10 Essential Apps for the New Mac User

[Image: apple logo]As regular readers of my blog already know, I went out and purchased a MacBook Pro at the end of December. This is step one in a massive re-organization in how I work and, err, compute. Until now I’ve never owned a Mac, mostly because I grew up using Windows and because Windows has a much much much better selection of games.

However, 90% of the people I work with are on Macs, and it can get a little frustrating trying to translate back and forth between platforms all the time. Also, since one of my favorite authors of all time (Douglas Adams) used a Mac, I’m hoping that buying this thing will make help me write good.

So for the past few weeks I’ve been moving all my e-mail, contacts, and general work flow onto OSX. Part of that has been combing through the internet for the kinds of useful/essential applications that I’ve never heard of before but can no longer live without.

This is, in no particular order, what I’ve come up with (unfortunately, not all of these are free):

[Image: whatsize icon]WhatSize - This little app doesn’t sound very impressive, but it’s probably the one I end up using most often. If, like me, you compulsively organize and cleanse your hard drive, this little program is for you. And it’s especially handy for long-time Windows users, because it actually tells you how much space things take up (I’m used to selecting a batch of folders and right clicking to total it up; command-I on the mac sizes all folders individually). Anyways, I’ve used to to selectively and effectively trim the fat from the pre-installed software on my new Mac, and I’m sure it will continue to come in handy.

[Image: cyberduck icon]CyberDuck - In my line of work, it’s essential that I have an ftp client. I just need to. I think a lot of people do. I hear from friends that Transmit is actually the best option available, but CyberDuck is more free, and it uploads and downloads just fine. On the PC I love to use FileZilla, and there is a free app called SecureFTP on the mac that mirrors the UI pretty well, but it keeps cutting your connection after a few minutes of inactivity, which doesn’t work for me.

[Image: firefox icon]Firefox - This is the browser that I use more often than any others. The built-in Mac browser Safari is actually a very good browser, but the real killer app for Firefox is the Google Browser Sync plug-in, which lets you sync bookmarks, passwords, history, etc over multiple computers. And yes, I know you can do this with .Mac as well, but this service is free. If you’ve tried both browsers and you honestly prefer Safari (I believe it does load pages a little faster), then that’s totally fine, but I wouldn’t write Firefox off without trying it first, especially once you dig into the extensive database of themes and extensions that are available online.

[Image: qt broadcaster icon]QuickTime Broadcaster - This little program applies only to people with an iSight camera (so, all of the new Macs). I went hunting for this thing when I realized that I should be able to use the camera in this computer to actually record things (like a videoblog entry) if I had the right capture software. This is it. It takes a quick tweak to the setting, but you can record decent quality and well compressed .mov files right to your hard drive. The Wordpress plug-in I used to upload the quick time file and stick it in the RSS feed with the right enclosures is called PodPress, and it works like magic. If you want to podcast with Wordpress, this is your solution.

[Image: missing sync]The Missing Sync - I’ve linked to the version that translates between Windows Mobile and OSX because that’s the particular program that works for me, but there’s also a version for Blackberry and, I think, PSP. I know I’ve seen some complains on forums about getting this program to work, but it was a reasonably painless process for me. The only catch is that I needed to use the cord instead of a bluetooth connection for some reason. Oh, and it also costs money.

[Image: azureus icon]Azureus - In this day and age, you need to have a BitTorrent client. A lot of hefty downloads can be deftly managed by a torrent, and this is the client to have. Incidentally, it’s also what I used on the PC.

[Image: vlc icon]VLC Media Player - Again, this is something that I used ALL THE TIME on the PC, so it was pretty much a no-brainer for me to grab the OSX version. VLC has the remarkable ability to play virtually any media file you throw at it. On top of all that, it looks pretty, and it’s free. Wins all around, I think.

[Image: audacity icon]Audacity - I’m sure there are plenty of people who will tell me that Apple’s pre-packaged Garage Band will do everything I want. However, audacity *also* does everything I want, and takes about 3 gigabytes less space. Audacity is a great little free app that lets you do multi-track recording and has a great selection of preset filters to help you make a podcast, equalize a recording, or do whatever you need to do. If I remember right, the down side is that you have to install the mp3-encoder yourself if you want to output to mp3.

[Image: Onyx icon]Onyx - Onyx is a tiny little app that sits on top of OSX and lets you mess with preferences that aren’t normally available through System Preferences. I haven’t found tons of use for this yes, but it is nice to be able to tweak some things that I wouldn’t normally be able to tweak.

[Image: desktop manager]Desktop Manager - This particular program is going to be more useful for some people that for others. One of the things that I like the most about OSX is the ability to hide things. I like to work with one thing on the screen at a time, but I don’t like having to exit stuff to get it out of the way. Having multiple desktops is a pretty cool way to have multiple setups for different things without messing with hiding/closing windows. Also, of course, it lets you pull of the Smackbook pro.