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Bought my first Mac, what are the essential programs?
m3k
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Having been on a PC all my life, I just ordered my very first iMac... 27" Core i7.
What programs should I be aware of, preferrably freeware? I'm a typical PC user... Music, videos, internet, media, and the occasional game are my primary interests.
What programs should I be aware of, preferrably freeware? I'm a typical PC user... Music, videos, internet, media, and the occasional game are my primary interests.
Et tu, Brute?
m3k on
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Video: No matter what, I strongly recommend you install Flip4Mac and Perian to your machine. Google will point you to them. Those two plugins will let you play 99.999% of the videos on the internet through quicktime. The reason this is important is because Quicktime as a system component gets used all over the place on the mac, so even if you decide to use VLC for your media consumption, being able to open a DIVX or MKV in Front Row or iMovie is nice.
Internet: Try Safari... its really nice. Nice, zippy and fast. When I first switched to Mac, I started with Firefox for familiarities sake, then moved to some weird Mozilla-OSX hybrid browser so it would integrate with the OS better, then finally gave Safari a fair shake. Much like the Windows variant of iTunes, if you used Safari on the PC you have the wrong impression. Apple writes great Apple software... not so hot PC stuff. For chatting, iChat does AIM rather well, and for mac to mac communication nothing beats it (multi user crystal clear video conferencing, desktop and document sharing, etc) but if you need more protocols (like ICQ, MSNm, gTalk, etc), Adium is pretty freaking nice.
Gaming on the mac? You may have heard about an announcement from a little company called Valve that they are bringing Steam to the Mac. Furthermore, if you bought any Valve titles via steam, you have a free copy for your mac client. Nice, huh?
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Opera 10 is way bettery than Safari..
Gaming on mac
Gaming on Mac is actually becoming not a total joke... sure, they don't cater to the hobbyist who builds Quad SLI super rigs... but for the overwhelming majority of gamers out there, Mac hardware is more than up to the task.
but I really don't want this to become a listwar, so I'm going to shut up now.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
yep. As I understand it, everything Source Engine is getting the mac treatment, including source-ports of earlier stuff, like HL1: Source.
But the entire Half Life 2 series + episodes, Left for Dead series, Team fortress 2, Portal(s)... it's all coming along. And due to how they built it, they are 100% compatible with the mods already out there for the PC users, and all of the servers already out there...
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Applications:
Acorn: For image editing.
Flow: If you need an FTP client.
MagicPrefs: For makign that fancy Magic Mouse a bit more useful.
Transmission: For the torrents.
OmniGraffle: Sort of like Visio.
Tweetie: For twitter
NetNewsWire: For RSS feeds
Err, other than that I usually use the built in software. I second the recommendations for Adium, Perian and Flip4Mac.
There is a Chrome beta available for Mac, though add-ons aren't enabled for it yet. There are plenty of decent full-feature browsers out there - I use Firefox when i need Adblock.
If you own any Blizzard games, you can redownload the Mac versions from their online store.
And my favorite part? A purchase of any valve game is a purchase of the game for either platform. Or both. Or whatever. If you purchased the game before the mac port was ever announced, you have a free mac copy sitting out there to download... which is awesome, as I was a PC gamer back around the time of Episode 1, and had a pretty nice collection of software purchased already.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
If you are looking to rip DVDs, Handbrake is awesome.
Outside of that and what was already mentioned a lot of the "must have" software already comes with OSX
Extensions are enabled in Chrome on OS X now, and have been for a month or more
I use Chrome because I also use it on windows and I like solidarity in my keyboard shortcuts, but Safari and Firefox are also great browsers. Just pick the one you think feels the most familiar; you can't really go wrong with your choice.
How does one use the saving system? When I wiped my computer I lost my half life save.
I think the saving to their server thing is fairly new (?), but supposedly seamless. If its an older save you lost, I think you are out of luck
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Huh, sweet; guess it's time to update!
Is VLC for mac nearly as awesome as the PC version?
And one more thing, any media streaming clients (like TVeristy) i can use to stream video to my PS3?
I mean shit, OS X is a Unix-like. Doesn't seem so infeasible now.
MediaTomb, to my understanding, runs on OS X as well as linux and FreeBSD.
they have adblock for safari
i use safari
i got tired of firefox being a bloated piece of poop
It is important for people to remember that just because something is great on one platform, it is no guarantee that things will be the same on another.
