What's the glaringly obvious thing to be installed on new Mac?

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938 posts

Ultimate Geek

#803449 22-Apr-2013 08:38

BetterSnapTool so that you can "throw" windows to a corner, just like Windows 7. I really missed this when changing to OSX. Also you could write something yourself to mount network shares on startup but Drive Mounter is really simple and works well at this. +1 for MS Office 2011. Adobe Photoshop Elements. Dropbox and some sort of Snapshot tool like Snip (simple) or Skitch (not so simple).

tdgeek

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#803451 22-Apr-2013 08:40

khull:
All this talk of MBP is making me want one again. Someone mentioned "the one with overheating issues" implying its been updated, so I might revisit this.

That has been fixed since and only applies to the MacBook Air

Tks

Dunnersfella

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#803496 22-Apr-2013 09:59

So here's my list of apps that I 'must' install. Keep in mind, I have a music playback focus...

VLC
Handbrake
Fidelia (FLAC playback)
xACT (CD ripper)
AppCleaner (to easily remove some of the programmes I'm recommending?)
Stuffit (expander)
Skype
Calibre (book conversion)
Flip Player
Silverlight (Hulu or Netflix want it... I forget which one)

MorrisTheCat

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#804654 24-Apr-2013 07:27

Thanks for all the input. In the last two days I have spent quite some time studying just what the Retina MacBook Pro units are from the Apple website and discovered why there's quite a fuss amongst the mac-user community. Then at my work two machines just happened to turn up care of colleagues who have stretched to own them. I had to be careful not to drewl over them. That Boot time is increadible. Photos on that retina screen are just incredible.

Realising my olde MacBook alloy is becoming increasingly hard to read the text on the screen as my old mans eyesight deteriorates i began to justify its replacement. So Mac Gang, I now have a brand spanking Retina 15", 16GB, 512GB flash etc MacBook Pro! All i need now is some time to sit down and set up. Of course, the advice you all gave for my OP will be centre to what I do....

MikeB4

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#804665 24-Apr-2013 07:57

Chrome, Safari is horrible. Don't be tempted to install Firefox it eats memory.

myopinion

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Ultimate Geek

#804673 24-Apr-2013 08:24

I like Safari on my Mac. Seems faster and smoother to me. I use Chrome for maintaining websites though as Safari tends to break the formatting.

MorrisTheCat

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#804677 24-Apr-2013 08:32

@KiwiNZ. Thanks for the Firefox warning. I'm a FF user from wayyyyyy back. It's on my work PC, my home iTX-mini mobo'd dual screened i5 PC, my net books and the ancient MacBook. A chance to not use it and learn new environments can only be good.... My only adoration for it are the Add-ons that give nicer experiences on web sights like TradeMe stripped right back of any advertising using Adblock not to mention Greasmonkey scripts that present all photos of items in a list as thumbnails rather than having to open each and every auction...

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jarledb

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#804787 24-Apr-2013 11:26

Caffeine is one of the first apps I install on a Mac. Makes sure that it doesn't try to sleep on me.

Another great app is Alfred. Its sort of the same as Spotlight only much more powerful. Think of it as a quick launcher for everything.

If you use Gmail or Googles other mail services (and have more than one) you will love Mailplane

For your own Safari based apps (anything you want to make into an "app", like a streaming radio stations player, or Google Calendar, etc. Check out Fluid.

If you want to set up automatic tasks you should check out Hazel. (one of the things I do, is to let it look for torrent files in the download folder and then move them to a Dropbox folder - which is monitored by a stationary machine I have)

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MorrisTheCat

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#833862 11-Jun-2013 06:30

KiwiNZ: Chrome, Safari is horrible. Don't be tempted to install Firefox it eats memory.

Well, it's been a few months. My 'new' Mac has been brilliant. The only quandary is that as a long term user of Firefox i miss the Apps that gave me control over those pesky as utter hell ADVERTISEMENTS! I don't have the weaponry for Chrome and Safari to obliterate a cluster of changing animation flash firing off in multiple boxes all around some document i might be trying to read on the Interweb.... The retina display just shows them so much more clearly i might add!

