Just Got My MacBook Pro What Apps to Get?

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prodigee

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Ok so I just got my MacBook Pro 13", and so far I am loving every bit of it. But what I really want to know is what programs or should I say applications should I get so I can get the most out of my MacBook. I have already put a copy of Windows 7 RC1 for the boot camp and that works flawlessly, but what else is there to put onto this machine that would be productive, or even just for fun, I know there is a ton of stuff out there but where do I start?

There is one thing that I wanna try which is customizing the Leopard theme. Yes of course I am running 10.5.7 but what utilities are there to change the theme?

Thanks in advance,

prodigee
 
Well its not really a switch I still use Windows on my desktop it was more of a "I need a laptop, and this after research was the best option" I dont want to just forget about OS X I really would like to learn more about it and see what programs and such can really get me more out of the OS because as of right now all I have on it is Skype.
 
Boot Camp + Windows :p

Seriously though... Boot Camp's useful, but besides that, I recommend the following;

Growl - great notifications program, plugs in automatically to a lot of apps
KisMac - for your WiFi stumbling fun
Adium - great messaging client, interfaces with a lot of protocols such as msn, aim, etc
CrossOver -Not free, but its a great program that works a lot like Wine, enables you to work with many windows applications semi-natively
Firefox - need I say more?
Little Snitch - a great firewall policy program, allows you easily set what access programs have to the net
Transmission - amazing torrenting program for mac osx and linux, works very well and the ui is very seemless.
VLC(VideoLAN) -Its useful, very useful, especially for wmv files you'll come across.

Thats all I know off the top of my head, hope that helps!
 
Chilly said:
Boot Camp + Windows :p

Seriously though... Boot Camp's useful, but besides that, I recommend the following;

Growl - great notifications program, plugs in automatically to a lot of apps
KisMac - for your WiFi stumbling fun
Adium - great messaging client, interfaces with a lot of protocols such as msn, aim, etc
CrossOver -Not free, but its a great program that works a lot like Wine, enables you to work with many windows applications semi-natively
Firefox - need I say more?
Little Snitch - a great firewall policy program, allows you easily set what access programs have to the net
Transmission - amazing torrenting program for mac osx and linux, works very well and the ui is very seemless.
VLC(VideoLAN) -Its useful, very useful, especially for wmv files you'll come across.

Thats all I know off the top of my head, hope that helps!
Click to expand...
Now this is interesting why is Transmission so great?
I have used it once before and its very simple and I like that but how is it different to uTorrent?
 
Quicksilver!
+1 for Transmission
PLEX (for HD rips)
Perian for everything else (QT plugin)
SMC Fan Control
+15 for Adium
VirtualBox (when you absolutely need Windows)
Postbox (If you don't like Mail.app)
 
handbrake for DVD ripping!
iStat for monitoring your system info
Geektools is fun to play with too

im just curious would you guys recommend lilsnitch or peerguardian
 
So when it comes down to the 3 vm softwares, zaxour says virtualbox, I don't remember where it was but I remember hearing that parallels was the best. This is really interesting, and thanks to everyone here (and seemingly the rest of the internet) I will be getting Transimission for my completely legal needs ;).
 
All I will say is hug it! Will be a great laptop for you if you take care of it.. lol
 
ffmpegx - best video conversion software
mactheripper
crossover + office 2007 (seriously office 2008 and sucks)
+1 vlc
+1 postbox
gimp - free image editing, uses X11 and not as good as photoshop, but gets the job done
 
Oh, and for changing the look I would recommend CandyBar 3 ($) for icon and dock customization. I have had problems myself though finding a good program to change bars and window frames.
 
Thank you, I will definitely look into that. Does anyone know of a good N64 emulator for OSX?
 
+1 SMC Fan Control, Growl, Adium, VLC, uTorrent, Crossover, Plex

I also like, NetNewsWire (RSS), Bean (free word processor), App Zapper (removes apps)

If you have an Ipod Touch/Iphone, pick up Snatch.

I wanted to just bring Quicksilver out in the open here. It was mentioned, but it deserves a little text about it. It is a program that opens with a keyboard shortcut (⌘+Space for me), and then allows you to type the name of any file or application, from there you can open whatever you typed (most useful), or do other things too! After you type the name of your target, you can hit tab and type what you want to do with the target. For example, you can move it to trash, copy, move to a folder, etc. There are a ton of actions, and once you get the hang of it, it is very slick!

