Well, I powered through Mac OS X for Java Geeks this weekend in just under 58 hours. I wasn’t reading the whole time, that was just my weekend; noon Friday – 10pm Sunday night.
The review:
I’ll start with my grade, a C-, generously given. The author, Will Iverson, did a good job of briefly touching on all aspects of Java and Java development. He gave a chapter to the Java topics: Apple’s JVM, Java tools/IDEs, Java GUIs, stand-alone Java apps, Servlets, JSPs, Tomcat, and EJBs. And a few other chapters on more Mac OS X stuff like databases, Apple extensions, and some Apple specific Java APIs.
The chapters cover their stated topics well giving just enough info that the reader understands the topic but doesn’t give enough info to make the reader “dangerous”. I was hoping for more Mac OS X stuff and less Java. I didn’t need the history of Tomcat. If you are a Java Geek you know that. But, being new to Mac OS X more OS X stuff would have been more relevant in this book.
I really can’t complain because I got this book free, but in my opinion it’s definitely not worth the $39.95 O’Reilly is looking for. I think the $9.95 O’Reilly gets for their “Pocket” books would be more appropriate.
It looks like I need to find one of those Dummies books I was talking about…