hello, im a p-mac-nix

[bitWISE]

Picked up my first Mac tonight. Got the new 15" MacBook Pro with 4gb of ram, 320gb hdd, geforce 9600. Loving it so far. Installed Adium, Growl, and Firefox. Probably picking up vmware fusion soon. Any other apps I should check out or helpful tips? Is there a shortcut key to minimize everything at once?

[Transient]

Option-Command-M

[saturn]

Quicksilver, Handbrake, NetNewsWire, Toast Titanium, 1Password, Macjournal, Journler, Adobe shitz, SuperDuper!, NeoOffice, Onyx, uTorrent, Textmate, Transmission, Tinkertool, Pixelmator, Keynote, Pages, Microsoft Office, coconutWIFI, coconutBattery, Cyberduck, Crossover, Colloquy, Appfresh Delicious Librabry, Yojimbo, Writeroom, Unison, VLC, Perian, Whatsize, Songbird, Simple Comic, etc.

Install Perian, flip4mac + VLC and you can play any codec.

[Whiskey 7]

bitWISE

I never got into Macs so please do come back in a while and let us know what gives with the OS.

Pros, Cons, first impressions that sort of thing. I've nearly taken that jump but pulled out @ the last minute so I'd be grateful for your opinion here.

TYIA

[Doombrain]

Aperture

[Mat Linnett]

Just to add GraphicConvertor, Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection, Final Cut Studio 2 and Apple Remote Desktop to those already listed, although the last 2 are obviously both paid-for apps/suites.

[Geebs]

Most important tip is: if you're planning on running windows under Boot Camp and in VMware Fusion (which, imo, is better than Parallels), be very careful to follow the instructions. I had so much trouble with my (legally bought) copy of XP requiring constant reactivations, including needing to reactivate each time I updated to newer versions of Fusion, that I had to be a bit naughty to fix it. Fucking microsoft.

[dmmh]

NZBDrop, Airfoil (plays any sound through Airtunes, if you have Airtunes that is...), Toast Titanium, VMWare Fusion, The Unarchiver, Serial Box, Candybar, AppZapper(really remove apps), LogicielMac Update (never search for updates to your apps anymore), Quake III for MAC , DoorstopX (important), Little Snitch

[dmmh]

Aperture

I don't like it, I tried but allas

[Therac-25]

You'll probably end up choosing one of fink and macports at some point. They can both live together on the same box, but I tend to prefer macports.

Xee as an image viewer for a certain class of images. Twitterific if you need a decent client for that. Vent and Skype mac clients, obviously. MacPar Deluxe for verifying and extracting perfectly legal and legitimate rar archives with par2 files.

[Deathshroud]

iStatPro is an awesome widget, it displays the stats of your machine on the fly.

[dmmh]

MacPar Deluxe for verifying and extracting perfectly legal and legitimate rar archives with par2 files.

[Deathshroud]

bitWISE

I never got into Macs so please do come back in a while and let us know what gives with the OS.

Pros, Cons, first impressions that sort of thing. I've nearly taken that jump but pulled out @ the last minute so I'd be grateful for your opinion here.

TYIA

For just about anything other than gaming it is an awesome OS. It has a great GUI, and is UNIX based so any advanced things you want to do to the OS can be executed through the shell.

I still think Linux is better for the simple fact that any program imaginable is free. OSX has many great independent developers, but a lot of them are looking to make at least a small profit.

[MKJ]

that doesnt make it a better or worse OS. it is, however, a big practical plus.

[Therac-25]

I found using OSX as a "Unix" to be both frustrating and pointless. It doesn't behave very well at all, you need to install a whole bunch of GNU stuff for things like ps to be normal, and there's not much point unless you have a specific piece of software or programming to do.

It's nice that it's there, but I hardly ever use it. Probably the best effect of it is the ability to ssh in remotely and still be able to do something reasonably useful at the command line.

[bitWISE]

bitWISE

I never got into Macs so please do come back in a while and let us know what gives with the OS.

Pros, Cons, first impressions that sort of thing. I've nearly taken that jump but pulled out @ the last minute so I'd be grateful for your opinion here.

TYIA

So far I freaking love it. The screen is so insanely sexy I cant stop looking at it. The touchpad is ace and actually worth using unlike pc laptops. The keyboard shorts are sexy but I still have a lot to learn. I love the dock and the shared menu idea. Not having a right click is taking a while to get used to though. The file system seems nice and uncluttered. Installing apps or control panel extensions could be done by a 2 year old. Mapping my windows shared drive was easy so I copied over all my mp3s and loaded up itunes.

I think the biggest thing to get used to is that X doesnt quit it just closes the window. Favorite feature is the two-finger scroll trick with the touchpad.

So far I would totally recommend it. I have Fusion 2 installed and once I locate a copy of XP Pro I'll be getting that going. So far I have Flex 3, Thunderbird and VPN Tracker up and running so this thing is nearly ready to start work.

iStatPro is an awesome widget, it displays the stats of your machine on the fly.

Very cool thanks. Is there a hotkey to toggle dashboard?

[bitWISE]

Just to add GraphicConvertor, Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection, Final Cut Studio 2 and Apple Remote Desktop to those already listed, although the last 2 are obviously both paid-for apps/suites.

Nice link on the windows remote desktop. I wouldn't have even expected that to exist.

[obsidian]

Not having a right click is taking a while to get used to though.

I have an iMac, but IIRC, it's two finger tap on the touchpad. You may have to enable it in the options.

[Mat Linnett]

Not sure how the multitouch pad on the new MacBooks works, but on my BlackBook 2.4GHz, putting two fingers on the pad and clicking acts as right click.
The best one, and the one I curse by its absence whenever I use a PC laptop is the 2-finger scrolling. That's just plain awesome.
Basically, if you drag on the touchpad with 2 fingers, it scrolls the active window in the direction you drag.

Edit: Oh yeah, check out the touchpad's control panel; it's got loads of really well done video tutorials on different strokes and gestures.

[bitWISE]

Yea my friend showed me how to scroll. Awesome shit.

Ah you're right on the two finger tap too. Excellent.

[MKJ]

ctrl-click works too.

[Unisaw]

My daughter found the in-store seminars to be a big help. They hold them locally on the weekends. Assuming there is a store in your area of course. After growing up in a wintel household she loves it.

[bitWISE]

This may sound arrogant but I'd probably kill myself before showing up to a Mac store seminar with a computer science degree. If not myself, one of the morons in attendance.

Got Office 2k8, Aqua Data Studio, XCode, and PS CS4 installed. Also just got Ubuntu and XP Pro installed and up to date. Just wrapping up the IIS/VS2003 install in XP. Hopefully sourcesafe works through the virtual machine but I'm pretty sure it will. If I can figure out how to get vpn tracker to connect to our citrix vpn I'll have a true beast of a development platform.

[Deathshroud]

that doesnt make it a better or worse OS. it is, however, a big practical plus.

True, but like you said, it does make it much more attractive.

[Deathshroud]

I found using OSX as a "Unix" to be both frustrating and pointless. It doesn't behave very well at all, you need to install a whole bunch of GNU stuff for things like ps to be normal, and there's not much point unless you have a specific piece of software or programming to do.

It's nice that it's there, but I hardly ever use it. Probably the best effect of it is the ability to ssh in remotely and still be able to do something reasonably useful at the command line.

I don't see how using OSX as a UNIX is any different than using any other UNIX variant. If anything OSX has the advantage of having just about all software available in binaries, instead of having to compile it yourself.

I understand that you have to install the GNU software yourself, but that is just a symptom of OSX being production software. So I guess add another point to Linux.