Must have software for an iMac newbee
Discussion
Hi Guy
Just invested in a 27" iMac (now delivered and what a piece of kit it is
)
Having had PC's since the age of steam and elastic bands and now apart from an iPhone I'm new to Apple on a personal level (we have them at work, but I never use them!). What are you running as far as the 'must have' additions to the standard package?
So far I've loaded Mozilla, HandBreak and Spotify. Using Time Machine which seems to be a wonderful bit of kit and of course iPhoto to manage my 42500 photo's I've taken over the last few years!
Cheers
Just invested in a 27" iMac (now delivered and what a piece of kit it is
)Having had PC's since the age of steam and elastic bands and now apart from an iPhone I'm new to Apple on a personal level (we have them at work, but I never use them!). What are you running as far as the 'must have' additions to the standard package?
So far I've loaded Mozilla, HandBreak and Spotify. Using Time Machine which seems to be a wonderful bit of kit and of course iPhoto to manage my 42500 photo's I've taken over the last few years!
Cheers
Edited by M-J-B on Friday 12th March 21:01
Not much really. But there's plenty that's 'nice to have'.
You'll want Perian and Flip4Mac if you want to play most Windows video formats in Quicktime. Flip4Mac was bought by Microsoft so you'll find the free plugin on Microsoft's Mac web site. Perian is an open-source effort for all those 'other' bitty video codecs that are used everywhere. It's worth keeping up-to-date with Adobe's Flash plugin too - whilst it's installed by default, Adobe have been releasing updates. Virtually ALL the crashes experienced by Mac users in internet browsers are caused by the Flash Player plugin.
With those two and the standard software you'll be able to view virtually anything you can download or buy. Personally I could do without Flash so I use the ClickToFlash plugin, which blocks Flash on webpages and replaces the content with a grey box with the word 'Flash' in it. You can then click it if you want to see the Flash content, or ignore it and it won't crash your browser.
The iLife suite is good, but if you need an Office suite for compatibility with Windows documents, then I always recommend the old Mac Office 2004 that Microsoft sold - it's slow and clunky but still supports VBA macros, which I absolutely require in my field. The latest Mac Office from Microsoft removed all scripting support altogether, making it essentially incompatible and not worth spending money on.
OpenOffice.org (i.e. the free open-source suite) is available in 'vanilla' form and also in a 'Mac-style' GUI (i.e. using the Cocoa GUI object framework) in the form of NeoOffice. This also has limited VBA support and if you don't need that last 5% of the Microsoft functionality that virtually nobody uses, you'd be just as well off using NeoOffice.
Microsoft's 'proper' Office isn't overpriced though - virtually everyone qualifies as 'student and teacher edition' so you should be able to buy a real 3-user licence from MS for around £90. Microsoft's Mac software division (the so-called Mac BU) has typically been the most profitable division at Microsoft for a long time because Mac users actually BUY their software rather than nick it and as a result, support from MS for their Mac products has always been good. I don't normally recommend Microsoft products but if you need guaranteed compatibility, MS Office for Mac is worth paying them for.
Apple's own iWork suite is very powerful but a different take on word processing, spreadsheet and presentation apps. If you do a lot of presentations and don't particularly need Powerpoint compatibility then Apple's Keynote is meant to be the best app out there, bar none. The Pages word processor behaves more like a desktop-publishing app than a traditional word processor (i.e. MS Word), and whilst the Numbers spreadsheet app is very pretty and excels (oops) at presentation and visualisation (the charting and graphing tools are MUCH nicer than Microsoft's), for number-crunching you can't beat Excel. I do fixed income analytics for investment managers and whilst I've paid for (and use) Apple's iWork suite, I don't use Numbers. It's Excel all the way - IMO Microsoft's best software product bar none, even for all its faults - in the financial industry we ALL use Excel.
I'm tempted to give NeoOffice a shot - I've been using MS Office on my various Macs since the first Office v.X (which was buggy, slow and frustrating) and hence when the OpenOffice ports were very beta, I never really tried using them in production. But NeoOffice is now at version 3.0.2 and the underlying codebase (OpenOffice) has been in continuous development for quite some time, and sponsored financially by Sun, and hence now Oracle. Oracle aren't going to drop OpenOffice, and it has always been intended to be compatible with Microsoft Office, since MS Office is pretty much 99% marketshare in the enterprise. So the NeoOffice Mac version should be decent.
