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Must have apps for the Retina Macbook Pro?

B

bowlman23

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 20, 2007
157
0
Hey everyone,

Finally picked up my rMBP and even lucked out and got a Samsung screen. Anyway, I was wondering what apps do you consider "must have" for your MBP? Obviously, there's the iLife suite, and Office for Mac, but I was wondering what programs you put on your rMBPs (or cMBP) when you get a new computer?
 
bowlman23 said:
Obviously, there's the iLife suite, and Office for Mac,
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Why obviously? I almost always never use any of the iLife applications unless I test something for others to answer in an appropriate thread and MS Office is rarely used too.

but I was wondering what programs you put on your rMBPs (or cMBP) when you get a new computer?
Click to expand...
Alfred and CarbonCopyCloner, then iStat Menus, then gfxCardStatus and then some others.
 
bowlman23 said:
Hey everyone,

Finally picked up my rMBP and even lucked out and got a Samsung screen. Anyway, I was wondering what apps do you consider "must have" for your MBP? Obviously, there's the iLife suite, and Office for Mac, but I was wondering what programs you put on your rMBPs (or cMBP) when you get a new computer?
Click to expand...
This may be useful, especially the Need application suggestions? Look here: section of the first link:

 
bowlman23 said:
Hey everyone,

Finally picked up my rMBP and even lucked out and got a Samsung screen. Anyway, I was wondering what apps do you consider "must have" for your MBP? Obviously, there's the iLife suite, and Office for Mac, but I was wondering what programs you put on your rMBPs (or cMBP) when you get a new computer?
Click to expand...

Hey,

Here is quick list (there's many more but these are right off the top of my head):
- All included apps (iTunes, Safari, Stickies, etc.)
- Mozilla Firefox
- Microsoft Office
- Grooveshark
- VMware Fusion
- Skype
- Ankidroid (it's a spaced repetition flashcard app; good for studying)
- All my games (Steam, WoW, COD, Battlefield, Minecraft, etc.)
 
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I NEED all of these!

Alfred, Utorrent, Unison, Bettertouchtool, Daisydisk, DashExpander, Firefox, Handbrake, Logmein, and Weather HD.

These apps go on all of my macs. I can't live without them!
 
Congratulations on your new rMBP it is a awesome computer.

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)
 
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Must have apps for the Retina Macbook Pro?

Hey, just got a 15" retina macbook pro. What are some of the must have apps that can improve the computers overall performance or help sustain its battery life? Also looking for any apps that can help with productivity and programming..

Thanks
 
I have WinZip, office 365, pages, Roxio toast, vlc player, and text wrangler.
 
ai3crossover said:
Hey, just got a 15" retina macbook pro. What are some of the must have apps that can improve the computers overall performance or help sustain its battery life? Also looking for any apps that can help with productivity and programming..

Thanks
Click to expand...

No apps are really going to help the performance of the machine. It's already good enough. But apps for productivity would depend on what you need to get done. Me personally, I'm a writer so there would be certain writing apps I would use.
 
tgi said:
Wow. Anyone else have any useful suggestions?
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Even if in his post it looked like he was just trolling, it's true. No apps are needed to help with performance or battery life under OSX. Don't start installing Ccleaner, Mac Keeper and all that crap. You don't need it. It is not a Windows PC.
 
I would recommend Disk Inventory X (drill down inside you hard drive or SSD to find out which files are taking a lot of space and get rid of the junk you don't need), Dropbox, Evernote, Flip4Mac (if you want to watch WMV files), Onyx (to keep your Mac clean and lean), VLC, Wunderlist (to-do list App).
 
dastinger said:
Even if in his post it looked like he was just trolling, it's true. No apps are needed to help with performance or battery life under OSX. Don't start installing Ccleaner, Mac Keeper and all that crap. You don't need it. It is not a Windows PC.
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You are wrong, CCleaner is like a one-stop-shop for deleting a load of crap and cached stuff you don't need. It works and works well. As does OnyX.

