Paperback: 1504 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 2.51 x 9.16 x 7.36

Publisher: SAMS; 3rd edition (January 9, 2004)

ISBN: 0672326043

A couple weeks ago I received what is perhaps one of the largest books ever. Sams' Mac OS X Panther Unleashed. Weighing in at 1573 pages (sans index) it is easily one of the heaviest books in my library. This is my third book on OS X, although the only one that covers Panther, the other two books (Mac OS X Hacks and Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition) are both excellent but targeted at different audiences. The Missing Manual (O'Reilly & Associates, 2002) is excellent although roughly half the page count of the Unleashed title, whereas OS X Hacks (O'Reilly & Associates, 2003) is only 300 pages, one fifth of Unleashed.

Unsurprisingly I found that the Sams book was by far the most detailed. Sometimes possibly TOO detailed for a beginning Mac user, which is OK since the book is targeted at intermediate to advanced Mac users. If you are a novice Mac user you are probably better off starting with The Missing Manual before starting this book. After having read both books I have to say that they both deserve a place on any bookshelf. Once you're at least familiar with the basic workings of OS X, the Sams book is able to show you how to do just about any task, from setting up mail or playing music with iTunes to automating tasks with shell scripts and setting up Apache, MySQL and PHP.

There are some minor problems I had with the Sams book though, for example, one of Panther's new features is a window management utility called Expose. Expose allows you to minimize all open windows, rearranges all open windows so they are all visible at once or displays all windows associated with a specific program. The Unleashed book spends about 3 pages on Expose, but doesn't tell you which keys do what. They only give a brief overview and a few screenshots. When I went to use the appendix to find if Expose was covered anywhere else, I couldn't even find it listed (p102-104, for anybody who cares). Although it is a minor gripe, it just makes you wonder what else isn't listed in the appendix, which can be very confusing for an excellent reference book such as this.

I have to say that this is one excellent book. I'm a big fan of dynamic websites, so any book which walks you through setting up Perl, PHP, Apache, MySQL deserves my recommendation. In 1573 pages, there is sure to be something for everybody, whether you want command line tips and code, or whether you want to learn AppleScript, this book does it all. The last thing I need to point out is that this book is $50 USD ($35 on Amazon.com), or $72 CDN ($51 on Amazon.ca), which is a fantastic deal for this many pages and a great Mac reference book. Even after you've just read the first few chapters you'll notice that a lot of hard work and personal knowledge/experience went into this book. I can tell this book will find a permanant home on my desk for a long time.

Rating 4.5/5

You can find a sample chapter and the table of contents on Sams' site at www.sams.com.