iMac newbie apps questions

[whooshbong]

Awaiting my first mac in the next day or two. had pages, numbers, and keynote preinstalled as got education discount. going to bootcamp and use parallels for the few pc games i want to keep.

so my question is, what essential or must have apps are there for some new to macs (and what do they do)? Also is Office for mac any good or am i best sticking with windows version through parallels?, need to keep it for some features i regularly use for work and study in word and excel

[jojoba]

I depends what you'd like to do with your mac? Some of my favourites are

Evernote (note taking)
Alfred (to open/find stuff)
Better Touch Tool (to personalise/ help navigate your mac)
DropBox

I use Office for Mac, and it works fine for my purposes.

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by whooshbong

so my question is, what essential or must have apps are there for some new to macs (and what do they do)?

It's better to start with an idea of what you want to accomplish, so you know what kind of apps you'll need. There are hundreds of thousands of apps, so just listing them without a sense of purpose for your use isn't as helpful.

Originally Posted by GGJstudios

Need application suggestions? Look here:

• Is there any must have Mac apps?
• Must have Mac apps? new to Apple
• Apps/software to download for new Mac Users
• What are your favorite App Store apps?
• MBP apps for college student????
• A new Best Mac apps thread
• your top 5 of macbook pro apps
• Useful FREE apps from the app store

From:

Helpful Information for Any Mac User
Portables Fast Start: The New User's Guide to Apple Notebooks

Originally Posted by whooshbong

Also is Office for mac any good

I use Office for Mac daily and exchange files with Windows users constantly. It works extremely well.

[James Craner]

Congratulations on your new iMac.

Here are some of my favourite productivity Apps that I use on a regular basis:

1Password (Password, Form filling and Identity manager)

PDFPen (90% of the functionality of Adobe Acrobat at a fraction of the cost)

Alfred (App Launcher)

Dropbox (Cloud based document storage and sync App)

Textexpander (expands keyboard shortcuts into frequently-used text and pictures)

Skitch (Screen Capture and annotation)

Evernote (notes, sync files , save webpages, and share your ideas with friends and colleagues.)

DragonDrop (Utility to make moving files between folders much easier)

Moom (Tame those OS X Application windows)

Tweetbot (Twitter Client)

OmniFocus (Task Manager)

[From A Buick 8]

Yes better to post some things you will use it for and then let others point you in the right direction.

Our iMac is used mostly has a media Hub. I use RipIt, Handbrake and iDentify to rip, encode, add metadata and add to my iTunes library for playback on our iPad and Apple Tv's
everyone is going to have a list like that that is unique to their use on the imac

[whooshbong]

I work full time as a nurse and am doing a distance learning MSc, so much used for study. I use dropbox already to help sync pdfs for my course with my ipad.

as said need to keep office of some variety for certain features. do a lot of browsing email etc. getting bootcamp for some windows games that i want to keep. i have an itunes library of over 100gb and my wife got me an apple tv for Christmas so that needs to tie in. i do have a lot of photos that i've also intended to do something with but probably never will.

my wife likes the more creative side. another reason to keep office is for publisher for her.

[jojoba]

Originally Posted by whooshbong

I work full time as a nurse and am doing a distance learning MSc, so much used for study. I use dropbox already to help sync pdfs for my course with my ipad.

as said need to keep office of some variety for certain features. do a lot of browsing email etc. getting bootcamp for some windows games that i want to keep. i have an itunes library of over 100gb and my wife got me an apple tv for Christmas so that needs to tie in. i do have a lot of photos that i've also intended to do something with but probably never will.

my wife likes the more creative side. another reason to keep office is for publisher for her.

Regarding your studies: I'm a researcher and some of the apps I use regularly for academic work are Sente, Scrivener, Circus Ponies Notebooks and Curio on my mac, and iAnnotate, Notability and iThoughtsHD on my iPad (see links for how I use each app). I use PostBox for email, because it integrates very well with Evernote.

[ChristianJapan]

I think PixelMator is worth any penny it cost.
XCode for development
textWrangler/BBEdit

Others already mentioned: Evernote, 1password