Document Actions
Learning OS X
Apple has a good support website and a loyal following.
Darwin does differ from the other BSDs, of course. Fortunately, it has a large community of users and some good documentation. Here's what I found:
- #plone
- OS X is fairly well-represented in the Plone community. Ask around.
- #macosx
- There is a well-stocked channel on freenode. I found them helpful when I asked questions, but they made too many pr0n jokes for my taste, so I didn't lurk.
- www.apple.com
- Apple has a good support website. I browsed and searched both the knowledge base and the discussion board, and found answers both ways. I did not resort to the mailing list.
- GUI docs
- On the other hand, I found the documentation within the OS X GUI itself to be less helpful. It was hard to move around the help system, and I kept getting dumped at search result pages that mostly linked to basic-level content.
- man pages
- I also didn't find the Darwin man pages particularly inspiring. For example, I hoped in vain that hier(7) would explain Apple's filesystem layout. Also, the prevailing web version -- http://www.hmug.org/man/ -- has a worse interface than the FreeBSD man interface, which unfortunately is a bit out of date at Darwin 7.0.1.
- Apple Consultant Network
- This turned out to be a solid base hit. Read on for details.
by
Chad Whitacre
—
last modified
December 10, 2005 - 21:35
All content is copyright Plone Foundation and the individual contributors.