And as Microsoft *really* infuriated me (and many other Mac users working in finance and other 'non-creative' industries, where the Mac platform isn't popular and Office apps are the order of the day) by dropping VBA scripting support from their current product, it may be time to seriously explore NeoOffice.
If you don't want to risk incompatibility with documents sent to you from Windows users, then at least Microsoft have agreed to continue supporting Office 2004 for Mac (the last version with VBA support). Microsoft themselves admitted that they underestimated how much that'd anger Mac users (who traditionally have been paying £300 for the retail MS Office suite - it's only that MS slackened the criteria for the 'Student and Teacher Edition' so much that most people can buy it for £90 these days), and whilst there were very strong technical arguments for dropping VBA (the legacy code was a disgusting mess, and included unsupportable chunks of x86 assembler, so the Mac port done for v.X, which was back in the PowerPC days, included loads of dirty hacks to emulate x86 on the PPC - obviously now all new Macs are Intel x86 compatible anyway, but the code really needed rewriting from scratch, and MS wanted to co-ordinate this with its planned replacement for VBA on the Windows side; the sheer inertia of the Windows business market has slowed this down enormously), Mac users still needed it. So MS continue to support Office 2004 on the Mac - in terms of bugfixes, security patches, etc.
Other 'essential' Mac apps? Well if you use your PC (now a Mac, of course) to organise your finances, then you'll want a personal finance application. There are a few out there, but Microsoft doesn't make a version of MS Money for the Mac. My personal favourite is an app called iBank - I've been using it for years and also run my small company accounts through it - it's man enough for the job. It's not expensive, but the benefit of a commercial paid-for app is that the developer maintains and supports the app. iBank has been going since 2006 and is regularly updated - if you're a Quicken user then it'll import your existing Quicken files (I wasn't - I used MS Money beforehand). The app has won an Apple Design Award, it's nice to use and a 'proper' Mac app rather than a Windows port. If you use MobileMe then it also backs up your accounts to your MobileMe iDisk, which is an effective 'safe' cloud backup - nice to have if your office burns down. Obviously personal finance apps are a very personal thing - personally the most important thing to me is continuity and support, because if all your accounts are in a proprietary file format and the app developer gets bored and drops support for the app, then you can be left high and dry. The iBank developer, IGG Software, isn't a big shop and its main product is iBank, but they're still in business since 2006 and regularly update iBank, so I'm happy that the app is 'here to stay' - the app also has an export function and flexible reporting. I don't use all of the features - I'm a very basic user of it - but it's also got fancy OS X integration features like iCal event generation for reminders (tax returns, etc.), iPhone support (enter transactions on your iPhone when out and about and it'll integrate the transactions into your main accounts file), smart import of online statements, equity portfolio stock-quote support, and a fun feature that uses the Mac's built in iSight camera to attach a picture of a receipt / invoice (or the actual item purchased) to the transaction. It's a good app and worth the $60.
Skype have a native Mac client, if you use Skype. If you don't get on with Safari then all the major web browsers are available for OS X. I've found that Safari and Firefox are all that's needed for compatibility with every web site I've used. If you share stuff via BitTorrent then Transmission is the slickest OS X torrent client, and for Gnutella P2P sharing, the Acquisition app is the slickest client. By 'slick' I mean well-designed *native* OS X applications that retain the 'look and feel' of OS X - i.e. conforming to Apple's User Interface Guidelines - and therefore intuitive to use.
Depending on how much of a techie you are, the fact that OS X has a proper BSD Unix userland underneath (and is compliant enough to be allowed to call itself 'Unix' - there's a big Unix tech brief on Apple's website detailing the POSIX compliance) means that you can have all of the tools that you may have used on Linux or other commercial Unixes. Most tools are included with the standard OS X install - a variety of shells, the major scripting languages (ruby (and Rails), perl, python), Java, X11, etc. However you'll want to install MacPorts to give you access to all the free open-source projects out there. This is the OS X equivalent of a Linux package manager, so if you want to use Nmap or Wireshark then you can download it, compile it and install it without having to go through the old Linux rigmarole of .configure / make / make install. Of course, you can do it by hand if you want. NOTE that the bog-standard OS X install doesn't include the compiler and other dev tools required for all this - it's an Optional Install on your OS X install disc. If you're not a hacker at all then you probably won't need it, but it's there if you want it. The install also includes Xcode, which is a full IDE for OS X - the equivalent of Visual Studio or Eclipse. I think you can actually run Eclipse itself on OS X, but the Xcode development environment is tidy and nicely integrated.