Firefox is nowhere near the best OSX browser.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I do, however, still need to use it because Firebug absolutely rocks.
Watch my music videos
There's Rivet or Medialink
Try them both, though I had better luck with Medialink (well, actually the 360 version called Connect360)
For FTP I actually use a java program called Secure_FTP from GlubSoft because it's free.
Graphics I use Pixelator.
Chat: Adium but I am more and more often going back to iChat as more people get macs. There is a hack to merge all your buddy lists into one window - god it's annoying to have a different window for each client. The only account I routinely use not supported now by iChat is Yahoo (and msn I guess if anyone actually uses that)
MakeMKV beta will actually let you watch bluray on your mac with VLC if you have a BluRay drive.
Adium - chat client
AppCleaner - regular app deletion sucks
Audacity - decent audio editor
Bowtie - displays album art on your desktop
Cyberduck - FTP
Delicious Library - stores info about your physical book/music/movie/game/etc collection, paid
Digital - fun little adventure game I have yet to complete
Dropbox - interfaces with your dropbox account
EyeTV - DVR, paid w/ purchase of EyeTV dongle
Facebook Notifications - get Facebook notifications and messages through Growl
Firefox - web browser, adblock 4 life
Flip4Mac - playback Windows Media-encoded video
FreeDice - simple dice roller for RPG games
FuzzyClock - display time as "quarter past eight" instead of "8:15"
Gimp - image editing
Google Notifier - notifications of new GMail messages / Google Calendar events (don't really use this anymore)
Hyperspaces - enhancement for Spaces, paid (don't really use this anymore)
iStumbler - WiFi network info
iTunes Alarm - alarm clock utility for iTunes (don't really use this anymore)
Last.fm - scrobbling/streaming radio app from the awesome dudes at www.last.fm
Macfusion - mount network drives more easy like
MapTool - RPG mapping utility
MS Office 08 - was forced to buy this for a class, hate it
MusicBrainz Picard - MP3 tagger, don't like to use it as it interacts strangely w/ iTunes
NetBeans - Java IDE I use for class
Overflow - adds an icon on the Dock that holds more icons, paid (don't really use this anymore)
Paralllels - OS virtualization, paid
Path Finder - Finder replacement, I just have a trial installed but it is paid
Quicksilver - Spotlight replacement
RAR Expander - expands RARs
ShoveBox - place to store scraps of text, etc., don't really use this anymore
Skype - video chat/VOIP software
Smultron - barebones text editing, no longer updated
Solitaire XL - solitaire
SoundConverter - converts sounds, don't really use this anymore
StuffIt - more archive expansion stuff, don't really use this anymore
TextWrangler - another text editor, don't really use this anymore
The Hit List - to do lists, paid
TinkerTool - fiddles with various hidden system settings
Toast - burning stuff to discs, paid
Transmission - torrents
Ventrilo - more VOIP
VirusScan - forced to install by college
VLC - playback damn near any media
WireTap Studio - audio recording suite, paid
WriteRoom - more barebones text editing
XLD - X Lossless audio Daemon, convert audio files
Xmarks for Safari - bookmark synch, don't really use this anymore
Much more gamers use linux than mac. That would be great.. Fuck I would never use windows again.
What I would like to see in this thread is a solid SVN client that isn't 60 goddamn dollars.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
I use Flow. It's not free but it is worth paying for.
Alternatively, OneButton is really basic but works well.
Chrome as my browser - I feel it's way faster than Safari and hogs way less memory, especially since it actually releases memory as you close tabs instead of just holding on to it indefinitely. The built-in bookmark synching is great - I bookmark something in Chrome on my Windows 'puter and it shows up on the Macbook a few seconds later.
GlimmerBlocker for killing ads - this runs as a proxy, so it works with every browser.
LaunchBar (paid) - my app launcher. I tried QuickSilver and other stuff, but I always felt LaunchBar was the best of them.
Growl - this should really be shipped with OS X out of the box. :P So many apps use it. It's an API for showing info boxes, kinda like system tray notifications in Windows. I consider it mandatory.
TextExpander (paid) - this lets you save text snippets as shortcuts and quickly insert them into stuff you're writing.
Caffeine - another awesome little app. It prevents the screen from dimming when enabled, meaning I can actually watch youtube movies without poking the mouse every 20 seconds.
