Byebye PC, hello Apple
Today I write this post on a brand new Mac, a Mac Book Pro 15 inch. This is the first time I ever have owned a Mac. My first computer was an C64, then a Amiga 500. After that I plunged into the PC world with DOS and then Windows 95. I´ve been working with Mac both at school and at work but now I have my own Mac. It will be great to see if I like this, I still have to think to find the @ key. Why did get a Mac you wonder, well:
- It’s a great web developer platform
- I can run both Windows, Ubuntu (Linux) and MacOSX. Either by dualboot or Virtualizing
- Less trouble (is this really true?)
- It looks sexy, both hardware and software
I now have to find all those software that I use in Windows, as I am new to Machintosh I have no real clue what’s good and not. What I need is:
- A good texteditor (like notepad++)
- A webdeditor, hopefully not Dreamweaver
- An FTP client
- An SSH client (Is there a putty client for Mac?)
- A good IM client
- A good screen capture program (Gadwin PrintScreen today)
- Something to measure on screen (use JRuler today)
- Play music (like Winamp, is there a client for Last.fm for mac?)
- Watch movies (divx, avi, wmf, qt, mkv etc)
- Mounting images (like ISO, BIN files etc)
- Torrent client (for thos Linux images)
- Virus protection (heard that you do not need this?)
- Email (Is there a Thunderbird client or is there any better?)
- VNC and VPN (Hamachi?)
If you have any good tips what works and not, let me know.
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June 16th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Good to hear you switched. I did it last october. Here are some software suggestions:
- texteditor: TextMate, I use it as web editor as well
- FTP client: transmit or Cyberduck
- SSH client: Terminal
- IM client: Adium
- screen capture program: InstantShot
- Music: iTunes
- Torrent: Bitrocket
- Mail: Thunderbird is ok, but does not use the addressbook.app, mail.app is quite good
- Movies: VLC Player
Have fun with your new mac.June 16th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Congrats!
I’m stuck with my home-pc for another two years. Can’t afford buying a new one even if I wanted to. Would be nice to have a Mac. Can’t give you any tips about good programs. Really could need one myself when it comes to webeditors. I’m still using Dreamweaver (even if in code view)…
June 16th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
A good texteditor (like notepad++) TextMate, skEdit, Smultron
A webdeditor, hopefully not Dreamweaver GoLive, but use those I mention above
An FTP client Cyberduck (is free), Transmit (the best FTP client, but cost)
An SSH client (Is there a putty client for Mac?) You don’t need putty, you are working on a BSD (unix) OS now.
A good IM client Adium, Adium, Adium…
A good screen capture program (Gadwin PrintScreen today) You don’t need a app for it, Mac OS X got it. Try shift + cmd + 4
Something to measure on screen (use JRuler today) http://creativebits.org/review/freerulerformacos_x
Play music (like Winamp, is there a client for Last.fm for mac?) Yes, Last.fm works good on mac… and then iTunes and Songbird!
Watch movies (divx, avi, wmf, qt, mkv etc) VLC
Mounting images (like ISO, BIN files etc) This is also buld-in in OS X
Torrent client (for thos Linux images) Check for BitRocket, BitTorrent
Virus protection (heard that you do not need this?) Make sure to have your firewall on!
Email (Is there a Thunderbird client or is there any better?) Yes, Thunderbird is a good looking app, but I love Mail.app (also included in OS X)
VNC and VPN (Hamachi?) You could check for VNC for chicken (open source)
June 18th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Thanks for the tips, I been playing around this weekend and tried some of the ones you wrote about out. Really nice. Thanks!
June 18th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Grats on a great laptop, and welcome to the cult
As for your application needs these are (echoing some of the above), what I’d recommend/use:
Sorry, I’m too lazy to hunt down links.
June 18th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Thanks Jacob for the apps, as you say it is almost like a cult, a nice cult.
June 21st, 2007 at 9:45 pm
I was just thinking the other day when I was on the mac website, wonder why Jens is not using one of these yet…hehehehe, well now you are, good pick my friend, they are very sexy and excellent choice for your line of work!
July 6th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
To find alternative applications when switching to OS X recently, I used http://osx.iusethis.com/
Great website for this purpose.
July 6th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Thanks!
September 18th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Shameless link back here, but I wrote about my tips in Essential software for Mac OS X.
VMWare Fusion is also nice, and iTerm for terminal work.
October 30th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Hi and congratulations on the new Mac. I did exactly the same just a few weeks ago. Never to have owned a Mac before; but the threat of actually having to use Vista on a laptop and the fact that Leopard was coming out made the choice obvious.