Obviously my advice is slanted heavily towards the way I use my computers, which is more financial / technical due to my profession. I can't offer much useful advice if you're a budding movie producer or other creative sort. The bundled iLife package is reasonably powerful for casual photographers and video producers - I find that iPhoto is good enough for me and my digital SLR. But if you're more serious then Apple have 'professional' creative tools (Aperture for RAW photo editing, Final Cut Pro for video content creation, etc.) at 'professional' prices. Adobe's Creative Suite is expensive but somewhat a 'must-have' if you work professionally in the creative industries (Photoshop, for example). Do check out the tutorials for iLife though before spending loads of money on 'more powerful' tools - iPhoto in particular is more powerful than it looks, and spending a large amount of money on Photoshop isn't necessary for the majority of casual users. Of course, being Unix, the free GIMP Photoshop competitor works on OS X too.
You may find you still need to run one or two Windows applications. You can run Windows in a box on your Mac without having to reboot onto a separate Windows partition, by using virtualisation software. There are two main contenders, VMWare and Parallels. Parallels were first to market when the Intel Macs came out, but VMWare are the market leader in the enterprise and have put a lot of effort into their Mac product. I use VMWare as I think it's more stable - you can then install a copy of Windows (or Linux, or Solaris, etc.) into a virtual machine which you can isolate from the network if you wish. If your virtual Windows box gets compromised by a virus, worm or trojan, it won't affect OS X at all. You can just delete the Windows VM and start again. The virtualisation apps now support hardware graphics acceleration, so it's feasible to play a Windows 3D game in its own window whilst the rest of OS X carries on in the background.
Lastly, don't bother with 'internet security' or 'anti-virus' software. OS X, like Linux, doesn't need this and the products on the market mostly look for Windows viruses in files that you may be sharing with Windows users. All of these products add overhead to the OS, introduce instability, and are of little use. Security on OS X is good, as long as you don't run as root and you have a strong password. This is essential. Also, don't enable root unless you need it - and if you do, give root a very strong password. Simple stuff really - and as long as you've got a handy big external hard drive (it's really worth buying one with Firewire 800, because it's a LOT faster than USB) then Time Machine will keep backups automatically, so if the worst happens and you introduce a trojan into your system (the only threats worth worrying about with OS X - be very careful what downloaded software you install, and if it asks you for an Administrator's password, ask yourself why) then you can restore from a backup very easily.
I really like OS X - it's a great operating system IMO. Apple, Adobe and Microsoft dominate the application scene but there are LOTS of small, independent developers on the Mac platform making very polished, well integrated apps. It's worth trying to use OS X in the way that Apple intended, rather than force a Windows workflow onto it, but largely things are pretty intuitive in OS X. Enjoy it - and have a play around, try things out with the modifier keys (alt, option, command). There are lots of shortcuts in OS X that are enabled by holding a modifier key whilst doing something - I'm finding new ones all the time
One useful tip is to use System Preferences to map Exposé to the middle mouse button (if you've got an Apple mouse, it's pressing the trackball). Exposé shows all your windows and is VERY handy when you've got lots of windows on the desktop.
You'll want Perian and Flip4Mac if you want to play most Windows video formats in Quicktime. Flip4Mac was bought by Microsoft so you'll find the free plugin on Microsoft's Mac web site. Perian is an open-source effort for all those 'other' bitty video codecs that are used everywhere. It's worth keeping up-to-date with Adobe's Flash plugin too - whilst it's installed by default, Adobe have been releasing updates. Virtually ALL the crashes experienced by Mac users in internet browsers are caused by the Flash Player plugin.
With those two and the standard software you'll be able to view virtually anything you can download or buy. Personally I could do without Flash so I use the ClickToFlash plugin, which blocks Flash on webpages and replaces the content with a grey box with the word 'Flash' in it. You can then click it if you want to see the Flash content, or ignore it and it won't crash your browser.
