Alright you Mac fiends, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. I need your help. I’ve got a crazy fast Mac Pro with 8G of memory as my work station and besides Thunderbird and the Adobe Creative Suite, it’s got NOTHING on it. I need suggestions for the best Mac apps out there. There’s a few I know about in passing, like CandyBar and Toast, but what else does the Mac community have to dazzle me with?
I feel like I’m living the best of both worlds right now. I’ve got a screaming fast PC work station for all my printing, scanning and non-Mac compatible applications, and I’ve got a beefy Mac Pro for my creative suite, email and whatnot.
I’ve been impressed by the Mac so far. I’m still not “switching” at home any time soon, but my trepidations of using it as a main work system are disappearing. Seriously though, what is the point of having a little red “X ” button in the corner of a program if the program doesn’t actually close? Tell me that. Because, from where I’m coming from, that’s pretty damn retarded. I “closed” about 10 programs today, in order to install some system updates, and non of them actually closed and the system threw a shit fit.
Anyway, I’ve got a long list of things that simply don’t make any damn sense with this Mac. Maybe, if you’re lucky, I’ll be sharing them shortly. Until then, I need those Mac program suggestions. What’s completely a completely awesome application that Chris and Nagle just can’t live without???
Let’s see
– Parallels or VMWare for Windows stuff (install windows in a VM – browser testing, etc)
– Firefox, naturally
– Lots of stuff from Panic (Transmit, Coda)
– Microsoft Office 2008 if you need it.
– TextMate or TextWranger/ BBEdit for text editing
– Twitterrific for twitter
– Transmission if you do any torrent stuff
– People seem to like Fluid for making a webapp into standalone
That’s pretty much what I use on a day to day basis (aside from dev tools like MySQL clients, SVN clients, etc)
as for the “close button” not quitting apps – while the behavior is application. developer-specific, think of it kind of like the old office-style apps where you have windows inside another window. you can close all the documents in a window, but it won’t quit the app. The easiest way around it is just doing a command/ apple + q (or file-> quit from the menu, or even hold your click on an icon in the dock and select quit)
as for any other apps, there’s also netnewswire for RSS feeds if you don’t use a web app like google reader, and of course Delicious Library if you want to catalog things (though I don’t find it as useful as others do, and it really helps to have a camera with that one). for IM I usually stick with iChat, but others like Adium. MarsEdit is a pretty good blogging app, but doesn’t yet have support for WYSIWYG editing.
Welcome to Mac Land. I hate font book, so I use Extensis. PitStop is pretty useful, but since it’s Adobe you may already have it. Sorry I can’t give you anymore suggestions. Most of the software that I use came with really big machines … walls had to be removed to get them in the building.
Best wishes in filling up your Mac
Kimberly
I agree with Chris on checking out everything Panic has to offer, Twitterific (and anything else from Iconfactory) and Transmission.
When it comes to creative software, I couldn’t live without FontExplorer X from Linotype. I use Billable from Clickable Bliss to handle my invoicing. Although it isn’t the prettiest app, I get a lot of use out of Art Directors Toolkit from code-line.com. When I’m struggling with color schemes, I rely on ColorSchemer Studio to get me out of a rut. For video conversion, I absolutely wouldn’t survive without the amazing VisualHub.
Other than those, I mostly rely on the OS utilities and services, as well as the iApps. I’ve found that as time has marched on, I think the simpler the better…so iTunes and iPhoto and iChat do exactly what I need them to do.
Finally, I’m not a widget fan…but I’m sure some people dig ’em.
Enjoy. This has certainly been a long time coming. 🙂
Thanks for the suggestions guys. I’m checking out each and every one.
I also think I need to clarify. THEY chose the Mac for me. It’s my “work station”. I didn’t really have any say in the matter. At home, it’s still all PC. I just couldn’t live without my gaming. That being said, it is a really sweet machine. I’m really digging all the things I can get out of it.
Will I be buying a Mac for home use any time soon? Nope. Way to expensive.
For now, lets just say that before I was on one side of the fence and now I’ve kicked a hole in the fence and I’m walking freely back and forth. The property is way too expensive for me to set up camp just yet, but I don’t mind grazing a bit for the time being.
On my commute home last night, I remembered two more places: Rogue Amoeba (I LOVE RadioShift) and Ambrosia Software (Wiretap is an awesome piece of software).
Isn’t it strange that you, at NASA, end up using a Mac, and me, at ESPN, end up flocked with Windows machines? WTF is up with that?!?