Quicksilver
 
Well now that I know what Quicksilver is I definitely will be getting it. I am not so concerned with getting word processors and such because I am have the Office suite now. But anyway, does anyone know of a good N64 emulator, I really want to play Mario Kart right now. (Thats what I do instead of gaming on notebooks, play N64 roms). :D
 
prodigee said:
Now this is interesting why is Transmission so great?
I have used it once before and its very simple and I like that but how is it different to uTorrent?
Click to expand...

Transmission has slightly less features than uTorrent, but the Mac version of uTorrent is still in beta and not very good at the moment. Transmission is really the only game in town for torrents on OS X at the moment.

In addition to applications, don't forget Dashboard. There's an Application Update widget available that will check for updates to all of your installed programs. Very handy.

If you want to watch movies, Movist is an arguably superior solution to VLC, but it only plays movies: VLC can play both movies and audio files. But if you use iTunes (and you should) then this is really a non-issue. On the movie front, you may want Perian and Flip4Mac to take care of your codec needs. AppZapper is good for ensuring a thorough program uninstallation: just drag the app you want to remove into the AppZapper window. For virtualization, Sun's Virtualbox is competently done and 100% free. For handling compressed files, you can use The Unarchiver, UnRar X, or StuffIt Expander. The Unarchiver is the simplest and quickest, but it chokes when you open files that have non-English characters in the filename, so you may need UnRar X as a backup. MenuMeters allows you to put a system monitor in the titlebar at the top of the screen.

If you're on the go a lot, you might want to consider the free 2 month trial of Mobile Me. There's also a free 30 day trial of iWork if you're interested in an alternative to Office 2008. If you need to read and write to NTFS-formatted hard drives, check out MacFuse/NTFS-3G.
 
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Terpfen said:
Transmission has slightly less features than uTorrent, but the Mac version of uTorrent is still in beta and not very good at the moment. Transmission is really the only game in town for torrents on OS X at the moment.

In addition to applications, don't forget Dashboard. There's an Application Update widget available that will check for updates to all of your installed programs. Very handy.

If you want to watch movies, Movist is an arguably superior solution to VLC, but it only plays movies: VLC can play both movies and audio files. But if you use iTunes (and you should) then this is really a non-issue. On the movie front, you may want Perian and Flip4Mac to take care of your codec needs. AppZapper is good for ensuring a thorough program uninstallation: just drag the app you want to remove into the AppZapper window. For virtualization, Sun's Virtualbox is competently done and 100% free. For handling compressed files, you can use The Unarchiver, UnRar X, or StuffIt Expander. The Unarchiver is the simplest and quickest, but it chokes when you open files that have non-English characters in the filename, so you may need UnRar X as a backup. MenuMeters allows you to put a system monitor in the titlebar at the top of the screen.

If you're on the go a lot, you might want to consider the free 2 month trial of Mobile Me. There's also a free 30 day trial of iWork if you're interested in an alternative to Office 2008. If you need to read and write to NTFS-formatted hard drives, check out MacFuse/NTFS-3G.
Click to expand...
Wow thank you that was extremely helpful, I will be sure to check some of those out, I already have Office so iWork doesn't concern me ( and I HATE Pages ) but really that was extremely helpful. But what advantages does MobileMe have over a site where you can store your stuff in the cloud for free. I just want to know why it would be worth the 100 a year, cause if I could save 100 it would be nice.
 
Cyberduck, Firefox, Lightroom, Tweetie iLife, are my most used apps. Make sure you enable at least a 2x2 expose quick switch to have at least 4 separate work spaces!
 
iStat is a must.
Skitch.com for screen capping
Tweetie for twitter
VLC for media
Adium of course
Colloquy for IRC
Fluid.app will convert websites into native applications. I use this for Gmail, Gcal, Greader
Hulu Desktop app to watch media
VisualHub to convert media
Quicksilver to open apps
 
prodigee said:
But what advantages does MobileMe have over a site where you can store your stuff in the cloud for free. I just want to know why it would be worth the 100 a year, cause if I could save 100 it would be nice.
Click to expand...

MobileMe is more than a cloud storage service; it's your contacts, calendars, and email in the cloud. Everything you edit on MobileMe will be instantly pushed out to all Macs subscribed to the MobileMe account, as well as your iPhone if you have one. Sort of like on a Blackberry.