The iLife suite is good, but if you need an Office suite for compatibility with Windows documents, then I always recommend the old Mac Office 2004 that Microsoft sold - it's slow and clunky but still supports VBA macros, which I absolutely require in my field. The latest Mac Office from Microsoft removed all scripting support altogether, making it essentially incompatible and not worth spending money on.
OpenOffice.org (i.e. the free open-source suite) is available in 'vanilla' form and also in a 'Mac-style' GUI (i.e. using the Cocoa GUI object framework) in the form of NeoOffice. This also has limited VBA support and if you don't need that last 5% of the Microsoft functionality that virtually nobody uses, you'd be just as well off using NeoOffice.
Microsoft's 'proper' Office isn't overpriced though - virtually everyone qualifies as 'student and teacher edition' so you should be able to buy a real 3-user licence from MS for around £90. Microsoft's Mac software division (the so-called Mac BU) has typically been the most profitable division at Microsoft for a long time because Mac users actually BUY their software rather than nick it
and as a result, support from MS for their Mac products has always been good. I don't normally recommend Microsoft products but if you need guaranteed compatibility, MS Office for Mac is worth paying them for.Apple's own iWork suite is very powerful but a different take on word processing, spreadsheet and presentation apps. If you do a lot of presentations and don't particularly need Powerpoint compatibility then Apple's Keynote is meant to be the best app out there, bar none. The Pages word processor behaves more like a desktop-publishing app than a traditional word processor (i.e. MS Word), and whilst the Numbers spreadsheet app is very pretty and excels (oops) at presentation and visualisation (the charting and graphing tools are MUCH nicer than Microsoft's), for number-crunching you can't beat Excel. I do fixed income analytics for investment managers and whilst I've paid for (and use) Apple's iWork suite, I don't use Numbers. It's Excel all the way - IMO Microsoft's best software product bar none, even for all its faults - in the financial industry we ALL use Excel.
I'm tempted to give NeoOffice a shot - I've been using MS Office on my various Macs since the first Office v.X (which was buggy, slow and frustrating) and hence when the OpenOffice ports were very beta, I never really tried using them in production. But NeoOffice is now at version 3.0.2 and the underlying codebase (OpenOffice) has been in continuous development for quite some time, and sponsored financially by Sun, and hence now Oracle. Oracle aren't going to drop OpenOffice, and it has always been intended to be compatible with Microsoft Office, since MS Office is pretty much 99% marketshare in the enterprise. So the NeoOffice Mac version should be decent.
And as Microsoft *really* infuriated me (and many other Mac users working in finance and other 'non-creative' industries, where the Mac platform isn't popular and Office apps are the order of the day) by dropping VBA scripting support from their current product, it may be time to seriously explore NeoOffice.
If you don't want to risk incompatibility with documents sent to you from Windows users, then at least Microsoft have agreed to continue supporting Office 2004 for Mac (the last version with VBA support). Microsoft themselves admitted that they underestimated how much that'd anger Mac users (who traditionally have been paying £300 for the retail MS Office suite - it's only that MS slackened the criteria for the 'Student and Teacher Edition' so much that most people can buy it for £90 these days), and whilst there were very strong technical arguments for dropping VBA (the legacy code was a disgusting mess, and included unsupportable chunks of x86 assembler, so the Mac port done for v.X, which was back in the PowerPC days, included loads of dirty hacks to emulate x86 on the PPC - obviously now all new Macs are Intel x86 compatible anyway, but the code really needed rewriting from scratch, and MS wanted to co-ordinate this with its planned replacement for VBA on the Windows side; the sheer inertia of the Windows business market has slowed this down enormously), Mac users still needed it. So MS continue to support Office 2004 on the Mac - in terms of bugfixes, security patches, etc.
