Apple

Well I just took the dive and bought my first Mac. It's a 17" MacBook Pro with all the specs maxed (all of them!). I'm taking it to China for business but it will also become my main computer (sorry Onyx2). Anyway, I've installed a few things so far, Parallels, NeoOffice, Joost, Firefox and Thunderbird. Quicksilver, but I haven't really started to use that one. I'm just curious what killer apps Nekochanners have on their systems, or even what tweaks/utilities you always install right away on a fresh machine? Comming from IRIX/Windows I'm sure there are a bunch of great apps and tricks for the Mac that I'm totally ignorant of ... enlighten me.

I'd start by removing Firefox. It's shit on any platform IMO, OS X most of all. There's Camino if you really must have Gecko, but I've tried all the browsers on Mac and I prefer Safari by far. It doesn't get in the way and it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb.

Quicksilver I use almost constantly. It's very interesting..

Final Cut's pretty nice, but keep in mind I haven't been looking for ~4 years.

TextWrangler is a must in my opinion. Stock systems don't come with much in the way of ASCII editors.

Get a good FTP client.

RageX wrote: Comming from IRIX/Windows I'm sure there are a bunch of great apps and tricks for the Mac that I'm totally ignorant of ... enlighten me.

Confession time, I did shell out and give a cheque to Billy G for a copy of Office for Macintosh.

In addition to what others have recommended:
ffmpegX
QuickTime Pro
Toast
VLC
xACT

SAQ wrote: TextWrangler is a must in my opinion. Stock systems don't come with much in the way of ASCII editors.

...or make sure that you've installed X11 (it should be on your MacOS disks as an optional install package) and then download nedit for that good, old-fashioned, chewy, IRIX-flavored, text-editing goodness. Now available with special MacOS X Intel binary packaging!

Congrats, I made the jump to Apple a few years ago and can't imagine using anything else.

A few apps no-one else has mentioned:

- Adium for IM
- MacPorts for all the open source software.
- Emacs a must have http://emacs-app.sourceforge.net/
- Apple Developer Tools

Enjoy

..and, just for fun, a few screen savers might be cool.
http://seiryu.home.comcast.net/~seiryu/savers.html

josehill wrote:

SAQ wrote: TextWrangler is a must in my opinion. Stock systems don't come with much in the way of ASCII editors.

...or make sure that you've installed X11 (it should be on your MacOS disks as an optional install package) and then download nedit for that good, old-fashioned, chewy, IRIX-flavored, text-editing goodness. Now available with special MacOS X Intel binary packaging!

Yeah, I've got a bunch of X11 stuff, but Apple still makes the X progs feel like second-class citizens. Much like Classic apps.

Definitely make sure you install all the stuff from the OS disks- not sure what things are like on the newer releases, but for a while Apple had some essential utilities (for a UNIX-head) as optional installs, including X.

Make sure you put on the dev stuff, too.

Cyberduck for FTP/SFTP
Carbon Copy Cloner for Backup

Just came across a list of 16 Killer Apps to Put On Your Brand New Christmas Mac .

As a bonus, it has a picture of Alessandra Ambrosio (a Victoria's Secret model) with some Mac hardware.

congrats! i have the 15" model; nice machines.

like stated before, get x11 installed. then you can ssh into the onyx and display your windows on the mac. works better than vnc imo; more responsive.

a good place to pick up mac up hw and other stuff is otherworldcomputing. http://otherworldcomputing.com/ they have great prices and support is top-notch. load that mbp up with 4gb of ram for around $100. =)

802.11n really is much faster than g for large local file transfer too, especially if you plan on backing up to nas or such. apple's airport extreme gigabit also includes a usb port for disk drives and printers. fairly competitive price too compared with other n routers with the feature. i use time machine to backup to my nas, and it works great. if you have a spare external drive time machine is extremely functional and works very well.

kitsune wrote: a good place to pick up mac up hw and other stuff is otherworldcomputing. http://otherworldcomputing.com/ they have great prices and support is top-notch. load that mbp up with 4gb of ram for around $100. =)

I have to agree with that recommendation. I've been buying stuff from them for years, and they've always been great, including when I've had to return faulty hardware. They're not necessarily the cheapest, but they're usually close enough. (I don't know if they do any biz outside of the US & Canada.)

RageX wrote: ...Quicksilver, but I haven't really started to use that one...

QS is an instant love or hate affair (or not)

sometimes i love it sometimes i don't: it can be really addictive (kinda replacing the finder) it can also be very annoying (it adds one more interface layer)

noisetonepause wrote: ...There's Camino if you really must have Gecko..

ditto, faster one i ever tried

if u want to stick to WebKit browsers you can also check out Shiira and (if u are into web development) Sunrise

RageX wrote: or even what tweaks/utilities you always install right away on a fresh machine?

depends on what kind of work u want 2 do with your mac

my desktop macs are customized for visual (film/video/photo) work, my pb is split into 2 partitions (one for net/email/word processing/etc mumbojumbo, and another for visual work on the road).

if u r thinking of film/video editing, ignore all apple marketing bs stating that you can do it all with a default mac os x installation in just one partition... it will only end in tears

u can find some helpful tips on installing/managing/customizing mac os x from Mike's Mac OS X Deployment and Management Solutions and Setting up your OS X from scratch

there's also a Mac OS X FOSS directory with a dedicated Portable Apps section

fu wrote: depends on what kind of work u want 2 do with your mac

That pretty much sums it up; my applications/utilities of choice may not mesh with yours. Here are some of the items in my dock though - I try to keep it down to things I use on a fairly regular basis, but I admit I don't use the 3D apps as much as I'd like.

josehill wrote: Just came across a list of 16 Killer Apps to Put On Your Brand New Christmas Mac ...

I see Mozy @ #11... while free, keep in mind that their Mac client is still beta. I ended up uninstalling it since it was causing (almost constant) fastfan activity on my pb (MozyClient was messing with lookupd every second or so )

josehill wrote:

kitsune wrote: a good place to pick up mac up hw and other stuff is otherworldcomputing they have great prices and support is top-notch. load that mbp up with 4gb of ram for around $100. =)

I have to agree with that recommendation. I've been buying stuff from them for years, and they've always been great, including when I've had to return faulty hardware. They're not necessarily the cheapest, but they're usually close enough. (I don't know if they do any biz outside of the US & Canada.)

nice guys, i've been dealing with them for ages too

and yes they do ship out of the US

nekonoko wrote: ...Here are some of the items in my dock though...

that's a huge busy dock neko !

here's my minimal (net/email/wp/mumbojumbo partition) on my 12'' pb g4:

SupremeCmdr wrote: Congrats, I made the jump to Apple a few years ago and can't imagine using anything else.

A few apps no-one else has mentioned:

- Emacs a must have http://emacs-app.sourceforge.net/

Most OS X users at my place of work prefer Carbon Emacs:
http://homepage.mac.com/zenitani/emacs-e.html

Any reason why the Carbon Emacs is preferred?

SupremeCmdr wrote: Any reason why the Carbon Emacs is preferred?

I'd suspect that since Emacs originated elsewhere, porting even part of it to Objective-C and cocoa would increase the likely-hood of bugs and bloat.

If I wanted to write superfast code on the Mac, I'd use C, Carbon, maybe some assembler and most importantly, profile the hell out of the code.
If I wanted to use all the features of OSX and ensure longevity of my software, I'd use Objective-C and Cocoa.

I am not a great Emacs fan.. I have only come a cross it in a couple of workplaces..

Regan

fu wrote: that's a huge busy dock neko !

Beats digging through the 195 items in my Applications folder