new to mac

[liquidxray]

hey mac people
just purchased a ibook...

looking at the itunes and i this and that
just wondering what are some of the alternatives
like winamp is to window mediaplayer to PCs

so what are the alternative for

mp3 players
movie players

thank you

 

[advres]

hey mac people
just purchased a ibook...

looking at the itunes and i this and that
just wondering what are some of the alternatives
like winamp is to window mediaplayer to PCs

so what are the alternative for

mp3 players
movie players

thank you

you are new to mac so I forgive you but why bother with anything else besides iTunes?

If you find movie files you can't play on your mac go to versiontracker.com and download an application called VLC. It plays pretty much everything. Versiontracker is also a great source for freeware and shareware apps for your mac. Just put in OSX for the operating system type and search for whatever you want. Example: Mp3 players, p2p, utilities, video players, screen savers, etc...

BTY... congrats to changing over from the dark side

 

[RonJ83]

itunes is probably the greatest music player out there now. as for movie players you can download VLC as mentioned above, you can also download Windows Media Player @ MS.com.

 

[OryHara]

Yeah, itunes is the best mp3 player out there, mac or pc. Even my die hard mac-hating "friends" admit to using itunes, and you know they've tried to to find a better alternative.

 

[Dr. Dastardly]

I was like you when I bought my first Mac mainly because I wasn't use to having just about every piece of software I ever needed or wanted already preloaded on my machine. If you search around and play with your iBook a little bit more you will notice all the goodies it actually comes with and all the great alternatives you have already. I cant immagine using anything besides iTunes for music. iPhoto pretty much replaced Adobe Photo Album for me. Quicktime is a great little media player, I also went to version tracker and downloaded VLC and Windows Media Player (the only reason I downloaded WMP was because I like to shop at BN.com for my music). I don't use iMovie or iDVD that much but thats only because I don't have anytype of video camera. I like normal picture cameras alot better. But others in my family swear by it and watching the ease of use in it is just brillant.

There are also other stuff you might not even know you have or considered getting until you need it. WinZip for example when I grabbed a zip file and needed to open it. I thought I had to find some sort of OSX version to open it, but low and behold there is a program called Stuffit preloaded on OSX that does it all for you. And its ALOT better than WinZip in my opinion.

Anyway exploring is the best way to learn about OSX and finding what you have and what you need. Also I cannot recommend "The Missing Manuel for OSX" enough for any new user. It will give you a ton of info that some of even the more seasoned MAc users may not know.

 

[Dr. Dastardly]

Oh yeah and try to beat chess, its soooo easy.

 

[igucl]

Oh yeah and try to beat chess, its soooo easy.

It keeps us honest.

 

[HiRez]

WinZip for example when I grabbed a zip file and needed to open it. I thought I had to find some sort of OSX version to open it, but low and behold there is a program called Stuffit preloaded on OSX that does it all for you. And its ALOT better than WinZip in my opinion.

Actually .zip compression/decompression is built right into Mac OS X now. Select one or more files and the from the Finder's File menu, select Create Archive... and it'll zip it for you. Just double-click on it to unzip. Works great, and I've moved away from using Stuffit since not only is .zip Windows-compatible (without installing the Windows Stuffit engine), it's also significantly faster than Stuffit, almost 10x faster for some large archives I had containing movies, images, and other files. I keep Stuffit around because you still find files for download that are stuffed, but I never create Stuffit archives anymore. Stuffit was a great, groundbreaking product 10 years ago but in recent years it's become a flakey, bloated mess IMHO. I hope it dies a fast death.

 

[Mechcozmo]

"Welcome to the light side of computers."

[All are built in unless otherwise noted]

iTunes for your music needs.

Quicktime does quite a few movie formats.

VLC [not built in] is great for the format that Quicktime cannot handle. I don't like the interface, rather hard to get used to, but it plays DivX files, and other random things you find.

Toast Titanium [Not built in] is great for everything you can't burn via the Finder. You can burn from disc images, burn video CDs, (it even comes with a plug in for iMovie so that you can encode video at the right quality!), and burn in all kinds of formats. It's really nice. You can burn DVDs, too. I have version 5 and don't see any reason to upgrade to version 6. Just make sure that to make it work under Panther that you download the update. (free)

MacStumbler [not included] Detects wireless networks. Allows you to, uh, borrow wifi wherever you go.

iTattle [not included] Tells you everything about your network connection that you'd ever want.

Check here for more OS X apps. There are quite a few threads on this!