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what to put on my mac?
- Thread starter Sc24evr
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I propose to see this list, it gathers the most popular free programs, and which choose to establish himself according to your needs.
what about not free stuff too? anything special you like to use personally? Do you guys use iworks for word processing?
Some favorites of mine not on the above list:
Steam (an excellent on-and-offline game source)
AppCleaner / AppZapper (two different programs that help to delete a selected app, and all associated plist files, caches, etc.)
CoconutBattery (a simple battery monitoring app)
smcFanControl (control fan speed on your Mac)
uTorrent / Transmission (BitTorrent clients)
Dropbox
Just to name a few.
Steam (an excellent on-and-offline game source)
AppCleaner / AppZapper (two different programs that help to delete a selected app, and all associated plist files, caches, etc.)
CoconutBattery (a simple battery monitoring app)
smcFanControl (control fan speed on your Mac)
uTorrent / Transmission (BitTorrent clients)
Dropbox
Just to name a few.
That depends on how you plan to use your new MacBook, and how much money you're willing to spend on new software.
These are often available in software bundles offered by MacUpdate and MacHeist. Both will occasionally offer $400-500 worth of software for around $50, and MacUpdate often advertises here on MacRumors.
For business productivity applications, you may want to check out OpenOffice, a free open-source suite that can read and save MS Office files as well as its own ODF format.
The iLife suite that comes with your MacBook shouldn't be overlooked, either. It's hard to beat "free", and they usually perform much better than similar third-party software bundled with many Windows PCs.
- For light to medium graphics manipulation, I highly recommend Pixelmator. It's near-Photoshop-quality photo editing without the Photoshop price.
- For audio editing, I use Sound Studio extensively. It's a great way to prepare a GarageBand (or other DAW software) mixdown for mastering.
- If for some reason you absolutely need to run a Windows-only program, there are virtual machine applications such as Parallels and VMWare Fusion.
- Do you hate having to remember username/password combos for various Websites? Take a look at 1Password, which gets mentioned a lot in these forums.
These are often available in software bundles offered by MacUpdate and MacHeist. Both will occasionally offer $400-500 worth of software for around $50, and MacUpdate often advertises here on MacRumors.
For business productivity applications, you may want to check out OpenOffice, a free open-source suite that can read and save MS Office files as well as its own ODF format.
The iLife suite that comes with your MacBook shouldn't be overlooked, either. It's hard to beat "free", and they usually perform much better than similar third-party software bundled with many Windows PCs.
Tweetie 2 - Great mac twitter app.
iWork - Word processing,Spreadsheets and Presentations
Aperture
iWork - Word processing,Spreadsheets and Presentations
Aperture
iWork is beautiful, honestly. I'd rather use it over Office any day (I still like MS Office though).
If you're not a fan of Safari, you can always try Firefox or Chrome for Mac.
Firefox is the slowest out of those 3 (in my experience) with Safari being the fastest and the one that crashes less. Chrome is still very good too if you want to change the look of the browser
. I use Safari and have Chrome as a back up on my Mac.You can also get Steam for Mac for gaming (even the basic MacBook runs alright with some games).
If you use MSN or Yahoo! Messenger, you can find special clients for them just for the Mac (Click here for MSN or Click here for Yahoo!). If you use AOL, it's works perfectly with iChat which comes with every Mac.
Every couple of days or so, Apple updates their "Downloads" page with new programs. You can get to it by going to: http://www.apple.com/downloads/ or by going
It's hard thinking of "must-have" software that doesn't actually come with the Mac
I payed for this program that I use quite often: http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/
It's a macro program, you can set various keys to do different things such as controlling applications, even executing apple scripts. The main uses I have for it is to control iTunes with my keyboard easily (play, pause, back, forward, activate and show current song, paste lyrics, and auto-search google for lyrics).
I've got other shortcuts setup including the running of a backup script, and the ability to quit all programs and shut down with the pressing of certain keys.
It's a macro program, you can set various keys to do different things such as controlling applications, even executing apple scripts. The main uses I have for it is to control iTunes with my keyboard easily (play, pause, back, forward, activate and show current song, paste lyrics, and auto-search google for lyrics).
I've got other shortcuts setup including the running of a backup script, and the ability to quit all programs and shut down with the pressing of certain keys.
BBEdit, FileZilla, FireFox+FireBug, NetBeans, Word, Photoshop and InDesign: to work with.
Transmission for torrents. VLC for movies.
Adium and skype for chat.
What will you do with it? I use my MBP for work (and a little play) so a lot of my stuff is productivity-centric.
iWork is a breath of fresh air compared to Office
1Password for all your password storing needs (with it's iPhone counterpart)
I use Billings for work (freelancing)
Toast
MobileMe is great if you take advantage of the features
I do video work so; Final Cut Studio, Photoshop, After Effects
Pixelmator is like the iWork of Photoshop
Steam - specifically Portal
Ommwriter - use headphones and write that novel!
Roller Coaster Tycoon
LogMeIn Free (worth the iPhone app)
and while it may seem blasphemous and dirty; you might consider a copy of Windows for Boot Camp. I never use the bloody thing except to run Flight Simulator.
iWork is a breath of fresh air compared to Office
1Password for all your password storing needs (with it's iPhone counterpart)
I use Billings for work (freelancing)
Toast
MobileMe is great if you take advantage of the features
I do video work so; Final Cut Studio, Photoshop, After Effects
Pixelmator is like the iWork of Photoshop
Steam - specifically Portal
Ommwriter - use headphones and write that novel!
Roller Coaster Tycoon
LogMeIn Free (worth the iPhone app)
and while it may seem blasphemous and dirty; you might consider a copy of Windows for Boot Camp. I never use the bloody thing except to run Flight Simulator.
Oh, I forgot to mention two I use often.
For DVD or video conversion to iTunes/iPod/AppleTV-friendly formats: Handbrake and the aforementioned VLC.
For DVD or video conversion to iTunes/iPod/AppleTV-friendly formats: Handbrake and the aforementioned VLC.
Absolutely the first things you should do is enable the firewall, then click the Software Update button and get all OSX updates, iLife updates, etc. Make sure you have or download the newest Safari, version 5.
Then get "Stuffit Expander" or whatever its called to decompress RAR files, etc, get VLC (plays lots of video/audio files), Flip4Mac (plays WMV files), Google Earth, also go to Adobe Flash website and get the latest update for that one (maybe your mac won't run as hot when on a Flash site).
Then get "Stuffit Expander" or whatever its called to decompress RAR files, etc, get VLC (plays lots of video/audio files), Flip4Mac (plays WMV files), Google Earth, also go to Adobe Flash website and get the latest update for that one (maybe your mac won't run as hot when on a Flash site).