New Mac User

greggoodwingreggoodwin
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Hello AI,

Heard about this site before, but never had a reason to visit until now.

I have finally decided to cut ties with Microsoft and get a MacBook Air (13'') on Monday.



My main concern is applications, I can use Google Docs or a few other services for documents, so no reason to worry about getting Office for Mac, but I am also a developer.



Any other developers out there that can direct me to some replacement products for development? I know Photoshop is a must, but I also do a lot of MySQL, PHP, XHTML and Javascript work. Yeah I could use a normal text editor but intelisense can be nice sometimes.



Also what are some necessities that every Mac user should get beyond out of the box software?



Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Welcome.



    Everyone has a favorite list... here are a few.



    http://www.opensourcemac.org/



    http://zamwi.com/2006/05/14/the-best-free-mac-apps/



    http://pbgalvin.wordpress.com/the-be...-os-resources/
  • Reply 2 of 6
    greggoodwingreggoodwin Posts: 2member
    Thanks!

    Good links, exactly what I was looking for.
  • Reply 3 of 6
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by greggoodwin View Post


    My main concern is applications, I can use Google Docs or a few other services for documents, so no reason to worry about getting Office for Mac, but I am also a developer.

    ....

    Also what are some necessities that every Mac user should get beyond out of the box software?

    ....

    Thanks in advance for any suggestions.



    At some stage you might always need productivity software. The Mac way:

    http://www.apple.com/iwork/
  • Reply 4 of 6
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,323moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by greggoodwin View Post


    My main concern is applications, I can use Google Docs or a few other services for documents, so no reason to worry about getting Office for Mac, but I am also a developer.



    I'd still recommend getting an offline Office suite. Even Open Office, which is free.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by greggoodwin View Post


    Any other developers out there that can direct me to some replacement products for development? I know Photoshop is a must, but I also do a lot of MySQL, PHP, XHTML and Javascript work. Yeah I could use a normal text editor but intelisense can be nice sometimes.



    OS X has a built-in Apache webserver for offline site testing but I'd recommend getting the Entropy PHP build over the built-in PHP as the Entropy one supports libraries like GD. Get the official MySQL server too.



    For local and remote MySQL management, I recommend Navicat (the lite version's fine as you can dump databases and batch execute files for db transfer). I also recommend Transmit for FTP. I tried loads of FTP clients and it just works reliably and quickly.



    I'd also suggest getting Parallels for site checking in Internet Explorer. It's good to get rid of Windows but it's still needed in some areas.



    For development coding, you can try out things like Coda but I personally go with Dreamweaver all the time. It's just stable and the code completion, even with PHP functions makes development so much easier.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by greggoodwin View Post


    Also what are some necessities that every Mac user should get beyond out of the box software?



    Thanks in advance for any suggestions.



    Graphicconverter for batch image processing

    Xee for fast image previews (although quicklook can take over there)

    VLC for playing videos

    Toast for burning discs (liquid CD might be ok and is free)

    r-name for batch file renaming

    blue phone elite for sending SMS through your phone (if you have an iphone, you won't need this but for old phones, I hate typing on those keyboards)

    CD Finder for cataloging CDs/DVDs

    EasyFind for oldschool finding stuff when Spotlight fails you

    File Juicer for extracting files from say webarchives

    Pacifist for extracting installers when they don't work or you need to get a specific part of it

    PDF merge for handling PDFs

    unrarX for extracting rar files

    The unarchiver for extracting zips when the built-in one fails

    Whatsize for finding out what apps are wasting the most disk space

    isquint or visualhub for video encoding
  • Reply 5 of 6
    bergermeisterbergermeister Posts: 6,784member
    Welcome to the New World!





    Though not a developer's app, the best noptepad out there is Edgies.



    http://www.apple.com/downloads/macos...ls/edgies.html



    Great little note keeper that stays out of the way but is instantly accessible.



    iWork is awesome and not expensive at all. It will more than handle a small business.



    For odd graphic work (screen capture, markup) try these:



    Flysketch

    http://flyingmeat.com/flysketch/



    Snapz Pro

    http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/
  • Reply 6 of 6
    talksense101talksense101 Posts: 1,738member
    I prefer Textmate for editing. You can always get Eclipse.
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