SuperDuper! (paid, free version works just fine) - I use this to do backup images in conjunction with Time Machine. Got a bootable image of my Macbook on an external USB drive in case something asplodes.
Notify (paid, freeware version) - Mail notifyer.
iTerm - Terminal.
MoneyWell (paid, free version can do up to 50 transactions) - awesome budget program that is well worth paying for.
Spirited Away - a little app that hides applications that don't have focus after X seconds, keeping the desktop clean. Has a filter so it doesn't touch stuff you don't want it to hide.
The Unarchiver - unzipper that does a ton of formats and feels faster than the native unarchiver.
Wallet (paid) - app for storing serial numbers, site login info and other password stuff.
I really dislike Growl though. It's like taking one of the worst and most annoying bits of Windows (endless pop up notifications) and optionally adding it to OS X.
To be slightly more helpful here's some stuff I'm using (my list looks scarily like Echo's!):
Chrome - It doesn't integrate with OSX quite as well as Safari, but it syncs my bookmarks between the computers that I use Chrome on (work PC, home PC, and Macbook), is very snappy and it seems to handle memory better than Safari. Plus, its got it's own task manager built-in, and what nerd doesn't love that?
LaunchBar - Makes launching things easier. It's paid, so if you're looking for something free then check out Quicksilver. I had a problem with QS crashing on me though.
Typinator - Expands text snippets. For instance I have a snippet set up so I can type "ssb" (because I rarely have to abbreviate "Super Smash Bros"
VMWare Fusion - Paid, and not a lot of people need this. I'm thinking about switching to Parallels though as it's been getting much better reviews lately.
Smultron - A nice text editor since Text Edit seems to be poop.
Moneywell - (just read what Echo wrote for this one), plus if I do have a problem their support people have been really nice.
Pixelmator - Image editing. It's paid, but works well, and there aren't a whole lot of good free choices like there are for Windows.
Transmission - For the rare times I'm doing some Torrenting on my laptop.
Flow - Paid FTP client. I hate that the best FTP client I've found for OS X is something I had to buy. That sounds silly, but on Windows nothing beats Filezilla. Unfortunately it just doesn't look or feel right in OS X.
Perian - Because I like to play more things through Quicktime than just MOV and MP4 files. Though, sometimes QT bogs down (MKV, or other large files) when I hook the laptop up to my TV, so I've got VLC there for playing files efficiently when I need to.
Flip4Mac - If you need or want to play WMV files on the Mac, because VLC sucks ass with the WMV format for some reason. Though this is a little weird, it's almost as though F4M transcodes on the fly because the video opens in Quicktime.
Agreed on Growl. The problem with it is that so many apps use it. For most of them, it's unnecessary, and 9 times out of 10, I don't really want popover notifications from any application that isn't already in focus.
A lot of people do love it, though, and it's at least customizable enough to tailor it to do what you want it to.
If there's one (free) program I can use to do most of these I'd be all over that.
Depending on the source video (and how you want to output it), I can get a lot accomplished in iMovie.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
That's why you only let whitelisted apps use it.
Skype can fuck right off, you're not getting Growl access.
I think most of the apps I use have been covered, but I do have to echo that the built-in stuff is the best you can find in a lot of cases. Safari, iTunes, and Mail all work really well.
I'm not sure anyone has mentioned Net News Wire or Notational Velocity. NNW is a great RSS reader with a pretty Mac-ish interface, and NV is a minimal, simple notetaking app that can hold thousands of notes and make them all searchable. I find it works best if you sync it with Simplenote on the iPhone, but I'm not sure if the OP has an iPhone or not.
XBL |Steam | PSN | last.fm
if not that sucks
That said, keep an eye on MacHeist for when they are giving away free stuff, its usually pretty good. Occasionally their bundles have something useful in them too. For most purposes the iLife package that will come with your iMac will be sufficient, but it is missing a few things. I don't have any experience with iWork, but keep meaning to check it out.
PS. Jealous. I'm probably going to buy that same computer when I get back from my vacation/my bank account has time to recover.
Speaking of bundles, MacUpdate's running their Spring Bundle right now.
At the minimum, if he's thinking about getting Parallels, might be worth picking up just for that.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
Wow, thanks for the link. Even if it was just Parallels, that'd be a pretty sweet discount.