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What cool things do you do with your Mac? Looking for inspiration

G

guvna

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 11, 2011
17
0
I am about to replace my 4 year old :apple: with a shiny new Macbook Pro. An amazing machine. Looking forward to getting my hands on it.

Only thing is.. what am I going to use it for? How am I going to make the most of all this power? Facebook. Twitter. General Internet. College Work... and that is probably about all I do on a computer based on my current habits!

I want to have a reason for sitting at my computer.. I want to actually do something productive with my spare time.

What do you use your Mac for? What are those guys staring at their Mac's in Starbucks doing? Just looking for ideas..
 
Hmmmm let's see......

Manage Finances w/Quicken
Keep a Journal w/DayOne
work with Excel & Numbers Spreadsheets
Write things with Pages and Word.
-- Thinking about writing a book about all the stupid things guests at Disney World do.
Create PowerPoint and KeyNote presentations
Play Solitaire
make Greeting Cards
Manage my Calendar
manage my tasks with OmniFocus
Keep track of my Photography group membership w/Bento4
Edit Photos
Keep my iPad and iPhone synced with iTunes
 
If you want coolness, look no further.

I use:
gotomypc to connect to my work computer
Microsoft's RDP client to connect to my work serveres
VMware/QuickBooks to manage my church's finances
Word/Excel for helping with reports of said finances (both windows office and mac office).
Rapidweaver for some light web dev.
Photoshop to make my cool sig
mail.app for email
ical to make sure I don't miss anything
safari because I love this place :p

There you have it :D
 
Well I suppose I could try to learn how to code.. that could be productive
 
Love letters

Serving customers:
  • graphics with Illustrator and GraphicConvertor
  • desktop publishing with Framemaker (in a Windows VM) and Word; I love typography
  • database programming with 4D
  • creating tutorials and technical support communication in Gmail
  • updating web sites in Dreamweaver and Coda

Working on community projects that inspire me (libertarian stuff, "Reinventing the Future of Freedom"), using:
  • OmniOutliner
  • Google Sites
  • Gmail

Watching Movies, especially classic film noirs.
 
guvna said:
What are those guys staring at their Mac's in Starbucks doing? Just looking for ideas..
Click to expand...

They're doing exactly what you aspired to be doing when you made the decision to buy a macbook. Looking "cool" while actually doing nothing.
I like coffee shops too, but any real work is done in an office. Any one of those people sitting in some overrated cafe on their macbooks with their lattes are completely aware of what they're doing and desperately hoping that someone watches them and basks in their apple-shaped beam of coolness.
losers
 
duncanbrodie1 said:
They're doing exactly what you aspired to be doing when you made the decision to buy a macbook. Looking "cool" while actually doing nothing.
I like coffee shops too, but any real work is done in an office. Any one of those people sitting in some overrated cafe on their macbooks with their lattes are completely aware of what they're doing and desperately hoping that someone watches them and basks in their apple-shaped beam of coolness.
losers
Click to expand...

I vehemently disagree. This is nothing but bad-mouthing cool people who sit around in coffee shops with macbooks.

I assert that they are actually checking their favorite webpages and playing Farmville. So what if they could do it on a netbook for 1/5th the price? They look cool doing it.
 
If you don't want to spend a lot of extra money, there are programs like the Gimp and Inkscape which do a good job approximating Adobe programs and allow you to produce some sharp stuff. If you have a graphics card in your MBP you'll have enough horsepower to edit video, but do you actually have video to edit?
 
Thats the whole thing! What could be so important and interesting that you need to bring your Macbook to a coffe shop and sit there for 4/5 hours?

These people can't all the posing! The ones doing the posing are the guys with the iPads these days.
 
guvna said:
Thats the whole thing! What could be so important and interesting that you need to bring your Macbook to a coffe shop and sit there for 4/5 hours?
Click to expand...
They're either working or surfing and using the coffee shops' free wifi.
 
Spaces to have many, many applications open at once.
Expose to use with windows (all open spaces) and open windows in that space for fast movement.
Myriad of keyboard commands along with powerful applications to improve productivity.
Alfred to use in place of spotlight to find and open ANYTHING on the computer.

With the various setup I have and the programs I have installed, I can move any file, window, open any folder, document, search anywhere, do anything from ANY screen. ALl under 3 seconds.

^If you put enough time and effort into fine tuning your machine, it will be so amazingly powerful you won't know what to do.
 
Download Pixelmator from the Mac App Store. The program is so beautiful that you'll want to learn image editing and graphical creation, and not nearly as cumbersome to learn as PS. It's a decent replacement for PS, to a certain extent.

Their website (www.pixelmator.com) has some basic tutorials that'll kick start you right into action. If you want to be creative, this is it.
 
Badbaw said:
Download Pixelmator from the Mac App Store. The program is so beautiful that you'll want to learn image editing and graphical creation, and not nearly as cumbersome to learn as PS. It's a decent replacement for PS, to a certain extent.

Their website (www.pixelmator.com) has some basic tutorials that'll kick start you right into action. If you want to be creative, this is it.
Click to expand...

I would suggest trying Aperture as well if you're spending some money; very powerful and has a TON of editing features along with great organizational features. I got it 50 percent for the organization, 50 percent editing.
 
I'm a project junkie so I'm always trying to create something.

-Graphic Art/Portraits using either Sketchbook Pro or Illustrator CS5.
-Taking photos with my Lumix GF2 and editing through Aperture 3.
-Creating fun cheesy movies with friends and cousins using Final Cut Express/Audacity/Montage Screen writing software.
-Manage calender.
-Play games (Killing Floor, Trine, Amnesia, Machinarium, etc).
-Sort projects and important docs in Evernote.
 
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