Just bought my first Mac. Now what?
 

Well, this die-hard Windows user has finally bought his first Mac. Rather than learn everything the hard way, I'm hoping to leverage the experience of all you Mac users out there and get some advice on the best apps, utilities and widgets to install.

What are your favorite programs and tools for the Mac?

personally its gotta be firefox (obvious I know), smultron (its a text editor which handles multiple files has line numbers and does syntax highlighting) and cyberduck (FTP). Other people will tell you different things but these are the 3 things I use the most. The best thing is that they are all free too!

Thanks, Kerry-Anne. I use Flock on Windows (based on Firefox), but not having used Safari much, I'm curious -- why Firefox over Apple's own Safari?

I just find some of the things in safari strange but that is probably because I don't use it very often. Its like why use FF over IE on Windows? I've used FF for the last 5 years or more first on Windows then on Mac when I switched over to Macs nearly 2 years ago.

Personally, I use Safari. I fell like it is the only "mac" styled browser. FF3 has come quite a long way, but not far enough. And yes, Safari does have it's quirks. The only reason I would use FF over safari would be plugins.

Now for FTP I use a paid client. It is called Transmit FTP by Panic, Inc. It for me has been the simplest to use and has some amazing features. For file editing (as I do it heavily) I use another paid solution. It is the best of the ones I tried, but I have only used 2. Coda has a truly nice UI and has some nice features.

Widget wise, not many, as for me, dashboard hasn't had much use for me. Some other apps I have installed to do specialized tasks that most don't do, so I won't go into those.

Flock 1.1 has a Macintosh version available on the Flock Website.
http://www.flock.com/get-ready-to-flock/?platform=mac

Great thread. I'm gonna try out smultron on Kerry-Anne's advise. I normally use BBEdit but wouldn't mind trying something else.

I also use Transmit. I've been using it forever and have never found it lacking in anyway. I like the interface. I've never tried anything else, other than fetch though.

What is Flock? I have never heard of that.

me too ... :)

anyway i heard some 'rumors' about Safari, it seems the fastest browser in the market ... but i still prefer FF, especially with the new releases ...

I didn't know you use a Mac. :) But yeah, Panic has a great support team!

It is the "Social Networking Browser". It has a sidebar that interacts with the Social Networking sites like Facebook.

It is pretty speedy.

Mac isn't a touch on Windows IMO -- that's speaking from experience.

Anyway, Apple's software is truly intrusive. For example, I run Windows XP SP2 -- yet not so long ago, while updating iTunes, I was offered the latest version of Safari.

News story that I wrote can be found here.

As stated above it is a social networking browser. You can create services to different places around the Internet like Gmail, Flickr, Facebook, LiveJournal, Blogger and even self-hosted blogs. From these services you can login via a single click, post from any web page with a rich text editor and so forth.

The thing that I like about it is that you don't have a homepage. You have a "home internet" where you can define what RSS Feeds, Favorite Media, Favorite Sites and track your friends. With addons, you can add any book from any website to your Amazon Wishlist, add movies to your Netflix queue, manage Twitter and more. I just keep the "My World" tab open at all times and have quick easy access to friends, news and more.

The software is a custom distribution of Firefox and continues to be open source. They make money through an advertising deal with Yahoo for searches but you can use any search engine as your default and any Yahoo toolbar. The only downside is that extensions for Firefox aren't necessarily compatible and the number of extensions available is low. You can also probably build something similar with a standard Firefox but that takes time and energy.

That was a bad move on Apple's side. But owning a mac and using Apple software is completely different.

I think I know that King -- however, it is still the same company/organization ;)

I guess it goes down to preference, but I don't think you'll see me with a Mac anytime soon....

Not a whole lot different as the same idiot is in charge of them both.

<a href="http://www.grabup.com" target="_blank">www.grabup.com</a>

one of the best freeware apps going for the mac imo.

ask for a refund ;)

I have to say the macs aren't too bad. I like it more than PC's.. well just about! I find the performance is a lot better and it's great for arty type of work eg. photoshop, final cut, after effects, animation etc... So a lot of people here might not be using them, especially programmers =P

They have one or two nice programming tools. :p But it is a PITA to get a localhost of mysql / php working.

ROFL... ditto ;)

Thanks for all the tips! I've installed Adium, and excellent multi-network IM client which I'm very impressed with and will be adding Flock soon.

I'm not a Mac fanatic. I still have and use several other Windows PCs so no need for snide Mac quips. I'm just looking to expand my toolkit.

I also recommend Quicksilver (launcher/tool of many uses), Transmission (torrent program), TextWrangler (although smultron may be better.)

I use something called Scrivener for my writing projects, but it is paid software. I tend to use firefox, as I do web design and having many different browsers is very useful! Also highly recommend Cyberduck for ftp. http://www.freemacware.com/ is a great source of new programs and things. MacTheRipper is also worth checking out, as is NeoOffice/Open Office. I do like iWorks, I just haven't bothered buying a license yet ;) If you like doing 3d graphics, check out Blender - open source maya style program.

Sidenote is also handy, and there are ton of nice RSS readers out there if you aren't a fan of googlereader - Vienna, NetNewWire

http://macspecialist.org/content/art...ssential_apps/
http://freelanceswitch.com/working/3...tial-mac-apps/

Although a lot of people who assemble those sorts of lists are GTD/productivity freaks, so it can be a tad heavy on the self-organiser lists.

*dies*

Actually I find it much easier since Leopard comes with PHP 5 and Apache 2.2 built right in. No need to install anything extra. Then you just install MySQL as you would on any Unix system.

The advantage of Mac OS X is not necessarily the GUI (although I've grown so used to it I find I miss all the time saving features when I am using Vista) it is the fact that is a full Unix operating system and thus comes with all the standard Unix programming tools.

Care to elaborate. Cause I have completely screwed myself over. I can't install mySQL at all. :( I think it may be XAMPP.

Haha well i am still stuck with Windows, not sure to move yet. I still enjoy Windows!

Well you obviously need to install the developer tools for the C/C++ compilers. Then just download the MySQL source code and install it pretty much the same way as you would under Linux. There are plenty of tutorials for installing MySQL on Mac OS X on the internet.

I have developer tools. :p I have released software.

Reported Post - Problem : Mac User Detected

You just brought yourself a new mac me ponders why u downgrading your comp :)

actually there is some configurations possible for OS-X with PHP/MySQL... i work with the latest versions of each, with a full server on my Mac Pro... here is where i started my trip with MySQL: http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/ ... he is the one who coded the PHP and MySQL integration over Mac... read the infos ;)

--------------- Added [DATE]1212756916[/DATE] at [TIME]1212756916[/TIME] ---------------

Non-Reported post but it would worth it. Pointing a user who would be happy to start another flaming war between PC/Mac.... pffffft

Actually, that is where I started too. It is just that I didn't think that it worked. And somehow I completely screwed up as I tried to install the latest mySQL package from their site and they said that 5.0.45 (installed on my computer?!) is new than 5.0.51 or whatever is out now.

If you stream videos you can use camtwist which is free and windows users have no equivalent.

Greatest posts I have ever read!! Macs a surely a upgrade. No viruses less security risks 10X faster. Tell me how sad it is when your best OS has over 300,000 viruses? Thats really sad. Not to say vistas widgets *cough* i mean gadgets would have never came around if it weren't for 10.4.

Actually, there is a "security flaw" in Safari that Apple is refusing to fix as they do not see it as a security flaw. Sometimes I think they are a bunch of idiots over in that building.