Essential Applications for Apple Users.
I am soon to be a Mac owner - wondering what are the essential and ideal applications (this may seem obvious to you guys but not me as I grew up on Windows) that you would suggest for a Soon-To-Be Apple Mac User?
(I.e. for Windows I'd suggest Office and Photoshop as crucial)
(I.e. for Windows I'd suggest Office and Photoshop as crucial)
Comments
My experience as a "switcher"? I do a lot more on the Mac that I ever thought about doing on a PC. It's a lot more enjoyable and things just work. I have 5,000+ photos in iPhoto and all of my CDs in iTunes and on the iPod. Played with movies, but have a way to go in that area.
There is a good list of free or very cheap apps on Apple's site and I use
http://osx.hyperjeff.net/Apps/
to check for free/shareware. It's an ad free site with 14,600+ OS X apps.
I've gotten a lot of apps to try and kept many. Check Off and NotePad are easy ones to recommend. WorldTimes and CurrenciesConverter if you are you're the international type - plus Google Earth.
I found that griffintechnology.com is a good place to look for the bits & pieces that can go with a Mac. The iMic is good for converting LP's & cassettes and I use their iCurve for the PowerBook.
Mostly just look through the Made4Mac section of Apple's site for some new ideas and have fun.
The system will be used for the utmost basic of tasks - Word Processing, Web Surfing and Occasional Photo Editing by a non-expert.
iWork 06- WP/Page Layout/Presentation
Omni Bundle- Omnigraffle, Omnioutliner, Omniweb, Disk SWPR
Photoshop Elements 4- Just came out. Will be UB soon enuff
FontXplorer X- Free Linotype Font Management tool
Sticky Brain/Yojimbo/Noteshare/Devonthink- repositories for everything.
Newsfire RSS reader- Looks cool
Video LAN Client(VLC)- I LOVE this..plays damn near everything
Soho Organizer- New contact management bundle. Some teething problems but promising.
Originally posted by kmhtkmhtkmht
Cost is no object as ....
Cost is not the point. The wonderful thing about the Mac is that the computer ships with a collection of software that is quite capable. The Developer Tools provide the best programming environment of just about any platform and it is free! On Windows, you get Visual BASIC and you have to pay for it. Need to produce PDFs? Print them from any MacOS X application. Check out VersionTracker.com and MacUpdate.com. You will find great commercial titles there. You will also find shareware and freeware titles that equal or beat the commercial titles in quality. One such title is the MPlayer-based, QuickTime-compatible media player, Cellulo 2.0.1. This rock-solid donationware app is as polished as any media player on any platform.
One of the things that you will discover about MacOS X is that you have very few "either/or" decisions. Which browser do choose? Don't choose, use them all--simultaneously! Which media player? Unless you need WMP 10, you can use the Quicktime Player, WMP 9, VLC, two versions of MPlayerOS X, Cellulo, iTunes, and others.
Need to do some real work? Again search VersionTracker and MacUpdate for the app that you need. Don't restrict yourself to Mac ports of Windows titles. There are lot of Mac-only titles that will likely do everything that you need. But, no amount of talking can do justice to the Mac experience. You have to immerse yourself in it.
I am soon about to embark on this very such journey - I have become fluent and know Windows so well that it feels weird to be learning another one - I don't really play games anymore so I think this will be a huge productivity boost.
This should be fun!
Add:
Photoshop Elements
Apple's iWork (Pages is great for layout; you might even make a presentation)
Omnigraffle
There's a different way of doing things:
ConceptDraw MindMap
VoodooPad (a notepad that's a wiki)
Curio
I have one game on my PB 15" which goes to work every day:
GNU's Goban
I would recommend AppZapper, like me, I would assume you will be downloading and 'evaluating' a lot of software over time. Some of those applications, you will decide you won't need or use and delete them by dragging the program icon to the trash. The problem with this is, there are generally supporting files that get placed in various locations on your system - library, Preference Panes and what not - when you drag the program icon to the trash, you 'think' you've deleted the program, and for all intents and purposes, you have - however, if the program had supporting files - they are still taking up space and possibly using system resources unnecessarily . AppZapper is an inexpensive - $12.95 utility that helps ensure all the supporting files get trashed as well. So, instead of dragging the program icon that you wish to delete to the trash, drag it to AppZapper and let it do it's thing ! You can get it here: AppZapper 1.2
It's free, it's amazing and you don't want to use your Mac without it any more once you've used it.
