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What good apps can I download?

S

Shisha

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 10, 2010
24
0
Hey all,

I'm not an active user here but just a few days ago I purchased I my first ever Mac (A Macbook Pro Retina 13"). The appstore is great and I'd love to know what great apps you guys use on a daily basis and what for. I am a designer by profession by the way but this doesn't effect the types of app I'm looking for as I'm quite clued up in that are.

Look forward to hearing your replies.
 
Finding apps begins with understanding what tasks you intend to use your computer for. While an app may be ideal for someone else, it may have no value for you. If you describe the tasks you want to do, people can recommend apps to accomplish those tasks.

This just two of dozens of existing threads on best/favorite/recommended apps:

[url=https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1809239/[/url]
 
Shisha said:
quite rude, but anyway.
Click to expand...
How could you consider anything I said rude? You asked a question and I gave you an informed, appropriate answer, including taking the time to find other threads you can use as a reference. If that's how you respond when people try to help you, you won't get far in this forum.
 
My Top 5 Apps - No Particular Order

1. Memory Clean - Allows you to free up ram manually when things get laggy

2. Caffeine - Allows you to keep your display on and your mac wont go to sleep when you're doing something and need it to stay on for a while.

3. Evernote - Cloud based note app that lets you create notes and access them on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad/iPod

4. DocWallet - Password protect documents and files that you wouldn't want anyone to get ahold of.

5. Copy Cloud - Dropbox alternative that gives you 15GB free
 
Shisha said:
quite rude, but anyway.
Click to expand...

A quite uncalled-for and inappropriate response. GGJstudios is one of the most helpful and knowledgable people on this forum. Your original question was so vague and general that it is simply impossible to answer. A little like asking "Hey guys, I just got a car. What can I do with it?"
 
baidoc said:
MacKeeper is a must-have app in my opinion. You should try it, to keep your mac clean :)
Click to expand...
This is terrible and irresponsible advice. Do NOT install MacKeeper if you value the stability of your computer.

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.
 
The non-Apple apps I use everyday...

Dropbox - I can't live without it.
Evernote - Flawless syncing of note with iPhone and iPad.
MS Office - I know, i know...
Firefox - The Swiss Army knife of browsers... cuz Safari just isn't enough sometimes.
 
Last edited:
  • I like BetterSnapTool for window management. It allows to instantly position a window to take up half or a quarter of the screen. It has extra customizations but this is what I mainly use it for.
  • Chrome for those sites that insist on using flash. It also has much better add ons than Safari.
  • Keka to create zip files without the stupid resource forks.
  • Flux to rest my eyes once the sun goes down.
  • TextWrangler for big text files. It also can save the file in Windows format so it is good for cross-compatibility. It also removes all formatting so I use it to remove formatting when copying and pasting somewhere else.
  • Flycut for remembering more than one clipboard item. Sometimes useful.
  • VLC for media. Also allows keyboard navigation for skipping ahead and increase playback speed for going through a slow podcast.
  • Google Drive to keep my documents always backed up. The sharing features and group document editing are also nice.
 
What I consider must-have apps for Mac:

1. ZoomBySite - Safari extension, if you intend to use this browser. (free)
2. Firefox - one of the best browsers out there. (free)
3. 1 Click DVD Creator - to make home DVDs from almost any file format. (free)
4. AppCleaner - to fully uninstall apps, dragging to Trash is not enough. (free)
5. EasyFind - to find files on your Mac, very useful, you will see. (free)
6. HandBreak - to convert files to different formats. (free)
7. Burn - burn different files to CD and DVD. (free)
8. Microsoft Office - no comment needed. (paid)
9. PhotoScape X - image browser and editor. (free)
10. VLC Media Player - universal media player (movies etc.). (free)
11. Keeper - password keeper. (paid)
12. TheUnarchiver - to unzip, unrar etc. files. (free)
 
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Some of my favorite third-party apps on the Mac include:

  • Firefox
  • Tweetbot
  • Evernote
  • StoryMill
  • VMWare Fusion
  • YNAB (You Need A Budget)
  • TrueCrypt
  • TeamViewer
  • Microsoft Office for Mac
 
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