Rating: 
Summary: Save your money for a different book
Review: I am afraid that I found this book to be inaccurate in some areas, such as sharing, and also lacking in technical information. Its a paperweight. 800 Pages of fluff.
Rating: 
Summary: The Complete Reference?
Review: I am not sure who this book was wriiten for. If you can start your computer and open an application then most of this book will be useless to you. Before you purchase this book look in the index for some common tasks you know how to do in OS 9.0. For instances taking a screen shot, burning data CD's, and networking with non macs are not listed in the index. Things that are indexed are in such broad detail you won't get it done following Jesse's book.
Rating:
Summary: A dreadful book
Review: I anxiously awaited a book on OS X wanting to learn the ins and outs of the new OS and its UNIX underpinnings. Bit inside, I found long, detailed discussions of basic, operating system functionality like saving documents and such. Wading through this oh so basic stuff goes on for 600 pages. The best part was a discussion of AppleWorks where I actually learned something. Finally, I reached the UNIX part and all that appears is a short list of commands and descriptions. There are no examples. There is nothing to help you use UNIX. Out of 700 pages, I found, perhaps, 50 that were somewhat useful. And for what I wanted, I found nothing. Literally, I have never been so disappointed in a book.
Rating: 
Summary: Just what I needed
Review: I finally installed OS X because of this. It works fine, and there's enough of the book left to work through to keep me busy for a long time! Unfortunately, the section on iMovie and digital Image capture is going to be very expensive. I WANT THOSE TOYS!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Good book
Review: I found out what I wanted to know. That's not such a big deal--except it doesn't seem to happen very often!
Rating:
Summary: This should be OSX for dummies Plus
Review: I got this book in and it appears that 75 percent of the material covered in the book should be a natural for a regular Mac user. I was expecting a little more for the money.
Rating:
Summary: stays on the surface
Review: I was looking for a book, that gave me some insights on the combination of the Apple user interface with the inner workings of Unix.
This book has over 750 pages and a lot of screenshots and it explains the user interface.
But I expected some Unix insights, there are none.
Rating:
Summary: Complete Reference? Not even close.
Review: I'm a sysadmin in a shop running Windows clients. We also run several Unix servers so I'm familar with that side as well. We're planning a project to run some servers for users to save their files to for archiving and backup. I bought this book to learn more about OS X to see if it will fill this role.I wish I had read the reviews here before purchasing the book. It would have saved me the trouble of returning it for something better. The first issue I ran into was it doesn't describe how to attach Windows users to a server running OS X. I can attach my users to our Unix boxes running SAMBA. I assume that OS X, being based on BSD, would be able to do the same thing. SAMBA is never mentioned, at least not that I can find. It's not in the index and I can't find any mention in the text. The only networking information I can find seems to be designed for a plain-vanilla Mac environment. My domain controllers are all NT. It would be nice to have information on how to validate users against an NT domain. Again, I can do this with SAMBA on my Unix boxes. This *is* supposed to be the "Complete Reference" right? The second issue is that backing up the server is glossed over in a few short paragraphs. Basically the gist is use Retrospect. I can't tell from the text if Retrospect is bundled with OS X or not. After doing some research on the Dantz website I think that Retrospect sounds like a fine package. It would be nice if the text would show what it is capable of and how to use it instead of just saying that it's the most widely used backup software for the Mac. Also, coming from the Unix side I was suprised that Unix tools such as tar didn't even get a mention. All in all I think that a Mac server running OS X could very well serve my company's needs. I just need to look elsewhere for my information.
Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: If you're looking for a book to help make the move from mastery of OS 9 to mastery of OS X, this is not it. This thing is 600 pages of the totally obvious (told in excruciating detail), 100 pages of programming info (too shallow for the expert, too obscure for the novice), and 50 pages of Unix stuff thrown in for "completeness" (again, too shallow for the Unix guru, too obscure for the Unix newcomer). Pretty much a complete waste of money.
Rating: 
Summary: The "Complete Reference" is not quite complete
Review: Jesse Feiler's "Mac OS X:The Complete Reference" includes most of the basic information necessary
to operate Mac OS X presented in a clean, organized fashion. It covers all of the features of the original release of the OS and serves its pupose as a basic reference for a new user. The book also touches on the underpinnings of the operating system (Carbon, Cocoa, etc.). What is missing is troubleshooting information. The book assumes OS X is in good working order. It gives little advice as to how to deal with installation problems, incompatibility problems, or anything that requires repair. If you are looking for what is basically an extended owner's manual that explains the features of OS X, this book does a good job. But if you want to troubleshoot, repair, or otherwise tweek OS X (ala "Sad Macs, Bombs, and Other Disasters" and "Mac Secrets"), you should wait for one of the newer books based on OS X.1.
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