Purchased a new mac- Upkeep and such

[alkora]

Hey guys... Well after a long time of eyeing a mac and finally purchasing one on a whim (at least thats what i'm telling my gf so she isn't as angry...) I want to know what I need to do for upkeep.

I bought the upper end 15" MBP and want to know how to keep it in the best shape over time. How should I protect the battery to keep it in great shape the longest? What kind of malware/bad stuff should i be aware of in trying to keep the OS as clean as possible? Best measures for keeping the case in good condition?

Is there any software or widgets that are a "must have"? I'm looking to get the best experience out of my mac and am looking to you guys to help me out with that. I did do a short search (didn't look too far back in the records) on upkeep for macs, and didn't find anything too important and I figured I would ask it here. Any help would be appreciated.

To give you an Idea of what I'm going to use my mac for is basically digital composition in film as well as some 3D work.... The main apps I'm going to use that I don't know already are shake and motion (provided I get to know them good enough to do what I want) and I have extensive experience in Premiere, After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop, Encore, and Audition.... (for those of u out there that know this... what is the closest equivalent to Audition for the mac?)

Thank you and have a great day.

Alkora

 

[mad jew]

Not much really. You don't need to worry about malware, viruses and spyware. You will probably want to calibrate your battery straight away, and then again every month or so. You may also want to repair permissions in Disk Utility (Utilities folder) after app installs, but this really is very option. Welcome to Macs.

 

[EricNau]

For battery info, check out this site ...also make sure you calibrate your battery.

As for malware, no need to worry... They isn't any!

You also don't have to worry about defragmenting your drive (or any other typical PC maintenance).

Buy a nice case to protect the MBP, especially if you'll be carrying it around a lot.

As for cool widgets, I love miniStat2, although it does cost $5 (money very well spent IMO).

Enjoy your new Mac!

 

[Pancake]

I like Coconut Battery for keeping an eye on the status of your battery.

VLC is a great media player.

ffmpegx is great for convert video files.

I reccomend either Toast or Dragon BUrn for disk burning.

Delisious Library is just cool, you got to check it out.

That is all I can think of now. World of Warcraft is pretty usefull as well.

As for Audition, I don't know too much about it, but Pro Tools is great for the sound work I've done. Adobe is making their version of their Creative Suite for the Mac as well as PC.

 

[alkora]

Thanks guys. I'm glad to hear there is no malware or viruses.... didn't I hear something about a virus checker out there or something for a mac? maybe i'm mistaken....


And about network security, is OSX's firewall good enough? Opinions?

 

[blackstone]

Thanks guys. I'm glad to hear there is no malware or viruses.... didn't I hear something about a virus checker out there or something for a mac? maybe i'm mistaken....


And about network security, is OSX's firewall good enough? Opinions?

Antivirus software exists, although there is really only one piece of in-the-wild malware for OS X right now -- so it's mostly a waste of money and CPU cycles to install antivirus software right now. If you just set Safari not to auto-open "safe" files after downloading, set up a separate administrator account, and do most of your work as a regular user, then you will be extremely safe from malware.

And yes, the built-in firewall is quite good. The underpinnings for the OS X firewall are one of the major Unix firewalls (ipfw, I think), which is a very solid product. If you want to do really fancy stuff with firewall settings, you may want to install a more powerful/flexible interface for it, but there's no need for that in most circumstances.

 

[Mac'Mo]

For battery info, check out this site ...also make sure you calibrate your battery.

As for malware, no need to worry... They isn't any!

You also don't have to worry about defragmenting your drive (or any other typical PC maintenance).

Buy a nice case to protect the MBP, especially if you'll be carrying it around a lot.

As for cool widgets, I love miniStat2, although it does cost $5 (money very well spent IMO).

Enjoy your new Mac!

I like Coconut Battery for keeping an eye on the status of your battery.

VLC is a great media player.

ffmpegx is great for convert video files.

I reccomend either Toast or Dragon BUrn for disk burning.

Delisious Library is just cool, you got to check it out.

That is all I can think of now. World of Warcraft is pretty usefull as well.

As for Audition, I don't know too much about it, but Pro Tools is great for the sound work I've done. Adobe is making their version of their Creative Suite for the Mac as well as PC.

yeah thats a good site, i use ministat2 and coconut batter and they're great little apps/widgets