Preface

Mac OS X is the first real operating system for the 21st century. A stunning achievement not to be confused with Mac OS 9 and its predecessors even as it builds on their legacy, Mac OS X redefines our expectations of what a computer should be. On the surface, Mac OS X has a graphical user interface (GUI) with usability that can't be touched by any other OS on the planet. Under the hood, it has a powerful Unix engine known as Darwin, which was developed through Apple's open source initiative and based on the FreeBSD 5.0 Unix distribution and the fully buzzword-compliant Mach 3.0 kernel. This combination of features gives the system its smooth multitasking behavior and virtual memory management.

This strong foundation provides with the system the stability it needs to amaze, intrigue, and serve you. It is also this foundation that lets you run the Apache web server, the Postfix mail server, and X11 applications next to Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, and Macromedia Dreamweavera feat that nobody thought possible a few years ago. For many, Mac OS X has replaced the dual boot systems that they used to have: one partition for Windows so you could run Office and another for Linux for doing Unix-related work. Now, it's all under one roof.

Even better, Mac OS X continues to improve. Each release brings new features, speed improvements, and more polish. This book, Running Mac OS X Tiger, will help you master the latest version of Mac OS X. You'll learn how to get the most out of the pretty GUI as well as how to dive into the Unix layer of the system to take fine-grained control when you need to.