Bought a Mac Mini last night - Must have software?

TechLarry

TechLarry

RIP [H] Brother - June 1, 2022
Joined
Aug 9, 2005
Messages
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Bought a Mac Mini last night. The $799 job. I'm very impressed with it's performance. Even windows 7 Ultimate under Parallels hits 4.5 on the Windows Experience scale. All the reading are actually in the 5's and 6's, but the RAM access speed put it at 4.5 (lowest score).

Parallels is brilliant stuff.

Anyway, it's been about 6 years since I've owned a Mac (other than the old PB G4 my sister gave me a month ago), so I'm a bit behind on the software side.

I have Office 2011 Pro, Parallels, and I'm using the free 90 day Kaspersky AV that came with Parallels. Since I am running windows on the machine, it will have AV on the Mac side as well.

That's about all I have right now.

Right now I'd like recommendations on the best freeware utilities, etc... I should go after?

They have to run on Lion.

BTW... The OS recovery system is brilliant too. I've already downloaded the utility and created a bootable USB key with the OS/Software just in case though.

Are they storing that in firmware or is it hidden on the hard drive somewhere? I thought it would be on the drive, but the online sales pitch indicates that it even works if you have to replace the hard drive, which would indicate to me it's on some sort of built in SDRAM or firmware.
 
How are we supposed to know what you need or want? A quick Google for "mac freeware" turned up 359 million results. I can type them all here but I start charging after the first one.

The best way to approach this is to use the Mac for a while, get an idea of what you need, then Google it. You can say "I like to _______" and fill in the blank. Then Google the blank "+ OS X"

You can't approach OS X from a Windows direction. The ideology is different and the "common needs of the user" are different.
 
The App Store is a decent place to start looking for good software. Look at free ones and sort by rating.

Essentials for me are VLC and Perian for media playback, Adium for chat and VirtualBox for VMs.

The OS boot/recovery system you're talking about is part of the EFI firmware on the machine. You can use it on a fresh drive or even with no drive at all.
 
SuperSubZero said:
How are we supposed to know what you need or want? A quick Google for "mac freeware" turned up 359 million results. I can type them all here but I start charging after the first one.
Click to expand...
^ not very helpful.

Some of my favorite mac apps:

Sparrow - Mail
MPlayerX - MUST HAVE video player
Adium - Instant Message
DaisyDisk - Disk Space Management
Stay - Multiple Monitor Management
BetterTouchTool - Multitouch Management
TextMate - Text editor
Transmit - FTP client
Google Chrome - duh

There's more but I'm not sure you do the same sorts of stuff I did with mine
 
Zinn said:
^ not very helpful.

Some of my favorite mac apps:

Sparrow - Mail
MPlayerX - MUST HAVE video player
Adium - Instant Message
DaisyDisk - Disk Space Management
Stay - Multiple Monitor Management
BetterTouchTool - Multitouch Management
TextMate - Text editor
Transmit - FTP client
Google Chrome - duh

There's more but I'm not sure you do the same sorts of stuff I did with mine
Click to expand...

OP needs/wants, maybe dramatically different than yours, so that list is useless for the OP until he gets a handle as to what he really needs. I just got iWorks for business and that was it, until something I wanted to do, and Lion was unable, than I would ask the community what application would do such and such for me. That's how I would go about it. ;)
 
a GREAT program that I always liked on mac was LittleSnitch (lightweight firewall)

Other than that, outside of productivity applications (photoshop/illustrator/Quark), I don't have much experience with mac software.
 
Adium
Cyberduck
Dropbox
Evernote
Firefox
Handbrake
Max
NetNewsWire
PCSX
PCSX2
Quicksilver
Skype
SNES9x
uTorrent
VLC

Everything else I use either comes with OSX or is paid for.
Aperture
Adobe Suite (Most notably Photoshop and Bridge)
Office 2011
VMware Fusion
 
Last edited:
Few things I use on my macbook

Trillian
Caffeine
OnyX
Google Chrome
iStat Menus
VMware Fusion
Dropbox
Appzapper
VLC
WineBottler and Wine
uTorrent
SynergyKM

I have photoshop and open office on one of my VM's
foobar2000 running through wine, I might switch to Fluke for my FLAC files.
 
