Between my evangelizing Macs as replacements for Windows laptop users- and later getting the "what should I install?" question, and wanting to finally pull the trigger on an OS 10.5.1 upgrade and fearing I'll have to do a fresh re-install should it go wrong, I thought now would be a good time to document the applications I feel are worth going with from the start, in no particular order. Perhaps my Mac guru friends can do the same and I'll realize I'm going about it all wrong...
- Firefox
- Thunderbird
- Adium
- Chicken of the VNC
- Netbeans 6 with Glassfish v2
- Lightroom
- Twitterific
- LittleSnitch
- MenuMeters
- Xcode
- N
- SkeyCalc
- iTerm (Leopard belatedly brings tabs to the stock Terminal app, so I may end up punting this)
- DarwinPorts
- Cisco VPN
- Parallels
- QuickSilver (installed but never became a power user)
- Flip4Mac
- Flickr Uploadr
- Gallery Remote
- Startup Sound to disable that annoying BONG!
* Parallels
* Solaris
* That's all
;)
Posted by Dave Tong on December 07, 2007 at 01:43 PM PST #
Shimo is a great VPN client to replace Cisco's.
http://www.nexumoja.org/projects/Shimo
Posted by Kevin on December 07, 2007 at 02:31 PM PST #
Skitch? Let me know if you need an invite.
Posted by ThinGuy on December 07, 2007 at 02:34 PM PST #
What is "N". Not an easy thing to google.
fugu -- when I am too lazy to scp
Butler -- Key Remps
Matrix "Red Pill" Screensaver
video lan -- Often times, less sucky than QT
Posted by twothirds on December 07, 2007 at 03:06 PM PST #
@Kevin: sweet, I'll give it a spin.<br>
@ThinGuy: please send invite to altbit'at'gmail, thx <br>
@twothirds: sorry, got lazy on the hyperlinking. fixed. looks like there's an N+ in the works too.
Posted by rama on December 07, 2007 at 03:16 PM PST #
Think carefully before you go for Firefox on the Mac - it leaks memory badly. I'd try Safari first , the newer builds are really very good.
If you absolutely *must* have a firefoxalike, go for flock. It's crammed with social networking addons but uses much less memory than firefox (and more importantly it doesn't leak).
Similarly I'd try out mail.app before going for thunderbird.
Leopard comes with a vnc client, so you may not need CotVNC.
+1 for VLC - don't know why apple still bundle quicktime, most video formats are playable by VLC so make it the default player (certainly for avi, wmvs etc).
everyone raves about iTerm but I never saw what it has over Terminal.app personally.
the new spotlight does everything i used quicksilver for (mostly app launching), so i don't bother with that either anymore.
Posted by Dick Davies on December 07, 2007 at 04:24 PM PST #
I've recently become a great fan of 1Password, so I'd add that to the list. I also pretty much always install OmniDiskSweeper, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, MacGPG, GPGMail (for those of us who like Mail.app rather than Thunderbird), Inquisitor, BBEdit, and my own personal collection of scripts and utilities, of course. ;) I also like YummyFTP and Springy. MenuMeters++, Adium++, Shimo++, Quicksilver++, LittleSnitch++, Flip4Mac++, Xcode++...
Posted by Levi on December 07, 2007 at 04:34 PM PST #