New to Mac need advice...please

[hectrobeing]

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hi guys

I'm awfully new to mac. My iMac 3.06ghz is on it's way from where ever and should be arriving next week... Extremely excited as you can imagine...for the moment I'd like to find out if there is any useful software in general I need?

 

[MacDawg]

You might want to give us an idea of what you will be doing

MS Office 2008 is receiving less than stellar reviews
Try iWork or NeoOffice (free)... or free word processors like Bean or AbiWord

For graphics...
GraphicConverter is useful and inexpensive
Seashore is free
Skitch is free
Paintbrush is free
The Gimp is very powerful and free

Firefox is an alternative to Safari if you like

VLC for media

Beyond that, we need to know your needs and what you will be doing

Woof, Woof - Dawg

 

[Apple Ink]

Firstly.... Welcome to the Brotherhood!

MacDawg has covered most of it! VLC Medial Player (http://www.videolan,org)

For any thing else, your Mac comes with some great utilities - TextEdit for general purpose Word Processing, Disk Utility for managing your HDDs and Optical Media, inbuilt DVD/CD writer, iTunes (duh), Time Machine for backing up to an xHDD (Please Backup), suite of iLife - iPhoto: excellent non pro photo managing app, iMovie: brilliant movie importing and editing app, iDVD: creating gorgeous DVD with inbuilt themes, iWeb: producing smooth websites (best works with MMe)! iCal and AddressBook for managing your calendars and contacts....... <the list goes on>

Feel free to ask.... thats what this forum is for!

 

[galstaph]

It all depends on what you want to do, but IMHO: (do a google [or cuil if your into the newest of the new] search for these, they are relatively easy to find)
onyx is nice to have (utility maintenance all-in-one)
iwork is a bonus
office is useful but iwork can do the same thing (pages is sooo much better for layout and keynote is superior (in most respects) to ppt)
toast is a must for burning software
quicksilver might interest you
flip4mac is good if you watch wmv
a52codec (and divx) is essential to watch ac3 encoded avi files
parallels/vmware for running windows (again if your into that sort of thing)
firefox 3 (or safari 4)
little snitch is a nice handy app to see what is going on program -> net wise
if you plan to rip programs off your install disc, get pacifist
if you have an ipod already, get senuti (sp?) it will access and pull off songs
stuffit and unrarx for compression (archive) file handling
and vlc (videolan) will play most anything quicktime won't

Other than these your mac is pretty much ready to go out of the box
I use others, but I also do design/rendering work so it might not be your bag.

Hope this helps

 

[hectrobeing]

wow... that was quick...sorry a bit slow...away from my laptop...just got edge on iPhone...thank you for the info....as for now mainly video editing and playing around with photos to publish...but I almost imagine that iLife will help me out...finally more often than not watching tv shows...can't wait for Heroes...LOL

 

[galstaph]

for video editing final cut or idvd i think (I've made movies in idvd, but not too much editing)
for photos I use photoshop and illustrator CS3

 

[hectrobeing]

this is great place to be...all my friends just don't understand...why in gods name I did spend all that cash on a computer...I check this forum and website daily for updates and information......thank you guys for all the information...for now I just WANT the UPS person to ring the bell and ask me to sign here...cheers

 

[Apple Ink]

iPhoto is more like a cataloging app rather than much of editing, Photoshop is of course brilliant and Im sure you'll simply love its Mac avatar.

Movie Editing is a flick of a finger in iMovie. Final Cut is beyond brilliance but expensive and probably a waste for you....
iDVD is by far the best DVD creation software with some mind boggling themes bested only by Final Cut suite!.... you'll enjoy your Mac like hell!