So I bought my first Mac. I am looking to see what cool apps are out there that I should get my hands on. I need to update all the software I previously had on PC such as Adobe/Macromedia, Reason and Office. I am not at all Mac illiterate, as I supported Macs professionally for years, I just never owned one. I have been a little bit out of the Mac loop for the past 2-3 years, and I understand how to use Expose and widgets and such so I don’t need help with that. I just want to know what are some apps that’ll make my experience better that I might not think of.
The best place to get a good list of cool OSX apps is to select “Mac OS X Software…” link on the Apple menu in OSX. It’ll redirect you to http://www.apple.com/downloads/ where they have a list of Apple as well as 3rd party applications.
If you’re into Astronomy, then check out Stellarium.
A brilliant and uniquely Mac app is Delicious Library which lets you keep track of your books, CDs, and DVDs. It’s so nice since all Macs now have built-in iSight cameras, and you can use that to easily scan the barcode of the items you want to add to your library, and it’ll look up all the details for you automatically.
Of course Microsoft is releasing Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac OSX, but if you’d like an alternative you can use OpenOffice, or the version of OpenOffice which has been custom tailored to integrate with OSX called NeoOffice.
May I direct your attention to WeatherPop, QuicKeys, iClick, X-Ray, FruitMenu, TextWrangler, DefaultFolder, GraphicConverter, SwitchRes, Make SymLink, Shiira, Hogwasher, MacFUSE fs + NTFS-3G, Adium, Cronnix, TinkerTool, MS Remote Desktop Connection (RDC), MacTheRipper, MPEG StreamClip, Perian, DivX, and Flip4Mac?
Also, there are so many cool dashboard widgets. Radar in Motion for weather, SuperBrain is like the old MasterMind game. Sunlit Earth is kinda cool, shows a map of earth and which part is sunlit. You can do a whole bunch of webcams on dashboard too. At my last job, I used to have a collection of webcams on one frame that showed the traffic cams of my commute, and alternates, so I could plan my route before I left. With one click.
Delicious Library? :eek: I need that. I have hundreds, maybe thousands of, of books…
I use Adium X for my network chat needs, and Skype for my netphone needs.
I have VMWare Fusion for opening Mirosoft Windows in a virtual machine. The degree of integration that VMWare Fusion affords between the Mac OS X desktop and Windows is astonishing. You can click on a window in Windows, tell VMWare to display it in Unity mode, and all the rest of the Windows desktop disappears, leaving the Windows window floating in magnificent isolation on the Mac OS X desktop. And then you can minimise it to the Dock. And the Windows application menu appears in VMWare’s menu bar.
The only tricky things are setting up the virtual machine so that Windows doesn’t complain that it’s being installed on a different machine when you boot it in a VM rather than direct from the BootCamp partition.
Sidenote (great app for storing notes in a side-drawer), Adium (multi-client instant messaging program) , BBEdit (text editor for which there is no peer), Toast (CD/DVD burning program which is better than the OS), Transmission (Bit Torrent client), SiriusMac (if you happen to listen to Sirius), Audacity (audio editor/converter), Endnote (if you publish), Solitaire Till Dawn (say goodbye to your time)
If you have a Tivo and you can hook it up to your computer, download Tivo Desktop for Mac. It’ll let you play your Itunes mp3s on the Tivo. (Also get the LAME encoder for it to be able to play AACs.)
There are many slick tools out there… Enjoy your Mac experience!
I’ll share my latest fave: an app called Yep that allows me to organize all of my PDF documents and tag them, just like iPhoto.
It works particularly nice when used with the awesome Fujitsu S510m scanner (scans a book with its spine cut off into PDF in minutes).
I have managed to scan in and catalog about a thousand documents, ranging from my military records to bills over the years and health insurance paperwork.
(It’s all in an encrypted volume, fortunately, and backed up).
I also like:[ul][li]PithHelmet for ad blocking in Safari[]xGestures for adding gestures to any application[]RemoteBuddy for letting you do things that are actually useful with that little white remote that came with your Mac[*]Keyboard Maestro for creating simple macros that can be launched by hotkeys.[/ul][/li]Among others.
or at the very least buy a spare external drive and turn on Time Machine. That is one sweet utility, though it may be a bit lightweight for many. I like it.
ETA: Sunspace, how does that VMWare tool compare to Parallels?