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MAC OS X Internals: A Systems Approach
Mac OS X was released in March 2001, but many components, such as Mach and BSD, are considerably older. Understanding the design, implementation, and workings of Mac OS X requires examination of several technologies that differ in their age, origins, philosophies, and roles. Mac OS X A Systems Approach is the first book that dissects the internals of the system, presenting a detailed picture that grows incrementally as you read. For example, you will learn the roles of the firmware, the bootloader, the Mach and BSD kernel components (including the process, virtual memory, IPC, and file system layers), the object-oriented I/O Kit driver framework, user libraries, and other core pieces of software. You will learn how these pieces connect and work internally, where they originated, and how they evolved. The book also covers several key areas of the Intel-based Macintosh computers. A solid understanding of system internals is immensely useful in design, development, and debugging for programmers of various skill levels. System programmers can use the book as a reference and to construct a better picture of how the core system works. Application programmers can gain a deeper understanding of how their applications interact with the system. System administrators and power users can use the book to harness the power of the rich environment offered by Mac OS X. Finally, members of the Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unix communities will find the book valuable in comparing and contrasting Mac OS X with their respective systems. Mac OS X Internals focuses on the technical aspects of OS X and is so full of extremely useful information and programming examples that it will definitely become a mandatory tool for every Mac OS X programmer.
1641 pages, Hardcover
First published June 19, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 16, 2022
Great book. Was the first one I read covering all the internals of macOSand was great.
The way it's written makes it really easy to read and understand, even when talking about really complex topics.
My rating is not that good as the book is really long, full of information that is really outdated, and there're some other books that are more up-to-date than this one (like the books series of Jonathan Levin "*OS Internals"). I would recommend reading only some of the first chapters because it covers really good the history of macOS and how some things were introduced to the different versions of the OS.
The way it's written makes it really easy to read and understand, even when talking about really complex topics.
My rating is not that good as the book is really long, full of information that is really outdated, and there're some other books that are more up-to-date than this one (like the books series of Jonathan Levin "*OS Internals"). I would recommend reading only some of the first chapters because it covers really good the history of macOS and how some things were introduced to the different versions of the OS.
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August 9, 2014Kind of outdated by this point, but that is okay because the time from which it dates was a better time in the history of OS X, back when OS X was more hacker-friendly, when OpenDarwin still had any life in it, and when Apple's GPL-3 purge had yet to take place. I had started working on messing with the source code from it on my GitHub account:
December 15, 2010
Never 'finished;' this book is fascinating but I found that it took a lower-level approach than I was curious at. It's great for someone delving into the core of the system but if you are interested in a concepts-level rather than code-level description of the Darwin kernel, this isn't really it. If you want to understand the code, however, this is perfect.
August 8, 2009
Aborting. It's not carryable, there's no ebook version (apparently there was one, but it was never readable on Macs!), and I am just not interested enough to keep going -- I find myself reading other books instead.
Not as relevant or important to me as I had initially thought -- nothing against the book, but I'm not enough of a programmer for it to be professionally valuable.
Not as relevant or important to me as I had initially thought -- nothing against the book, but I'm not enough of a programmer for it to be professionally valuable.
July 1, 2013
so far, it is excellent. it covers the origins of the os x operating system, and covers all the features of the system, giving the reader a full and very complete understanding of how it all fits together.
December 8, 2009
Seriously in-depth review of Mac OS X technologies. It's not unabridged though, and wrt system components, you'll still need some other references. But it's a one-stop-shop for many, many Mac development questions.
December 29, 2009
It's in need of a new version soon, but this is the most comprehensive book on OS X out there. This is not a book for the average end user of a Mac. This is for hard core OS hackers and UNIX geeks. Awesome.
August 10, 2014
If you like your technical information by the hundredweight, this is the book for you. Think of it as a reader's companion to the Darwin source code.
January 31, 2016
A really fascinating read, even though a lot of the content deals with PowerPC
April 11, 2017
It took me a few weeks to read the whole book. As stated several times in the book, most of the operating system is independent of the processor architecture. So if you want to understand kernel and internals of macOS, the book is still (60-70%) relevant, despite of migration from PPC to x86/x64. Explanation is very clear and with accompanying code and examples, it provides deeper understanding.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
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