Btw, did I mention it's free
Originally posted by macanoid?
Quicksilver
It's free, it's amazing and you don't want to use your Mac without it any more once you've used it.
Btw, did I mention it's free
I totally agree! Quicksilver is my current favorite - in a word, awesome! I paid for Launchbar, but decided to try Quicksilver since it is 'free,' and was immediately impressed, but your mileage may vary? In this arena are Spotlight, Butler, Launchbar and Quicksilver - and 'my' vote goes to Quicksilver 8).
Originally posted by Mr. Me
One of the things that you will discover about MacOS X is that you have very few "either/or" decisions. Which browser do choose? Don't choose, use them all--simultaneously! Which media player? Unless you need WMP 10, you can use the Quicktime Player, WMP 9, VLC, two versions of MPlayerOS X, Cellulo, iTunes, and others.[/B]
I guess OS X is the only OS that can run two browsers at the same time. Gee, I'm convinced!
Originally posted by MrSin
I totally agree! Quicksilver is my current favorite - in a word, awesome! I paid for Launchbar, but decided to try Quicksilver since it is 'free,' and was immediately impressed, but your mileage may vary? In this arena are Spotlight, Butler, Launchbar and Quicksilver - and 'my' vote goes to Quicksilver 8).
Haha i went to download Quicksilver and i then i was like "o crap i gotta be careful, it could have a virus" and then realized that i had switched to a virus free system a month ago...
Locker. A widget that protects you data by going to the user log in screen.
EasyEnvelopes. Another widget for printing envelopes and it even puts the Post Office barcode on it.
Overflow. Sort of like Quicksilver, but apps only. Got it before downloading Quicksilver and like the ability to place apps by their type.
Folding@Home. I leave the iMac on all night so why not. I might actually benefit some day if I live so long.
Originally posted by kmhtkmhtkmht
I am soon to be a Mac owner - wondering what are the essential and ideal applications (this may seem obvious to you guys but not me as I grew up on Windows) that you would suggest for a Soon-To-Be Apple Mac User?
(I.e. for Windows I'd suggest Office and Photoshop as crucial)
== get a word processer, then pick from these freeware programs;
KeyManager -- http://www.cafeinasoft.com/eng/produ...ymanager.shtml
ArtRage --- http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html -- paint program
Bank Book --- http://www.smoonstore.com/silverstreaksoftware/ -- simple accounting
Clipper --- http://cole.nitroy.com/projects.html --- pasteboard utility
mPlayer --- http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net/ -- media player
Pixen -- http://www.opensword.org/Pixen/ --- icon maker
SnapnDrag --- http://www.yellowmug.com/snapndrag/ --- screen shot tool
JreePad --- http://jreepad.sourceforge.net/ -- java treepad
BurnX free --- http://www.hernansoft.com/products.html
iBackup --- http://www.grapefruit.ch/iBackup/ -- backup
MacJanitor --- http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_...acjanitor.html -- disc utility
CombinePDF's -- http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/Fr...binePDFs.shtml
Seashore --- http://seashore.sourceforge.net/ --- gimp like paint program
Audacity --- http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ ---audio editor
ClamXav --- http://www.markallan.co.uk/clamXav/ -- free anti-virus
journler --- http://journler.phildow.net/ -- journal
countdown -- http://www.fromconcentratesoftware.com/ -- count down timer
Little Snitch --- http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html (limited)
Dnotes -- http://www.geocities.com/diabolos56/cocoa/index.html -- note pad
Firefox -- http://www.mozilla.org/download.html -- great browser
Thunderbird -- http://www.mozilla.org/download.html -- great mail program
Neo Office -- http://www.planamesa.com/ -- java office suite
platypus downloader -- http://www.tucows.com/preview/213591 -- downloader
small image -- http://www.iconus.ch/fabien/smallimage2/ -- make images smaller
smultron -- http://smultron.sourceforge.net/ -- text and code editor
stuffit expander -- http://www.apple.com/downloads/macos...texpander.html
Tofu -- http://homepage.mac.com/asagoo/tofu/index.html - text reader
Ogg Drop -- http://www.nouturn.com/oggdrop/more.php .ogg coder/decoder
NVU -- http://www.nvu.com/ --- wysiwyg html editor
MenuCalendar -- http://www.objectpark.net/mcc.htm
IceCoffee -- http://web.sabi.net/nriley/software/ -open URL's by clicking