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Essential downloads for new Mac user?

C

Cadence

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 17, 2004
56
0
Los Angeles, CA
I bought my first Mac since owning a PowerPC 7500 around 10 years ago! Picked up a G5 dual 2.0 ghz today!

Anyone have a list of absolute essential software downloads for an excited Mac Newbie? I'm interested in ANY recommendations, anything you may have found helpful and use daily!
thanks!
-brian
 
There's been many threads about this, so you could probably search in the archives to get a lot. Off the top of my head:
Launchbar - keyboard shortcuts to most files and applications on your hard drive
SubEthaEdit - great plain text editor with syntax highlighting
Transmit - the best FTP if you want a GUI
MacJanitor - for all those system maintenance tasks that don't get done
SoundStudio - audio file recording and editing app
NetNewsWire Lite- RSS
Adium or Proteus - multiprotocol chatting

Search macupdate to download these.
macupdate.com
 
Duff-Man says....as said above - search as there have been lots of threads just like this. But if you really must start your own, at least tell us what you will be doing with your great new Mac (ie - graphics, audio, gaming, whatever your specific interests are) are that will give us a better idea of what apps may be of interest to you...oh yeah!
 
• MacJanitor (runs housekeeping routines – Mac ones, not doing the ironing unfortunately)
• Carbon Copy Cloner (for disk cloning)
• Silverkeeper (backup utility)
• Snood (stoopid but addictive little game)
 
Cadence said:
I bought my first Mac since owning a PowerPC 7500 around 10 years ago! Picked up a G5 dual 2.0 ghz today!

Anyone have a list of absolute essential software downloads for an excited Mac Newbie? I'm interested in ANY recommendations, anything you may have found helpful and use daily!
thanks!
-brian
Click to expand...

Of the top of my head, these are the apps I think are most handy (Free or shareware apps):

Safari Enhancer - a must
VLC - the best video app out there, pretty much plays everything, including hd
Transmit - awesome ftp app.
ChitChat or Charla - a must if you ever do Yahoo chat.
Yahoo Messenger
TinkerTool - a bunch of nifty customization tools
Watson - strips out the web, just leaves the whitemeat
mlMac - p2p, does gnutella, fasttrack, bittorrent, etc.
x11

Fun apps:

TransparentDock - pretty selfexplanatory
iPulse - groovy activity monitor
Konfabulator - does all sorts of things...like desk accessories.

Watson is great btw. Unfortunately, they will be giving up Mac support soon. And it looks like Konfabulator might be next.
 
Quicksilver - it takes an inventory of all of your applications and allows you to access them via the keybord. You hit Ctrl-space and then type the name of the program, or a partial name of the program and it brings up the icon. I've found this program to be essential, especially, when I'm trying to open several applications very quickly.
 
Onyx is a pretty fine app like macjanitor

X Resource Graph is a nice system monitoring tool

Colloquy is a good irc program

Firefox is a good backup browser for when safari has trouble

VLC as mentioned

OSX planet as its just cool
 
wow, lots of great apps to check out. Sorry if I started yet another one of these threads without a search.

Duff-man, I'm primarily using the new G5 for video editing. I plan to upgrade my ram to 2 gigs from crucial and then pick up another 250gb sata drive dedicated to video files. Next big buy will be the 23" ACD...heft tag, but looks beautiful!

Thanks for all the recommendations guys, I'm going to be up all night checking these programs out!

-Brian

here's a pic of the new G5 still in the box...man, even the box is beautiful!
g5.jpg
 
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