So based on the fact i know my way around FF and what Apps do it for me when i use my other PC machines (and life when i had my olde retired MacBook), i looks like i will simply have to 'pollute' my new Mac with the "Memory Eater".... (i have 16GBs of RAM to fill so surely that's a help)?

i'll hold off for 24hrs and see what others of you advise this Luddite....

MikeB4

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#833882 11-Jun-2013 07:24

MorrisTheCat:
KiwiNZ: Chrome, Safari is horrible. Don't be tempted to install Firefox it eats memory.

Well, it's been a few months. My 'new' Mac has been brilliant. The only quandary is that as a long term user of Firefox i miss the Apps that gave me control over those pesky as utter hell ADVERTISEMENTS! I don't have the weaponry for Chrome and Safari to obliterate a cluster of changing animation flash firing off in multiple boxes all around some document i might be trying to read on the Interweb.... The retina display just shows them so much more clearly i might add!

So based on the fact i know my way around FF and what Apps do it for me when i use my other PC machines (and life when i had my olde retired MacBook), i looks like i will simply have to 'pollute' my new Mac with the "Memory Eater".... (i have 16GBs of RAM to fill so surely that's a help)?

i'll hold off for 24hrs and see what others of you advise this Luddite....

use Firefox, it works well but just don't leave it on for longer periods of time as it will progressively use more and more memory. Example, on my iMac (2012 model) I have 16 GB of Ram, I have FF installed for site testing, I left it running overnight, in the morning I had less than a GB of free RAM available.

jarledb

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#833891 11-Jun-2013 07:53

You should be able to use AdBlock on Safari, it works brilliantly on my Macbook Air 2013 (not the one they just announced, of course).

nickb800

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#833893 11-Jun-2013 08:00

My advice more generally (sounds like things are already set up for the OP): Office for Mac 2011 is necessary for most people, but just don't expect it to match the Windows Office 2010. Tbh the mac version is a pretty poor effort on Microsoft's behalf - i find that it crashes far more often (particularly copy/cut/paste or drag/drop of formatted text) and is missing some features e.g. Analysis toolpak

MorrisTheCat

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#833941 11-Jun-2013 09:17

nickb800: My advice more generally (sounds like things are already set up for the OP): Office for Mac 2011 is necessary for most people, but just don't expect it to match the Windows Office 2010. Tbh the mac version is a pretty poor effort on Microsoft's behalf - i find that it crashes far more often (particularly copy/cut/paste or drag/drop of formatted text) and is missing some features e.g. Analysis toolpak

Agreed. I located a good priced package of Office on TradeMe and installed it. That's where i discovered the version wasn't high enough for the Retina screen and text in Word looked worse than on my old Macbook with it's earlier technology lower res screen.

I resided myself to the this is how it's gonna be, but did a couple of searches on the subject and learned that there was an update out there....

Then... the last time i went to use Excel (which had the same issue of blurry text) SUDDENLY there was an update screen popup message for Office, so to cut this post short Office on my new machine is now AWESOME to look at (at least on the retina screen)...

gehenna

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#833948 11-Jun-2013 09:19

1Password, VLC, Path Finder.

MorrisTheCat

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#833960 11-Jun-2013 09:31

jarledb: You should be able to use AdBlock on Safari, it works brilliantly on my Macbook Air 2013 (not the one they just announced, of course).

Thank you!, to that man there! I have used Adblock since the dawn of time on my PCs with FF and never knew it would fly under Safari. In all honesty, beginning to use this new Mac minus some control over the horrendous barrage of stuff i ignore anyway was becoming an incredible process and at times i'd simply turn to the PC with FF...

I won't enter into a discussion on advertising and site visiting here but now my usual haunts are again clean and clear while using this new Mac, so it just keeps getting better....Thank you again.

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