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Parents got me an air for Christmas...Now what software do I need?

nick2

nick2

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 12, 2011
14
9
The Great Plains
Hi Macrumors Forums,
My mom dropped it on me yesterday that my dad had went to Bestbuy and taken advantage off the 200 dollar off deal. So, naturally I went looking for an source and found a text saying,"picked up air." Score! But...my whole life I've been a windows guy, now this windows pc goes to my mom. I need software help.
All of these categories need a free and priced product. (Try and keep it reasonable)
Best Game for Mac
Best Program to run windows, (no free I know)
Best Utility
Best Torrent client
And 3 apps which are a Must for any mac owner in your opinion!
Have a happy thanksgiving,
Niko
 
GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
nick2 said:
Yes Yes Yes, but that was started in 09. I want the latest and greatest ;)
Digging the links though!
Click to expand...
The post was originally created in '09, but has been updated frequently. The information is current. Check the links. The first link under apps was posted in as recently as last month. There are also dozens of best/favorite/recommended apps threads, easily found by searching the forum.
 
nick2

nick2

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 12, 2011
14
9
The Great Plains
GGJstudios said:
The post was originally created in '09, but has been updated frequently. The information is current. Check the links. The first link under apps was posted in as recently as last month. There are also dozens of best/favorite/recommended apps threads, easily found by searching the forum.
Click to expand...
Sorry My Man
 
S

Sirolway

macrumors 6502
Jun 13, 2009
421
23
London
Aperture
Things
1Password
iStat Menus
Audacity
Transmission
Handbrake
Coconut Battery
ChronoSync
Dropbox
Firefox
EyeTV
Evernote
Text Wrangler
VLC
VirtualBox
 
J

jdechko

macrumors 601
Jul 1, 2004
4,230
325
Best Game for Mac : This really depends on what kind of games you play.
Best Program to run windows: Parallels & VMWare are pretty much equals for paid. VirtualBox is free and pretty good (haven't tried it).
Best Utility : 1Password, Daisy Disk are great paid utilities. Coconut Battery, Caffene, Dropbox are all great free apps.
Best Torrent client: Transmission and uTorrent are good.

As far as must have (paid) apps, 1Password definitely makes the list, especially if you have an iPhone/iPod touch. Everything else really depends on what you want to do with your machine.
 
agentphish

agentphish

macrumors 65816
Sep 7, 2004
1,140
0
TheJing said:
SMC Fan Control
Coconut Battery
Click to expand...

NO to SMC Fan Control. There's NO reason you need it and I've seen it cause issues on various mac models. Apple designs temp sensors for a reason. They help to control the fans.

Coconut battery, while a nice GUI, is not needed because you can get battery info from System Profiler. It also doesn't actually do anything for you, so i'm not sure why it's a must have.

Torrent client - Transmission. Hands down

Video Player - VLC/Quicktime w/ Perian plugin

Ripper - Handbrake or RipIt

Cloud Files - SugarSync (only better than dropbox because 5gb free instead of 2 though I think privacy policy is nicer too.)

For Windows - Parallels or Bootcamp. Latest version of Parallels is shown to have better performance than VMWare.

Graphics - Pixelmator if you don't need to pay ridiculous amounts for Adobe.

I also suggest, don't install Flash from adobe.com. Get Chrome and use it for when you need flash content and Safari for when you don't.

Use iCloud if you have an iDevice. Learn to love iPhoto, aperture if you're more into pro stuff.

I also use XLD for music conversion if you deal with any lossless files.
 
X

Xikum

macrumors 6502
Oct 19, 2011
281
1
agentphish said:
NO to SMC Fan Control. There's NO reason you need it and I've seen it cause issues on various mac models. Apple designs temp sensors for a reason. They help to control the fans.

Coconut battery, while a nice GUI, is not needed because you can get battery info from System Profiler. It also doesn't actually do anything for you, so i'm not sure why it's a must have.

Torrent client - Transmission. Hands down

Video Player - VLC/Quicktime w/ Perian plugin

Ripper - Handbrake or RipIt

Cloud Files - SugarSync (only better than dropbox because 5gb free instead of 2 though I think privacy policy is nicer too.)

For Windows - Parallels or Bootcamp. Latest version of Parallels is shown to have better performance than VMWare.

Graphics - Pixelmator if you don't need to pay ridiculous amounts for Adobe.

I also suggest, don't install Flash from adobe.com. Get Chrome and use it for when you need flash content and Safari for when you don't.

Use iCloud if you have an iDevice. Learn to love iPhoto, aperture if you're more into pro stuff.

I also use XLD for music conversion if you deal with any lossless files.
Click to expand...

I don't see the problem with SMCFanControl. I use it all the time on my iMac, because Apple seem to have the fans only kick in when the machine is a second away from bursting into flames. If I'm watching a movie, the GPU can hit 80C, and the fans will still be going at 900 rpm. Equally, I've seen my hard drive fans on minimum when the HDD is at 50C.

SMCFanControl is a good program for those of us who are a little more paranoid ;).
 
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