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anton1s

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 17, 2012
59
0
Hi All

I just bought my MBA 13 and since it's the first time I am using mac , I was wondering what are the -must have- applications that each user should have ?

Thanks
 

wrboyce

macrumors 6502
Oct 30, 2007
270
0

Not an Application, and not helpful.


Hi All

I just bought my MBA 13 and since it's the first time I am using mac , I was wondering what are the -must have- applications that each user should have ?

Thanks

Depends on your intended usage really? For a lot of people the basics (Mail, Safari, iCal) and iLife (iPhoto, iMovie) are sufficient. Personally, I like to replace Terminal with iTerm2, iCal with BusyCal, and Mail.app with Postbox - among many other apps I use for work/play.

Give us an indication of your intended usage, and we may be able to help. What is your Mac currently missing?
 

LukeSpringUK

macrumors member
Jun 14, 2012
35
0
Hi All

I just bought my MBA 13 and since it's the first time I am using mac , I was wondering what are the -must have- applications that each user should have ?

Thanks

The first things I install upon buying a new Mac are...

iWork (Apple's MS Office)
Clean My Mac (Similar to CCLeaner, deletes cache and language files your may not need)
Total Finder (Allows for a tabbed Finder experience so you don't have to have open multiple windows)
Cinch (Brings the W7 snap feature to Mac)

There's a few more that are purely tailored to my needs (Photoshop, Coda, etc). But those are the basics.

I'm sure other people will have more suggestions. :)
 

anton1s

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 17, 2012
59
0
I am a new mac user and therefore I have to start from scratch. For example vlc is something I would most likely think of installing for movies(never used imovie before so I might not have to install vlc after all).

I've been told that istat pro is really good as well for monitoring the activity of the CPU,SDD etc

Also, do I need a seperate archive tool ? (i.e to open .*rar, *.zip files?)

Thanks for all the help
 

palpatine

macrumors 68040
May 3, 2011
3,130
45
Nothing really. Unless, of course, you give us a use-case :)

I pretty much exclusively use Chrome, Everntoe, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and Adobe Acrobat Pro (for OCR, annotations, etc.). None of these are "must-have" applications for the Mac, but in my workflow (moving between the Mac and iPad a lot) they are wonderful.

Unique apps like VoodooPad and so forth might make your Mac experience more enjoyable, but these depend on your use-case.
 

appleguy123

macrumors 604
Apr 1, 2009
6,862
2,539
15 minutes in the future
I am a new mac user and therefore I have to start from scratch. For example vlc is something I would most likely think of installing for movies(never used imovie before so I might not have to install vlc after all).

I've been told that istat pro is really good as well for monitoring the activity of the CPU,SDD etc

Also, do I need a seperate archive tool ? (i.e to open .*rar, *.zip files?)

Thanks for all the help

I use rar expander. Hasn't failed me yet. iMovie edits edit, VLC plays them. It's really a must have for Mac.
 

KPOM

macrumors P6
Oct 23, 2010
18,019
7,862
Also, do I need a seperate archive tool ? (i.e to open .*rar, *.zip files?)

Thanks for all the help

OS X can handle basic ZIP files. If you want to add encryption or use something more complex, there's an app call BetterZIP that I have used.

I'd check out this forum for more information about software.
 

iNole

macrumors member
Mar 16, 2011
32
0
A-Town
The first things I install upon buying a new Mac are...

iWork (Apple's MS Office)
Clean My Mac (Similar to CCLeaner, deletes cache and language files your may not need)
Total Finder (Allows for a tabbed Finder experience so you don't have to have open multiple windows)
Cinch (Brings the W7 snap feature to Mac)

There's a few more that are purely tailored to my needs (Photoshop, Coda, etc). But those are the basics.

I'm sure other people will have more suggestions. :)

I completely agree with the Cinch suggestion. Love it so much!
 

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,539
941
Clean My Mac (Similar to CCLeaner, deletes cache and language files your may not need)
I would not recommend CleanMyMac, based on the number of complaints that have been posted in this forum and elsewhere. As an example: CleanMyMac cleaned too much. While you may not have experienced problems yet, enough people have that it's wise to avoid it, especially since there are free alternatives that have better reputations, such as Onyx.

You don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Most only remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space, with the risk of deleting something important in the process.

These apps will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space. In fact, deleting some caches can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt.

Many of these tasks should only be done selectively to troubleshoot specific problems, not en masse as routine maintenance.

Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. Among other things, it has its own maintenance scripts that run silently in the background on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, without user intervention.


If your goal is to free up space on your drive, this should help: Freeing up space in Mac OS X
 

mattopotamus

macrumors G5
Jun 12, 2012
14,666
5,879
some that i use often:

caffeine: keeps your mac from going to sleep, which is nice when you are downloading some big files

divvy: really nice for adjusting windows, especially on the 11" (does cost $7)

mplayerx: I think it is the cleanest media player out there.

unarchiver: basically winzip
 

mszpara

macrumors regular
Jun 21, 2010
176
0
The first things I install upon buying a new Mac are...

iWork (Apple's MS Office)
Clean My Mac (Similar to CCLeaner, deletes cache and language files your may not need)
Total Finder (Allows for a tabbed Finder experience so you don't have to have open multiple windows)
Cinch (Brings the W7 snap feature to Mac)

There's a few more that are purely tailored to my needs (Photoshop, Coda, etc). But those are the basics.

I'm sure other people will have more suggestions. :)

Is there an iWork package I can purchase? I do I have to get Keynote, Pages and Numbers separately?

Seconded, but again that's personal opinion.

Adium for chat (MSN Messenger, GTalk etc.) is another Mac staple.

Does Adium offer anything that iChat doesn't?
 

tootall

macrumors regular
Apr 17, 2011
212
3
Quebec, Canada
This is what I use on a daily basis

Mail, iCal and Contact
Word, Excel, Powerpoint
Safari
Adobe Acrobat Pro, Preview
Unarchiver
Dropbox
SuperFlexibleSynchronizer
Time machine
Better Snap Tool
Yoink
Flux
iTune

also useful occasionally:

Handbrake, HandbrakePM
iPhoto, iMovie
Tansmission
Skitch
Skype
Yemuzip
Papers2
Caffeine
 

bit density

macrumors 6502
Mar 5, 2004
398
2
Seattle
The one app I use EVERY day...

Audio Hijack Pro.

It has always been on my laptops. Apple laptops are too quiet to watch media and listen to music on.

Audio Hijack Pro, while ostensibly not designed for this purpose lets you increase the volume of the speakers beyond what the Mac will allow you to do otherwise.

The only other one that I use is Thunderbird for Usenet.
 

31rhcp

macrumors member
May 18, 2010
73
0
Apart from what comes standard, I recommend:

Google Chrome (might as well get Firefox as well)
MS Office 2011
VLC
Evernote (but this could be obsolete soon given the changes in Mountain Lion)
BetterTouchTool
Caffeine
Jumpcut
Handbrake
Transmission
Skype
Dropbox
Gimp

Also, set up a Time Machine backup immediately. They're super easy and can be a real life saver.

Based on your needs, Boot Camp is very useful too.
 

KPOM

macrumors P6
Oct 23, 2010
18,019
7,862
I would not recommend CleanMyMac, based on the number of complaints that have been posted in this forum and elsewhere. As an example: CleanMyMac cleaned too much. While you may not have experienced problems yet, enough people have that it's wise to avoid it, especially since there are free alternatives that have better reputations, such as Onyx.

You don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Most only remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space, with the risk of deleting something important in the process.

These apps will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space. In fact, deleting some caches can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt.

Many of these tasks should only be done selectively to troubleshoot specific problems, not en masse as routine maintenance.

Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. Among other things, it has its own maintenance scripts that run silently in the background on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, without user intervention.

x2. Also, I'd avoid MacKeeper (you will get lots of pop-up ads for it). In general OS X doesn't require all the "cleaner" applications that Windows does, because it has no Registry. Applications do a better job of uninstalling themselves.
 

KPOM

macrumors P6
Oct 23, 2010
18,019
7,862
MS Office 2011
Caffeine
Handbrake
Skype
Dropbox
Gimp

For some background, Caffeine is a utility that disables sleep mode. It can be useful if you are running a presentation.

GIMP is an X11 application that requires an additional download to run. X11 is another "shell" on top of UNIX, so X11 applications really aren't "Mac" applications. They are UNIX applications that can run on OS X. GIMP is a photo editor. You can download X11 support here. http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/wiki

----------

Will the mid-2012 MBA 13" 1.8/8/128 run Civilization V?

I would be skeptical. Civilization IV shows lots of artifacts when running on anything above low detail. That said, perhaps Civ V is optimized for the HD 4000, while Civ IV most certainly hasn't been.
 
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