HN Books @HNBooksMonth

The best books of Hacker News.

Hacker News Comments on
MAC OS X Internals: A Systems Approach

Amit Singh · 3 HN comments
HN Books has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention "MAC OS X Internals: A Systems Approach" by Amit Singh.
View on Amazon [↗]
HN Books may receive an affiliate commission when you make purchases on sites after clicking through links on this page.
Amazon Summary
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 Internals: 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.
HN Books Rankings

Hacker News Stories and Comments

All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this book.
Amit Singh wrote the book you are referring to. But it is now long out of date.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321278542/

I believe the book the OP is referring to in their post is effectively newer editions of Amit's book, but I could be wrong.

LucidLynx
Hi :)

The books I was refering to are from Jonathan Levin, who finished to work (and publish) the three different volumes two years ago.

I live in Europe now so it is not possible for me to order them via Amazon (the only physical distributor from what I understood), and ordering them directly from another distributor requires 50$ per each book (so, 125$ in total for one volume).

I am not a fan or user of ebooks for this case I would love to have this solution :)

GekkePrutser
Wow indeed they look good but they are crazy expensive especially when ordered in Europe. $375 for all 3. If I'd get them it would be mainly just as a matter of interest but I couldn't warrant that kind of expense. I bought the Amit Singh book and used it a couple of times but it was only $50 for the whole thing.

I'd actually prefer ebooks but they don't seem to be available like that at all.

LucidLynx
Indeed, they are crazy expensive...

Will begin with Absolute FreeBSD and take a look at recent forum / blog posts for now.

Maybe I will send an email to the author, asking if he plans to release the ebooks (who knows)...

GekkePrutser
FreeBSD also has an excellent handbook (though it's not kept up to date as much as it should be). I use it as my daily driver OS since Apple locked things down too much for me and am very happy with it. The thing I like the most is that it's one OS that does things one way, not like the fragmentation of Linux where every distro is different.

But I use every OS pretty much every day :) I like it that way.

But I wasn't aware of Absolute FreeBSD very much (I probably have heard of it before as the cover looks familiar). Will definitely get it, thanks for the tip!

LucidLynx
FreeBSD is a great OS! I don't like so much Linux distributions - way too much fragmented too, and I just want something that "just works" and not "barely works". Also, coming from *BSD, Linux is too messy for me... just my opinion :)

I used FreeBSD on a Thinkpad when I was in college but switched to mac as I became annoyed by Thinkpad and wanted a MacBook Air like computer...

Feb 18, 2016 · to3m on The Magic Ring Buffer (2012)
I think you can do this on OS X using the Mach vm_XXX family of functions (I've only used them for querying state, though, rather than rearranging the mappings.)

The documentation is pretty terrible, though, so some experimentation may be necessary. It's also even less like the POSIX parts than the NS bits are...

(Apple doesn't seem to tell you much; OK references are https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/gnumach-doc/Virtual-Memory... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mac-OS-Internals-Systems-Approach/dp..., and, of course, http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/. The source has some reference-style documentation in it.

aktau
This is mentioned in the comments of the original article, I'll quote:

> There are a couple of in-depth articles about implementing this same idea on Mach / OS X:

> http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2012-02-03-ring-buff...

> http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2012-02-17-ring-buff...

Apr 16, 2012 · fady on How Apple created OS X
i was expecting something in more detail if you want a full in depth history on the mac os x and how it evolved, i would check out "mac os x internals: a systems approach"

http://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-Internals-Systems-Approach/dp/0...

HN Books is an independent project and is not operated by Y Combinator or Amazon.com.
~ yaj@
;laksdfhjdhksalkfj more things
yahnd.com ~ Privacy Policy ~
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.