It's not worth it if you don't travel around a lot or if you only need to store a few files. But hey, it's a free 2 month trial, why not? Just be sure to cancel before your trial period expires otherwise you'll be automatically billed for a year of service.
 
I might look into it, but seeing as I have a blackberry and they are releasing the blackberry desktop manager on mac in like 1 month it really seems superfluous to me to even get it.

On a completely different note, does anyone know of a MS Publisher like application for Mac that can make business cards, brochures, flyers, etc.


And I am still looking for a Nintendo 64 emulator if anyone out there has one.
 
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prodigee said:
And I am still looking for a Nintendo 64 emulator if anyone out there has one.
Click to expand...

Emulator selection on OS X is pretty limited. You could try out Sixtyforce, but if that's not to your liking, you'd probably be better off just installing Windows XP via Boot Camp and installing all the emulators you want on that. Alternatively, you could try virtualization, but the emulation performance probably won't be up to par.
 
Flip WMV 4 Mac
Perian
Growl
Adium
Transmission
Boxee
Insomnia
VMWare Fusion
 
coversutra - for itunes CD display on desktop
xchat (new developers now) - for mIRC
coconutbattery - track your battery life
toast 10 titanium - burn dvd/cd
unRARx - winrar extractor
crossover - can run windows apps
insomniaX - keep your mac running even with lid close
 
Since most everything else has been metioned that i use, let me toss this out there:
NTFS-3G

Its a NTFS driver for OSX. Its great if your commonly working with windows formated USB HDs or to play with your boot camp partition without being in Windows.
 
Rombus said:
Since most everything else has been metioned that i use, let me toss this out there:
NTFS-3G

Its a NTFS driver for OSX. Its great if your commonly working with windows formated USB HDs or to play with your boot camp partition without being in Windows.
Click to expand...

thanks a lot that is going to be very useful for me
 
prodigee said:
Now this is interesting why is Transmission so great?
I have used it once before and its very simple and I like that but how is it different to uTorrent?
Click to expand...

IMO, Transmission works a lot better. Utorrent may have better features and is mroe in depth but Transmission worked easier for me. My mistakes I'm sure, but I was having several problems with uTorrent. Tried out uTorrent and it worked out a lot better. Simply my own opinion. Either will work great.

Another great app I just found on Apple's website is "Daisy Disk" It's a cool new interface to analyze what's on a hard drive. Not a really useful app but if you have time, check it out. Just a cool way to see what's on the disk.
 
What should I use for video editing? I am looking into Final Cut, but that seems like the only way to run it is with a friggin Mac Pro and not a 13" MacBook Pro. What good video editing programs are there for Macs that don't require a Mac Pro to run?
 
Perian for codecs
Growl just neat to have in general
GimmeSomeTune is a neat addon for iTunes if you are using Growl anyway
Adium for IM
Filezilla or Cyberduck for FTP
VirtualBox for VM
Transmission for torrents
VLC for movies
Colloquy if you use IRC
iStat just a neat widget to have
Aquamacs if you like Emacs
ClamXav for AV
smcFanControl if you want more control of the fan speed (they run pretty low imo)
USB Overdrive X for actually getting good mice to work well in OS X (shouldn't be needed, but it is)

that is about it that I can think of.


If you are just doing mild editing you can still download the old more featured iMovie from Apple. If you are just doing very basic editing then the current iMovie is actually fine too. FinalCut is a great piece of software, but it isn't needed for most people and rather pricy.
 
Sc0rched said:
ffmpegx - best video conversion software
mactheripper
crossover + office 2007 (seriously office 2008 and sucks)
+1 vlc
+1 postbox
gimp - free image editing, uses X11 and not as good as photoshop, but gets the job done
Click to expand...

what is crossover + office 2007?

2008 office really sucks for real!!
 
quicksilver is slow and buggy for me

I use google quick search box, not as robust but does everything I need
if you want to pay launchbar is good as well
 
nukleuz said:
what is crossover + office 2007?
Click to expand...

Crossover is a per-program emulator that will basically let individual applications run "natively" in OS X without needing to launch a virtual environment. It's basically a sandbox emulator.

Office 2007 is... well, Office 2007.

Personally, I would recommend trying out iWork before attempting to emulate Office 2007.
 
If he hated Office 2008 though he is going to hate iWork. Pages is just a god awful program.

Nukleuz I would check to see if Office 2007 is supported by Crossover and go from there.
 
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