Thread

I’m going into town at the weekend to buy a MacBook Pro, and I wanted to ask, as a windows user and mac virgin, what tips/software do you find useful on mac?

thanks!

Ack!  Whatever happened with Linux?  I read on your blog that you kinda liked Fedora…

Oh yeah, Fedora just got hard to achive anything, plus I need good quality screen recorder for IgnitedScreencasts and Istanbul didn’t cut it, xVidCap froze when I pressed anything and recordmydesktop was pants.

Still, live and let live, I say.

macports if you want to get a proper dev environment up and running quickly. you don’t have to use this, you can compile everything yourself if you’re that way inclined.
textmate - text editor of the gods.
if you’re in the UK, the # symbol is alt+3 (took me ages to find that!)

My software of choice:

- MAMP - zero config and works like a charm

- Coda - More than a text editor

- Cyberduck - free FTP when Coda is not enough

- TextMate - if all you need is a slick text editor

- twitterrific - to keep in touch with the world…

I’m surely forgetting something, but that’s a good start!  😉

I really want a mac, but just can’t afford it at the moment. I would love to get an iMac, as there stylish and I don’t need another laptop. If any one can help me find a cheaper one, or I will just have to wait 3 months till I can get me 12.5% discount at John Lewis (UK department store where I work.) Keep the advice coming because I’m interested!

A *ahem* few that i use….

Coda,
MAMP,
Textmate,
VirtualBox,
Navicat,
Toast Titanium,
Zipeg,
Transmission (or utorrent for mac which is nearly out)
Visualhub,
Appdelete,
CoconutBattery
Colloquy,
QuickSilver,
SMCFanControl
Vuze,
VLC

And you’ll be wanting ScreenFlow for your screen casts!

1. Adium - All in one IM messenger (msn,icq,aim,yahoo,etc)
2. Transmit - FTP app
3. Colloquy - IRC app
4. TextMate - Text Editor
5. MAMP PRO - Developer Server Environment
6. QuickSilver - Awesome App Launcher
7. Growl - Notification System
8. Adobe CS3 Suite - Photoshop,Illustrator,Fireworks,Flash,Dreamweaver
9. Extensis Suitecase Fusion - Font Manager
10. The Terminal
11. Versions - SVN GUI client

Note: the Macbook Pros are getting a significant speed bump and design refresh in the next month or so, so you might want to hold off on buying one until they’re released. Rumors point to October 14, but they’ve been wrong a lot this summer.

I’ll echo everything that [CoDeR] mentioned, but add the following:
1. Visor - By the people who made Quicksilver; provides quick hotkey access to a terminal window (for starting/stopping httpd, mysql, using SSH, etc) in a fashion similar to FPS games.
2. CocoaMySQL - Very comfortable MySQL database browser.

A note on Versions: it’s only really worthwhile if you have a fast SVN server. My workplace server is fairly creaky, which makes Versions almost unusable. If you’re like me, SvnX might be a better alternative.

forget all the others, just get:

Professor Fizzwizzle and the Molten Mystery.

Some of the software that I use on my Mac (some are not Mac-only software)...

- Adium (IM Client, free/open source)
- LiveQuartz (Image manipulation, free)
- NetBeans (Java IDE, free/open source)
- Opera (Web Browser, free)
- VLC (Media player, free/open source)
- ClamXAV (Anti Virus, free/open source) Not that it’s really necessary, I’m just paranoid 😊
- NeoOffice (Office suite based upon OpenOffice, free/open source)
- RapidSVN (Stand Alone SVN Client, free/open source)

like nick hunter says, they plan to go public with new version of MBP on october 14th.

So prolly a better choice to just wait.

good luck !

You have to get Quicksilver (it’s free).  It will save you a million years, 15 seconds at a time. Also TextMate is such a sweet text editor it’s impossible not to fall in love with it.  Bean is a great simple document editor. :wow:

Adium - All-in-one IM Client
MAMP Server - Mac Apache MySQL PHP
TextMate - Awesome Code Editor

Oh and I use Mail.app for my Email, RSS and Notes.

bbedit is the reason I switched from windows to mac about 9 years ago. Then OS X came along and I’ve been hooked ever since. Moving to the Mac is a great move, especially for web dev.

I’d highly recommend:
bbedit for text editing
expandrive for mounting sftp volumes
cocoamysql for mysql admin
yojimbo for keeping track of helpful code snips and notes
1password to keep track of web passwords, credit cards, etc. makes online shopping and account login super easy
quicksilver for system-wide custom shortcuts, super fast app launcher and overall excellent utility