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Just got my New MacBook Pro, Any essential applications?

O

Ohnevah

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 24, 2011
26
0
Hey guys,

You guys probably get a lot of this, but I was wondering, if you guys can list some essential applications or even useful applications that will help me put this MacBook Pro to full potential. I have the original 15" i5 Entry Level laptop from April 2010. I figure, I might need the graphics card for later usage.

My intentions is possibly video games, looking into Starcraft 2 and possibly using Logic Pro 9. Other than that I don't know what other applications to get. Any suggestion? Also is there a way I can add more ram to this laptop? If so, how and where. Sorry for sounding so much like a noob, because I am new the the Mac World. o_O Any suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks!
 
Some essential apps I have installed are:
Dropbox
Little Snitch
iStat Menus
Microsoft Office 2011
Handbrake
Carbon Copy Cloner
Perian
VLC Media Player
and of course all the apps that came with the machine (iLife, iTunes, Mail, Safari, etc)

Search for 8 GB 204 pin DDR3 1333 RAM from Newegg. Should be $90 tops, but I think you might be able to find some around $60.
 
VLC, Office, iWork (Pages's templates are pretty useful), Photoshop/Lightroom, Handbrake (video encoding), Firefox, Transmit (FTP program), Transmission/Vuze (torrents).
 
Well, how about telling us what else you would like to do? You can do the same things with a Mac then with a PC. If we know what you want to do, we can point you to the right program. otherwise, I could suggest a lot which has no value at all to you.

You can replace the RAM & HDD. It is fairly easy.
 
Essentials for me:

Google Chrome
Microsoft Office 2011 with Outlook
Little Snitch
Adobe Design suite
Dropbox
VLC Player
Transmission
Handbrake
 
These are my essential applications:

Dropbox
TinyGrab
Air Video Server (w/ respective mobile app)
Gmail Notifier
Better Touch Tool (for numerous reasons, not the least of which is the Windows 7 styled window snapping)
Shovebox (underrated little app)
VMWare Fusion (and with this also grab MacFUSE and NTFS-3G if you have a Boot Camp install planned)
Perian
Steermouse
Growl
Xmarks for Safari (and then the respective browser plugins for Chrome and Firefox)
Cyberduck
Textmate (I am a web designer and developer, but this is a great application for numerous reasons -- especially when coupled with textexpander)
Coda
VLC
TweetDeck
Toast Titanium
Handbrake
Office 2011
WriteRoom
MAMP Pro
Skype
PS3 Media Server (although I'm using this less and less nowadays)
Adobe Creative Suite
Final Cut Pro
Lightroom
 
1Password
Alfred
Chrome
Dropbox
The Unarchiver
VLC

Essentials that anyone can appreciate.
 
NewSc2 said:
Photoshop/Lightroom
Click to expand...
Photoshop and Lightroom are essential applications? Correct me if I'm wrong but most people don't randomly drop $1K on software unless they have a good reason... doesn't seem "essential" for most users to me.


True essentials... these are all free:

- gfxCardStatus (graphics card switching control)
- Temperature Monitor (monitor those toasty MBPs, over 80C is not ideal!)
- smcFanControl (keep things cool with more aggressive fan settings during load)
- VLC (open many kinds of video)
- Perian (open many of the same kinds, except in Quicktime)
- Flip4Mac (open Windows Media files in Quicktime)
- MenuMeters (view critical system info in the menubar)
- Chrome or Firefox (always good to have at least two browsers on-hand)
- Flash Player (Flash is still necessary for viewing some web content)
- iStumbler (or equivalent, good for monitoring wireless signal)
- TextWrangler (great for those more esoteric text editing problems)
- uTorrent (torrents are a common means of distribution, uTorrent is lightweight and fast)


Now.. as for paid/free applications that I personally find useful, but not as essential:

- Coda (scripting/web development)
- Colloquy (IRC)
- Evernote (note taking and clipping storage)
- iWork (many useful features between these three apps)
- Little Snitch (great tool for keeping a closer eye on your network traffic)
- NetNewsWire (RSS reader)
- Quicksilver (Launcher, sort of... basically liquid awesome)
- Transmit (FTP/S3/WebDav/SSH... awesome)
- xScope (unit measurement, loupe, etc... useful for designers mostly)
- Carbon Copy Cloner (finer backup control than Time Machine gives you)
- Cocktail (for various esoteric settings, if you don't feel like launching Terminal)
- Pacifist (package inspection and custom installs)
- The Unarchiver/UnRarX (extraction of many esoteric file types)
- coconutBattery (battery analysis)



I feel that these tools are all of some utility in general. I use most of them as I go about my day to day computing. The heavier and more expensive tools I use are decidedly specific-use, and do not warrant a place on this list.
 
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Thanks for the ideas people, one of my main focuses is actually making music, I have an axiom 25 in the way, one of the reason for logic pro, other than that I'm just a student, thus not much needed...but I will look up all those programs and search for that ram, really want to juice this up to 8gb and for 60-90 dollars that must be a steal...
 
Caffeine - free on the app store and great for skype/anytime you don't want the screen/mbp to go to sleep.
 
Quicksilver, great for launching apps, finding contacts, movies, or songs that are on your hard drive... etc.
 
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