New to Mac - Best Software

thepominlaw

thepominlaw

thepominlaw

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Joined
8 Aug 2005
Posts
234
After what seems like an eternity of PC ownership (the first one with DOS) i have decided to abandon it in favour of the i5 iMac, which i ordered today. Only 3 weeks to wait!

Obviously I can run some of my existing software via bootcamp, as I already have photoshop and lightroom. My question is though what is the MAC software you cannot live without?

PLEASE move to software forum sorry i posted in the wrong place
 
couldn't like without? Well the apps I use most are actually safari, terminal and mail but aside from things like that...

Evernote - not mac specific (in fact I run it on OSX, Windows and my iphone) but I couldn't live without it as a note making app alone, on top of which it has some excellent features.

If upload a photo of typed or handwritten text and it does text recognition with pretty good accuracy in the cloud in the background. I use for all sorts of stuff, I asked a friend to write me out the recipe for something a couple of weeks back, they wrote it by hand, I photographed it with my iphone and uploaded it then forgot about it. Now if I type 'recipe' in evernote's search, it shows up straight away, no manual tagging -straight from the text recognition - I thought stuff like that only worked in the movies and in adverts!

Anyway, great bit of software all round...
 
Best of breed

Task management, Things £
Text editor, TextMate £
Keyboard launcher, LaunchBar £
Sane window management, SizeUp £

Honourable mentions

Image editor, Pixelmator £
RSS reader, NetNewsWire -
 
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Hi guys, I have recieved delivery of my 1st Mac today (Mac mini 2.53Ghz) and was just about to make a similar thread. :P

What i need is:

Codec Pack (I don't like VLC, and I will be using XBMC or Plex)
FTP Client
Telnet Client
Text Editor
Microsoft Remote Desktop client (exists?)

I am pretty sure there are loads more but these are ones i must have to replace windows
 
Codecs - Perian and Flip4mac
FTP - Cyberduck
Telnet - I open a terminal and telnet that way!
Text Editor - Textmate

That's the ones I use - Perian is an essential really.
 
Thanks guys,

Perian looks like exactly what i am looking for. But i also need a Real player alternative for Quicktime (I will stick to one single media player and Plex for a frontend when used a HTPC)
 
There is a real player but I've never needed (or particularly wanted) it.
 
I recall reading that the official Real Player for Mac isn't bogus like the Windows one is/was. But I've never used it.
 
what i mean is ability to play real media files (.rmvb, .rm files) on Quicktime. We have 'Real Alternative' for directshow and i am looking for the Mac equivalent. I have a habit of sticking to one Media Player.

Sorry for flooding with questions, i will do a search later when i am off the iphone
 
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i use the following all the time:

Growl - notifier for itunes/spotify/email/bittorrent/adium etc
Adium - im
Pathfinder - finder replacement
handbrake - video converter
transmission - bit-torrent
evernote - brilliant for storing all kinds of stuff
dropbox
bettertouch tool - adds extra functions to touchpads/magic mouse
 
What I'm using at the moment

IM - Nimbuzz Does both FB chat and MSN chart (the two I use) but it says it does Yahoo, Google, AIM, My Space, ICQ and a host of others..

Torrent - uTorrent, I carried this over from windows, still in beta but working

Firewall - Little Snitch, more to stop things getting out rather than in ;)
 
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Is there a software that fixes the overscan on HDTV (1080p) outputs? Something that can force a custom screen resolution like ATi Catalyst does.

I had a full days play around now and I am loving OSX. Just the boarders are bugging me.
 
IIRC there's actually an overscan checkbox somewhere in System Preferences > Displays when OS X thinks it's connected to a TV.

For scarier low level tweaking there's DisplayConfigX
 
wush said:
IIRC there's actually an overscan checkbox somewhere in System Preferences > Displays when OS X thinks it's connected to a TV.
Click to expand...

Tried that already

not-checked: black boarders.
checked: the top menu bar is completely cut off screen and some of the Dock can not bee seen on the screen

Also downloaded DisplayConfigX, but have to register to use higher resolutions, and not been updated in a while
 
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