Other 'essential' Mac apps? Well if you use your PC (now a Mac, of course) to organise your finances, then you'll want a personal finance application. There are a few out there, but Microsoft doesn't make a version of MS Money for the Mac. My personal favourite is an app called iBank - I've been using it for years and also run my small company accounts through it - it's man enough for the job. It's not expensive, but the benefit of a commercial paid-for app is that the developer maintains and supports the app. iBank has been going since 2006 and is regularly updated - if you're a Quicken user then it'll import your existing Quicken files (I wasn't - I used MS Money beforehand). The app has won an Apple Design Award, it's nice to use and a 'proper' Mac app rather than a Windows port. If you use MobileMe then it also backs up your accounts to your MobileMe iDisk, which is an effective 'safe' cloud backup - nice to have if your office burns down. Obviously personal finance apps are a very personal thing - personally the most important thing to me is continuity and support, because if all your accounts are in a proprietary file format and the app developer gets bored and drops support for the app, then you can be left high and dry. The iBank developer, IGG Software, isn't a big shop and its main product is iBank, but they're still in business since 2006 and regularly update iBank, so I'm happy that the app is 'here to stay' - the app also has an export function and flexible reporting. I don't use all of the features - I'm a very basic user of it - but it's also got fancy OS X integration features like iCal event generation for reminders (tax returns, etc.), iPhone support (enter transactions on your iPhone when out and about and it'll integrate the transactions into your main accounts file), smart import of online statements, equity portfolio stock-quote support, and a fun feature that uses the Mac's built in iSight camera to attach a picture of a receipt / invoice (or the actual item purchased) to the transaction. It's a good app and worth the $60.
Skype have a native Mac client, if you use Skype. If you don't get on with Safari then all the major web browsers are available for OS X. I've found that Safari and Firefox are all that's needed for compatibility with every web site I've used. If you share stuff via BitTorrent then Transmission is the slickest OS X torrent client, and for Gnutella P2P sharing, the Acquisition app is the slickest client. By 'slick' I mean well-designed *native* OS X applications that retain the 'look and feel' of OS X - i.e. conforming to Apple's User Interface Guidelines - and therefore intuitive to use.
Depending on how much of a techie you are, the fact that OS X has a proper BSD Unix userland underneath (and is compliant enough to be allowed to call itself 'Unix' - there's a big Unix tech brief on Apple's website detailing the POSIX compliance) means that you can have all of the tools that you may have used on Linux or other commercial Unixes. Most tools are included with the standard OS X install - a variety of shells, the major scripting languages (ruby (and Rails), perl, python), Java, X11, etc. However you'll want to install MacPorts to give you access to all the free open-source projects out there. This is the OS X equivalent of a Linux package manager, so if you want to use Nmap or Wireshark then you can download it, compile it and install it without having to go through the old Linux rigmarole of .configure / make / make install. Of course, you can do it by hand if you want. NOTE that the bog-standard OS X install doesn't include the compiler and other dev tools required for all this - it's an Optional Install on your OS X install disc. If you're not a hacker at all then you probably won't need it, but it's there if you want it. The install also includes Xcode, which is a full IDE for OS X - the equivalent of Visual Studio or Eclipse. I think you can actually run Eclipse itself on OS X, but the Xcode development environment is tidy and nicely integrated.
Obviously my advice is slanted heavily towards the way I use my computers, which is more financial / technical due to my profession. I can't offer much useful advice if you're a budding movie producer or other creative sort. The bundled iLife package is reasonably powerful for casual photographers and video producers - I find that iPhoto is good enough for me and my digital SLR. But if you're more serious then Apple have 'professional' creative tools (Aperture for RAW photo editing, Final Cut Pro for video content creation, etc.) at 'professional' prices. Adobe's Creative Suite is expensive but somewhat a 'must-have' if you work professionally in the creative industries (Photoshop, for example). Do check out the tutorials for iLife though before spending loads of money on 'more powerful' tools - iPhoto in particular is more powerful than it looks, and spending a large amount of money on Photoshop isn't necessary for the majority of casual users. Of course, being Unix, the free GIMP Photoshop competitor works on OS X too.
You may find you still need to run one or two Windows applications. You can run Windows in a box on your Mac without having to reboot onto a separate Windows partition, by using virtualisation software. There are two main contenders, VMWare and Parallels. Parallels were first to market when the Intel Macs came out, but VMWare are the market leader in the enterprise and have put a lot of effort into their Mac product. I use VMWare as I think it's more stable - you can then install a copy of Windows (or Linux, or Solaris, etc.) into a virtual machine which you can isolate from the network if you wish. If your virtual Windows box gets compromised by a virus, worm or trojan, it won't affect OS X at all. You can just delete the Windows VM and start again. The virtualisation apps now support hardware graphics acceleration, so it's feasible to play a Windows 3D game in its own window whilst the rest of OS X carries on in the background.
