This book suffers from not having a clue as to what it’s audience is. Everything within the pages is great, but no individual will find more than a third of the book useful.

The author begins with the basics. These are the very basics. It actually has an entry on the Finder’s “View Options” panel. I half expected to see something about looking at an application’s preferences window. It really is that rudimentary. I suppose this appeals to someone, but whoever that is won’t get anything out of the rest of the book.

The author takes very shallow steps into topics like applescript, Automator, the command line, and X11 in the center portions of the book. Unfortunately, the author fails to do anything more than introduce the reader to them. There aren’t any examples that are actually useful. Anyone that just graduated from the first segment will quickly be lost and anyone ready for the middle section already knows what is being introduced and will want more.

There are a few nice hints but everything can be found online. If the author had collected and categorized a good number of these hints and presented them in a table, there may be some redeeming quality. Unfortunately, the book takes way too many pages and reiterates the same information to describe mundane “hacks” that aren’t useful or particularly fun.

The last third of the book is the most peculiar. Had the author stopped after the first two sections, the book would be decent for novices and early intermediates to OS X. Instead, a couple of chapters with programming are tossed in. It includes things in several different programming languages (including Objective-C++) that far exceed anything that most users could even concern themselves with. This is for experienced programmers. Anyone that feels comfortable with this latter section will likely find little useful in the earlier two.

The last section also drops the reader in expecting immediate familiarity with the code and programming basics. It’s a shame that there aren’t enough examples in this section or more depth. This last section should have been removed and expanded into a book of its own.

And there’s the rub. The book is lacking in depth at every level. All of the book will NOT appeal to every user. Up to 2/3s of the book will be completely useless to some readers and I’m betting 1/3 will be useless to most. If the book had been broken into its component pieces and each piece expanded, we’d have three very good books that appeal to different audiences. As it is, we have one book that isn’t very appealing at all.