the popular book, has been revised and expanded to cover further changes to what is now, ironically, the world's most widely-used Unix system. According to coauthor Brian Jepson, developers faced an unexpected learning curve. "Hacking code on a Mac is similar to hacking code on other Unix systems, but there are subtle differences between the Unix they're accustomed to and how things are done in Mac OS X," remarks Jepson.

"When you first launch the Terminal application, you find yourself at home in a Unix shell, but some of the standard Unix utilities we've grown accustomed to aren't there," explains coauthor Ernest Rothman. "When it comes to developing applications, you'll find things like library linking and compiling have a few new twists to them." This book is a "survival guide for developers and system administrators who want to tame the Unix side of Mac OS X."

The new edition tackles this task in five distinct parts:

"There are many PowerPC-based operating systems that run great on Apple hardware, including Linux, NetBSD, BeOS," Jepson says. "But who says you have to run one operating system at a time? And who says it has to be a Power PC-based operating system? There's an array of bewildering choices when it comes to mixing and matching." Geeks can partition their hard drive and load another OS onto the Mac, or use an emulator, such as Microsoft's Virtual PC, or an open source x86 emulator called QEMU. Readers will also learn how to run Mac OS X under other operating systems.

Compared to other Mac OS X releases, Tiger makes it easier for hardcore technical users accustomed to a command line to delve directly into the underlying Unix engine, Rothman says. Developers and system administrators can port Linux and Unix applications and run them side-by-side with native Aqua applications on the Mac desktop. Mac OS X Tiger for Unix Geeks is the only book that looks at Tiger from the geek point of view. "This book," adds Rothman, "serves as a bridge for those who've been lured to Mac OS X because of its Unix roots."

Additional Resources:

• More information about the book, including author bios, and samples
• A cover graphic in JPEG format

About O'Reilly

O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.

Return to: O'Reilly Press Room

Recent Press Releases

Press Release Archive »

Resources

• Company History
  Long  |  Short

• Tim O'Reilly
  Biography  |  Short Bio
  Photo: web (340K JPEG), print (8.7MB TIFF)

• Online Press Kit

Press Contacts

Corporate

Sara Winge
800/998-9938 x7109

Media Relations - North America

Sara Peyton
800/998-9938 x7118

Media Relations - Germany

Corina Pahrmann
+49-221-973160-22

Media Relations - Japan

Kenji Watari
+81-3-3356-5227

Media Relations - United Kingdom

Josette Garcia
+44 (0)1252-721284

Media Relations - Conferences