Must have apps for macbook?

Congrats on the Macbook

Head over to the Mac Applications section and you will find a ton of threads about "top 10 applications."

Also be sure to bookmark MacUpdate. You will be able to download many useful programs from this site and keep track of any updates.

http://www.macupdate.com/


My vote would be to get an external hard drive (if you don't already have one) and use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your MB HDD in case anything goes wrong with your computer.

Hope this helps...

I'm a first week macbook'er and I've gotta say I like iStat menu. its a cool stat tracker that goes in your menu bar at the top. Fan speed, cpu temp, network throughput, memory used, etc.

http://www.versiontracker.com is where i found it.

VLC. Great must-have media player.

Adium: IM client
Burn: General CD/DVD burning utility
Firefox: Browser
Handbrake: DVD Ripping/Compression/Video file compression
MacTheRipper (not the newest version): DVD Ripping (Use before Handbrake for faster overall times)
SuperCal: LCD Panel Calibration App
Transmission: BitTorrent Client
VLC: Video file playback, plays back almost any format/codec

There have been numerous threads about this. Just type in "must have applications" or "top 10 applications" in the search box and you will get all your answers.

Don't fall victim to the New to Mac Syndrome and think that you need to load up on maintenance utilities and virus protection type stuff. I can still remember the void in my life thinking that my day wasn't complete until I scanned or defragged or ran some routine to prevent my computer from crashing. That group of applications is daily/hourly life in a ms windows world but you can shed yourself of those habits and enjoy computing much more from now on. -GDF

GfulDedFan said:

I can still remember the void in my life thinking that my day wasn't complete until I scanned or defragged or ran some routine to prevent my computer from crashing.. -GDF

Click to expand...

4 months later and I'm just accepting the fact that it's not a job to own a computer anymore!!
Maintaining my Dell was seriously a part time job!

Congrats on your Mac purchase. You'll find yourself enjoying it more and more as you play with it. I just reformatting my harddrive and added the following within the first hour:

1. Adium - all-in-one IM program
2. uTorrent - BitTorrents (Transmission is a good one as well, but it's been buggy the last few releases. I love the 'Mac-like' look/feel of Transmission and I can see the up/down transfer rate on the icon w/o having to open the program. 1.41 version is what I use, but they put out 1.51 yesterday so i'll have to see if they've fixed the bugs in this one)
4. MacTheRipper - rips dvds to your Mac
5. Handbrake - rips & compresses dvds, I use it with MacTheRipper. (back up your dvd with MacTheRipper & then use Handbrake to make it into whatever file type you want. auto configures it based on what you're going to watch it on)
6. Flip4Mac - lets you watch wmv files through quicktime & safari
7. Perian - decodes & integrates almost all types into Quicktime so you can watch about anything in quicktime. VLC just isn't my style and i don't like having two programs that do the same thing.
8. Camino - alternative browser for the off chance a website you need doesn't like Safari. (paying my bill at t-mobile and my college web courses are the only two times I use it)
9. The Unarchiver - for opening up compressed files that the Leopard can't. (.rar for instance) Stuffit Expander is a good one as well.
10. AppCleaner - great program & one of my favs! Drag n drop program uninstaller. Finds every file associated with the program you're removing so it's completely gone w/o residual files left.

GfulDedFan said:

I can still remember the void in my life thinking that my day wasn't complete until I scanned or defragged or ran some routine to prevent my computer from crashing.

Click to expand...

You can still defrag monthly, just don't compact everything; instead defrag by optimizing the metadata positions, thereby improving file access performance.

App Zapper is a good one also, it allows you to uninstall stuff off your MacBook completely, other than that I pretty much use all the Apple default programs, Safari 4 beta is freakin sweet too.

Interesting; I actually don't have most of the programs specified in this thread. Possibly because I don't use IMs, Torrents, rarely burn DVDs etc. So there isn't much point. The only one that I do have is VLC, and that program really is the bomb.

If you like quality Audio and play a lot of .FLAC files, Obviously go for VLC, or Fluke, which enables you to use them in itunes.

tdgrn said:

App Zapper is a good one also, it allows you to uninstall stuff off your MacBook completely, other than that I pretty much use all the Apple default programs, Safari 4 beta is freakin sweet too.

Click to expand...

I got that in one of the bundles and it has been quite handy to have.

One more to add... Quicksilver. It's sort of a front-end for programs in OS X. The Mac Guide gives a comprehensive description: http://guides.macrumors.com/Quicksilver
It's free, of course