Obviously utilities like those two will not do anything for battery life, but they do exactly what they claim to do, and they do it well. They are also free so it's a no brainer.
 
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Steve121178 said:
You are wrong, CCleaner is like a one-stop-shop for deleting a load of crap and cached stuff you don't need. It work and works well. As does OnyX.

Obviously utilities like those two will not do anything for battery life, but they do exactly what they claim to do, and they do it well. They are also free so it's a no brainer.
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Do they tell you exactly what you don't need? Do you have to know exactly what you don't need having a ton of files to pick from? Because you are slowing down your system deleting caches that may be needed for example.. what harm does it make to let OSX do it's job?

Plus, wanting to do such a thing on a powerhouse machine like the rMBP... what for? Would you really feel a difference from deleting caches on such a machine? I don't think so..
 
Redwyvern said:
Alfred, Utorrent, Unison, Bettertouchtool, Daisydisk, DashExpander, Firefox, Handbrake, Logmein, and Weather HD.

These apps go on all of my macs. I can't live without them!
Click to expand...

surely you have to be kidding us all ;)
Firefox - maybe - at a pinch
but the rest??
pfft

"what's the world coming to - it is the end of civilisation as we know it. children are being disobedient to parents and everyone's writing a book."
Marcus Tullius Cicero
 
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dastinger said:
Do they tell you exactly what you don't need? Do you have to know exactly what you don't need having a ton of files to pick from? Because you are slowing down your system deleting caches that may be needed for example.. what harm does it make to let OSX do it's job?

Plus, wanting to do such a thing on a powerhouse machine like the rMBP... what for? Would you really feel a difference from deleting caches on such a machine? I don't think so..
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The software gives you a choice of what to delete. It normally populates browser cache, temporary files & trash by default, it's then down to you to decide what else you would like to get rid of.

CCleaner on Mac is a dumbed down version compared to the Windows version but it's still very useful.

As for the 'power house' rMBP, it will slow down as the drive gets full of crap and traces of old deleted/upgraded applications remain etc. Every machine suffers from this, be it one running Windows, OS X, Linux or whatever.

It's quite ignorant to think that your brand new powerful machine won't slow down over time. Some of the utilities mentioned in this thread simply help keep the machine running as optimised as possible. And remember, OS X generally looks after OS X, it won't do jack for all your apps and data apart from some limited automated optimisation.

What people do not need to do is pay money for apps that take over the maintenance of your machine by running automated tasks, as that is a waste of money.
 
halledise said:
surely you have to be kidding us all ;)
Firefox - maybe - at a pinch
but the rest??
Click to expand...
Precisely the problem with these threads. Must have is always highly subjective. The OP was asking for suggestions and the post you're replying to did just that. Post your list if you have a problem with the lists of others.
 
ai3crossover said:
Hey, just got a 15" retina macbook pro. What are some of the must have apps that can improve the computers overall performance or help sustain its battery life?
Click to expand...
There are many factors that impact your battery life. See the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link for details, including tips on how to maximize your battery life.
​
The link below should answer most, if not all, of your battery/charging questions. If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend you take the time to read it. If you're having performance issues, this may help:
Steve121178 said:
You are wrong, CCleaner is like a one-stop-shop for deleting a load of crap and cached stuff you don't need.
Click to expand...
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. 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.
Steve121178 said:
As for the 'power house' rMBP, it will slow down as the drive gets full of crap and traces of old deleted/upgraded applications remain etc.
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False. A Mac will not slow down because there are traces of apps stored on the drive. As already stated, having things stored on the drive has absolutely no effect on performance, unless the drive is almost out of free space. That is one of the myths told by the sellers of such apps.

As for deleting app-related files, app removal software doesn't do a thorough job of finding and removing files/folders related to deleted apps. For more information, read this and this. If you just want to delete the app, drag the .app file to the trash. No other software needed. If you want to completely remove all associated files/folders, no removal apps will do the job.
​
The most effective method for complete app removal is manual deletion:
 
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