In strict violation of my "no press releases" rule, I'm pleased to announce that (after too many months of effort!) the first ever macosxhints book is soon to be available! "Mac OS X Hints - 500 All-Time Best Tips, Tricks, and Secrets of Jaguar 10.2" will be published by Pogue Press / O'Reilly, and you can see a brief overview of it on O'Reilly's catalog page.
I've been quietly working on this project (during every free minute of time I've had!) since early August, and it's now reaching completion -- now you all know why I've had some trouble finding time for completing other projects! The book isn't just a "cut and paste" job from the site to print form. Every hint was rewritten and retested from scratch, and hundreds of screenshots were added to help clarify and explain the hints. In addition, many of the scripts and programs posted here are included (the author of each program was contacted for approval to include their original work in the book - thanks to each of you for agreeing!).
In recognition of the upcoming release of the book, I'll be in O'Reilly's booth at Macworld at 4:00pm on January 7th, giving a brief presentation on how I migrated from an OS 9 "power user" and UNIX "chicken" to a 100% OS X addict and founder of macosxhints.com. Stop by if you're going to be at the show; I think we'll even have a booklet of hints to give away to everyone.
If you'd like to know a bit more about the book and its contents, read the rest of the article...
The book doesn't include all 2,700+ hints posted here; a group of people helped select 500 or so of the most interesting and/or useful, and those are the focus of the book. In addition, much of the content from my shareware OS X Guidebook is also included (there may still be a future revision to the guidebook, but that's a project for 2003!). There are (among others), chapters on the Finder, the dock, networking, the iApps, recommeneded applications, and a couple (of course!) UNIX chapters.
One thing that hasn't changed from site to print is the general approach to the subject matter. The book is a "random access" book, just like the site. You can just flip it open and read any one hint, as they are (almost) all self-contained. As such, it's probably not the best book to use to get started with OS X, but it's a great reference guide to have lying around the house.
As an aside, I wrote the book primarily as a learning exercise (and I learned that writing a book while maintaining a full-time job and a busy web site is a very hard thing to do!), and to take the space available to expand on many of the hints to make them more usable for users of all skill levels. In addition, I'm hoping that revenue from the book will cover the costs of the site in the future, so that I can continue to keep macosxhints.com advertising free and 100% content focused. If the book sounds interesting and you'd like to help support my efforts with the site, I'd be elated if you purchased a copy, but that's as close to a sales pitch as I can get, as it's just not my style!
Happy Holidays!
-rob.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20021220063319280