Apple Training Series: Mac OS X Support Essentials (2nd Edition) (Apple Training)

There is no question that this book will assist you in passing the certification test for ACSP (Apple Certified Support Professional 10.5).

This book was very informative and easy to read. If you have no experience at all with a Mac this book is still very easy to understand. I would recommend this book before you decide to tackle any other book in the Apple Training Series, it will give you a good foundation.

This is an excellent book for anyone wanting to learn more about OS X Leopard. I'm using it to study for the ACSP test. So far I've learned a lot from the book. Recommended highly.

I purchased this book to prepare myself for the OS X Support Essentials 10.5 Exam, I PASSED and PASSED WELL! Everything that you need to know is in this book. If you want to pass the exam and can't afford to attend a training course this book is all you will need. It covers every topic in sufficient detail, it is easy to understand and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone wishing to embark on a career supporting OS 10.5 machines. Please make sure you read the Knowledge Base References at the end of every chapter. They will give you greater background on each topic area. Kevin M White has produced a great text here, well done!.

I saw a Macworld talk by the author (Neutered Admins, from the 2008 MacIT conference), and learned some really useful things. He mentioned that he'd written this book, and I bought it hoping for more information that would be useful to me in my system administration job supporting Mac and Linux users.

Alas, this book is aimed at help desks providing tier-one support, new users, or maybe Windows power users who are switching to the Mac. It has lots of coverage of the GUI and how to use a Mac for routine tasks and very little else. If, for example, you wanted to learn how a Leopard system sets a user's path (for use in the Terminal), you won't find that information here. You also won't find any information on how the system handles NFS mounts, how Leopard handles X11 and SSH agents with launchd, how you would set a Mac up to authenticate from another machine, or any other topic beyond what a reasonably experienced Mac user would probably already know or be able to figure out pretty quickly.