I prefer:
Mail.app - Mail
VLC - video player
Trillian - IM
Sublime Text 2 - Editor

Zinn said:
^ not very helpful.

Some of my favorite mac apps:

Sparrow - Mail
MPlayerX - MUST HAVE video player
Adium - Instant Message
DaisyDisk - Disk Space Management
Stay - Multiple Monitor Management
BetterTouchTool - Multitouch Management
TextMate - Text editor
Transmit - FTP client
Google Chrome - duh

There's more but I'm not sure you do the same sorts of stuff I did with mine
Click to expand...
 
CEpeep said:
The App Store is a decent place to start looking for good software. Look at free ones and sort by rating.

Essentials for me are VLC and Perian for media playback, Adium for chat and VirtualBox for VMs.

The OS boot/recovery system you're talking about is part of the EFI firmware on the machine. You can use it on a fresh drive or even with no drive at all.
Click to expand...

Thanks!

Zinn said:
^ not very helpful.

Some of my favorite mac apps:

Sparrow - Mail
MPlayerX - MUST HAVE video player
Adium - Instant Message
DaisyDisk - Disk Space Management
Stay - Multiple Monitor Management
BetterTouchTool - Multitouch Management
TextMate - Text editor
Transmit - FTP client
Google Chrome - duh

There's more but I'm not sure you do the same sorts of stuff I did with mine
Click to expand...

Exactly what I was after. Thanks!

SR45 said:
OP needs/wants, maybe dramatically different than yours, so that list is useless for the OP until he gets a handle as to what he really needs. I just got iWorks for business and that was it, until something I wanted to do, and Lion was unable, than I would ask the community what application would do such and such for me. That's how I would go about it. ;)
Click to expand...

raybik said:
I use this - http://osx.iusethis.com/ to decide on best tools for Mac. Smart search, tags and lots of reviews. It helps to decide on every freeware or licensed sw.
Click to expand...

Actually, lists like that are exactly what I was after.

Thanks guys. It's a great start :)
 
Sophos AV for Mac is free. I don't know if it scans Parallels virtual machines (you can probably just install an AV over in Windows if you want), but it scans your Mac file system for both Mac and Windows stuff.

Also, not only is it free but it even comes with your Mac already: Automator

Once you start getting used to the way the Mac works and pick up on actions that you do frequently, you can probably make them into Automator actions to speed them up.
 
I also bought a mac mini a while ago, but I returned it because it was too slow (core2duo). I was thinking on getting a core i5 mac mini. Again. Macs are exciting.
 
TechLarry said:
Parallels is brilliant stuff.

I have Office 2011 Pro, Parallels, and I'm using the free 90 day Kaspersky AV that came with Parallels. Since I am running windows on the machine, it will have AV on the Mac side as well.

That's about all I have right now.

Right now I'd like recommendations on the best freeware utilities, etc... I should go after?
Click to expand...


If you've already bought it Parallels, then stick with it. But from five years of experience using Parallels, I would avoid it and go with VirtualBox or VMWare. VirtualBox is free and just as good or better in some areas. With VirtualBox, there are no annoying upgrade to a new version for only $$ screens, no video tearing in 2D mode, much faster SMB/CIFS. Parallels does have great 3D support.

I would also suggest ControllerMate if you can't stand Apple's mouse acceleration curve. You can make the cursor in OS X move like in Windows, X, or however you want. It's only $15 and well worth it. http://www.orderedbytes.com/controllermate/
 
I was skeptical at first, but I'm starting to dig this magic trackpad :)

I wish there were windows drivers.
 
TechLarry said:
Since I am running windows on the machine, it will have AV on the Mac side as well.
Click to expand...

This is a waste of resources. You do not need to install anti-virus on OS X. Just install Microsoft Security Essentials in your VM when your Kaspersky trial runs out.

Right now I'd like recommendations on the best freeware utilities, etc... I should go after?
Click to expand...

Adium, Dropbox, The Unarchiver, and MPlayerX are all must-haves.

But to get some really good apps, you'll want to open the wallet a little bit. 1Password will do far more for your personal security than an anti-virus app; iStat Menus is terrific; and Growl is a must-have.
 
XLD (kills Max), Adium, Transmission (best Mac torrent app, bar none), UnRarX, Onyx...
 
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