Mac OS X Tiger in a Nutshell

Chapter 1. Introduction

In 2001, Apple released Mac OS X (that’s pronounced “mac oh ess ten”), building their next-generation operating system on the power of a Unix-like environment. Apple’s famed “lickable” GUI is built on top of the open source Darwin, including the BSD source tree. Although many users may never realize it (and Apple’s mainstream marketing has never made too much of it), when you’re running Mac OS X, you’re running a powerful Unix-like system.

The beauty of Mac OS X, besides its obvious visual beauty, is that it’s turning out to be the way to get a real Unix system onto the desktops of the business world. IT departments around the world are finding that Mac OS X is an alternative to Microsoft Windows that can be used by anyone, not just Nick Burns, The Company Computer Guy. Mac OS X integrates effortlessly with Microsoft networks through the Samba package. Users familiar with Microsoft Office have a Mac version available to them. Most major software packages such as Adobe’s Creative Suite (consisting of Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc.), QuarkXPress, and Maya have versions for Mac OS X. Internet packages, whether web browsers, email clients, or instant messaging clients are especially well represented on Mac OS X.