To deeply learn how my new Macbook works do I need to learn Unix? [closed]

I've been a Windows person since 1988 and I've bought my first Mac. Yeah thanks. I used to be tech support for Microsoft so it's horrible not knowing deeply how my new machine works.

I understand that Mac OS is based on Unix and is POSIX compliant. I have little experience with Linux, either, btw.

Should I buy books on Unix and Bash in order to learn how it works underneath Apple's shiny GUI? Or perhaps it's enough different that I do need a book on Mac OS X. Or both.

The books I've found on Mac OS itself seem to target specific releases, like Lion, and that makes me wonder if they're consumer focused on GUI features.

If you want to buy a book on Mac, buy one on the OS version you currently use. It changes in big, chunky steps, remaining similar for a while, then suddenly obsoleting a lot of older structures every 5 years or so. We are currently in the middle of the biggest set of changes since Mac OS X was introduced 20 years ago - Intel to ARM, APFS disk structures, 'locked & signed' system partitions, bash to zsh...

macOS might sit on unix, but it's not that straightforward. Learning unix to get used to how Mac works is the wrong way round.

If, once you have a handle on the macOS itself, you want to investigate its underpinnings, you can do that from a Mac perspective. Don't try to start from BSD, or Darwin, or even NEXTstep & think you can work your way 'upwards', it really doesn't quite work that way.

There are simple consumer-grade 'Mac tips for Windows switchers' which will show you the really obvious top-level stuff.
After that, if you want to delve deeper, start from Mac 'down', not unix 'up'. A good 'everything about Big Sur'-type book will start you on that journey.
I don't have any actual recommendations as to which book, sorry.

It kind of reminds me of when I first bought a Microsoft PC, in 2001, after 10 years of only using Mac. I bought the entire MCSE certification bookset as a 'getting started' guide.
Really, really, overkill.
I couldn't really recommend starting out with the entire ACSP suite;)

BTW, it hasn't been called Mac OS X since 2012. It was just OS X after that, then in 2016 went to the current moniker, macOS. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS#OS_X