Lastly, don't bother with 'internet security' or 'anti-virus' software. OS X, like Linux, doesn't need this and the products on the market mostly look for Windows viruses in files that you may be sharing with Windows users. All of these products add overhead to the OS, introduce instability, and are of little use. Security on OS X is good, as long as you don't run as root and you have a strong password. This is essential. Also, don't enable root unless you need it - and if you do, give root a very strong password. Simple stuff really - and as long as you've got a handy big external hard drive (it's really worth buying one with Firewire 800, because it's a LOT faster than USB) then Time Machine will keep backups automatically, so if the worst happens and you introduce a trojan into your system (the only threats worth worrying about with OS X - be very careful what downloaded software you install, and if it asks you for an Administrator's password, ask yourself why) then you can restore from a backup very easily.
I really like OS X - it's a great operating system IMO. Apple, Adobe and Microsoft dominate the application scene but there are LOTS of small, independent developers on the Mac platform making very polished, well integrated apps. It's worth trying to use OS X in the way that Apple intended, rather than force a Windows workflow onto it, but largely things are pretty intuitive in OS X. Enjoy it - and have a play around, try things out with the modifier keys (alt, option, command). There are lots of shortcuts in OS X that are enabled by holding a modifier key whilst doing something - I'm finding new ones all the time
One useful tip is to use System Preferences to map Exposé to the middle mouse button (if you've got an Apple mouse, it's pressing the trackball). Exposé shows all your windows and is VERY handy when you've got lots of windows on the desktop.Thanks Cyberface - a very informative post
The iMac also comes with the new Apple mouse which is weird but typical of Apple - IT WORKS!
I'm writing this on my pc laptop and even only after a week or two of 'macdom' I'm missing it and want to get a notebook to have some consistency in my computing life!
The iMac also comes with the new Apple mouse which is weird but typical of Apple - IT WORKS!
I'm writing this on my pc laptop and even only after a week or two of 'macdom' I'm missing it and want to get a notebook to have some consistency in my computing life!
HiRich said:
The best bit of softishware would be a copy of Missing Manual for Snow Leopard - one of those doorstep books and the best-written. Even cyberface would find some trick he's missed, and it has a lot of info for switchers like yourself.
Always recommended and well-regarded. I never got round to buying a copy (they started well before Snow Leopard) but you're right, there'll be stuff in there I've never seen
Quicksilver... Excellent prog that means you can keep your desktop, and dock free of a lot of crap. A simple quickey opens up a nice little pane, and you type what you want. Folder, file, application, and often just 2 or 3 keystrokes will get the one you need. Press enter and it opens. VERY cool program.
Blue Meanie said:
Quicksilver... Excellent prog that means you can keep your desktop, and dock free of a lot of crap. A simple quickey opens up a nice little pane, and you type what you want. Folder, file, application, and often just 2 or 3 keystrokes will get the one you need. Press enter and it opens. VERY cool program.
No need for Quicksilver to do that - Spotlight does the same thing in Snow Leopard. cmd-space is the shortcut (at least, I think that's standard...)I'm not keen of the spotlight version, which is why I use quicksilver. Plus, when you use it in Spotlight, it demands more cursor taps. Quicksilver is the better one to use by a log shot
For example, for the Movies folder. Takes a 'M' and enter. You're there. Spotlight requires you to pretty much type the whole thing.
For example, for the Movies folder. Takes a 'M' and enter. You're there. Spotlight requires you to pretty much type the whole thing.
Edited by Blue Meanie on Sunday 14th March 13:04
Not a piece of software but you can create an alias (shortcut) to your printer(s) - I keep mine on my desktop. To print, just drag and drop your file onto the shortcut - no need to open it.
To create the shortcut, go into System Preferences then Print & Fax. In the window containing the printer list, hold down the Command key (next to the space bar) and your left mouse button down at the same time on one of your printers and drag to the desktop.
To create the shortcut, go into System Preferences then Print & Fax. In the window containing the printer list, hold down the Command key (next to the space bar) and your left mouse button down at the same time on one of your printers and drag to the desktop.
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