Hacking Mac OS X Tiger

Scott Knaster's new book, Hacking Mac OS X Tiger, is now officially out.

The main selling point is that it features yours truly as a centerfold.

Backstory: I gave Scott a larger picture thinking he, like IBM, would crop it down to a head-shot. To my surprise he included the entire pic, and Wiley's editors must have been on a bender the previous night and let it through.*

Oh yeah, there's also the book's filler material. Some text about using/abusing the defaults database, putting your iSight video on the desktop, building Dashboard Widgets, writing a Spotlight importer and the return of Commando. It's good stuff -- I'd buy a copy if Scott wasn't already giving me one.

I got in on this because Scott wanted to have a chapter on mach_override and mach_inject. To say this was an honor would be an understatement -- I learned to program the Mac reading Scott's books. It's like Carroll Shelby looking over your shoulder at a sketch of a coupe you drew while bored in class, saying "that's cool", and putting it into production.

Scott's book provides an overview of mach_* and walks through the code of mach_override and mach_inject_bundle packages and the DisposeWindow+Beep and DisposeWindow+Beep_Injector examples. It's a great place to get started if you're new to mach_* or want to brush up.

* Okay, okay. It's not really that immense -- it only takes up half the page.

Monday, July 18, 2005
08:26 PM