The Official Mac Thread

[Uncle Ted]

Yes, the screen is great. Also forgot to mention the hard drive speed. I am used to SSD drives, but this one seems 2-3 times faster than my other SSD.

Apple, because of the volume they do, gets the first pick of SSDs from the manufacturers. Also, they modify the firmware on the SSD to get better performance.

[Uncle Ted]

I appreciate the retina display.

I had a problem with the menu bar at first, but now I like it.

This is the app I run most of the time so the whole menu bar thing hasn't really been much of an issue for me.



Tip: learn all the Command- short cuts and you'll never miss the menu bar being on the window.

[old_gregg]

Do you use terminal out of the box? I'm surprised you don't use something like iterm. What about a good osx text editor?

[Uncle Ted]

Do you use terminal out of the box? I'm surprised you don't use something like iterm. What about a good osx text editor?

I used to be a hard core emacs guy but use vim these days.

The editor in Xcode isn't too bad.

[Uncle Ted]

My app list.

Free:

Adium - For chat. Although I have been using Cougar's (aka. Mtn Lion's) messenger more lately.

Colloquy - for IRC, if you are into that.

Google Chrome - Chrome use to be much more secure than Safari. I believe Safari has the edge now.

HandBrake - For my DVD ripping needs.

Burn - For my CD/DVD burning needs.

SuperDuper! - for backup imaging (of course, I use time machine as well)

Transmission - for my bit torrent needs.

VLC - plays the videos that QuickTime player doesn't.


Stuff I bought:

VMWare Fusion

OmniGraffle - For my technical drawing stuff. I have some other Omni stuff as well (OmniFocus, OmniOutliner, OmniWeb) but really only use OmniGrafle a lot.

Pixelmator - Because I am too cheap to buy photoshop.

iLife stuff.

Pages/Numbers/Keynote - I mainly use pages and keynote.

The Microsoft office crap to read other people's documents and for Excel.

QuickBooks for Mac.

[Commando]

My Free apps:

unrarx: program that unfolds your .rar files

transmission: bit torrent downloader program

Safari: I don't really use other browsers- especially since Chrome got rid of its download button on youtube.

Spotify: Still the best music software for listening at work and in the car.

Handbrake: for ripping my Netflix dvd queue.

Dropbox: Easy access to the Dropbox site for large file storage/sending.

[Uncle Ted]

My Free apps:

Safari: I don't really use other browsers- especially since Chrome got rid of its download button on youtube.

I use firefox with a plugin (it is either DownThemALL! or "Download YouTube Videos as MP4 and FLV"; don't remember which one I used) that adds the video download feature just for that.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Adium - For chat. Although I have been using Cougar's (aka. Mtn Lion's) messenger more lately.

I have been quite happy with the Messages app, although it only seems to work for people in the apple universe. Does Adium work with non-apple phones?

I really like being able to type on a full keyboard to send text messages.

Colloquy - for IRC, if you are into that.

Never heard of IRC. Will check it out.

Google Chrome - Chrome use to be much more secure than Safari. I believe Safari has the edge now.

I normally use FF. I tried the Mac FF version for a few days and had a number of problems. Using Safari now and it seems OK.

HandBrake - For my DVD ripping needs.

Burn - For my CD/DVD burning needs.

Just installed both. I used Handbrake on the PC, but I understand it is a Mac app ported to the PC world so it should work better I think.

SuperDuper! - for backup imaging (of course, I use time machine as well)

Why not just use Time Machine? What does this give you?

Transmission - for my bit torrent needs.

Work computer. Not sure I dare try that.

VLC - plays the videos that QuickTime player doesn't.

Already installed. VLC is great, but they sure have a boring icon/logo.

VMWare Fusion

Intalled. Very cool.

OmniGraffle - For my technical drawing stuff. I have some other Omni stuff as well (OmniFocus, OmniOutliner, OmniWeb) but really only use OmniGrafle a lot.

I am a Visio user and I have tons of Visio documents lying around. I have Visio installed on VMWare but I am mulling over my options for going forward. I get a free license to virtually all Adobe products through work so I am going to give Illustrator a shot.

Pixelmator - Because I am too cheap to buy photoshop.

I use Photoshop (see above). Very powerful, but awfully complex interface.

iLife stuff.

Already installed. I wonder if our IT guy did that for me?

Pages/Numbers/Keynote - I mainly use pages and keynote.

The Microsoft office crap to read other people's documents and for Excel.

I like MS Office. I have both the Mac and Windows versions installed.

QuickBooks for Mac.

I use Quicken on PC. Have not heard good things about Mac version. Will use in VMWare until I figure out how I want to migrate.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I do quite a bit of web authoring. I use Dreamweaver for content creation along with wamp which gives me Apache, MySQL, and PHP on local machine for testing before kicking stuff up to the remote server. I see that there is a similar thing on the Mac platform called mamp. Anyone use that?

[Uncle Ted]

I have been quite happy with the Messages app, although it only seems to work for people in the apple universe. Does Adium work with non-apple phones?

I really like being able to type on a full keyboard to send text messages.

That's the main reason I used messages (formerly iChat) now. Adium supports about every chat protocol known to man, however.

Never heard of IRC. Will check it out.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is old school chat that most open projects use. I use it just to chat with other developers on projects.

I normally use FF. I tried the Mac FF version for a few days and had a number of problems. Using Safari now and it seems OK.

Firefox is littered with bugs. I only use it for downloading YouTube videos (see above).

Why not just use Time Machine? What does this give you?

SuperDuper! creates a bootable image which is nice if I need to use a different mac or something. I use it also for test images of partitions. Of course, the average user only has one partition. I have about 5 or 6 normally.

I use Photoshop (see above). Very powerful, but awfully complex interface.

Pixelmator is nice and simple but not as powerful as photoshop. It does everything I need which isn't much.

Already installed. I wonder if our IT guy did that for me?

It may have been included from Apple.

I use Quicken on PC. Have not heard good things about Mac version. Will use in VMWare until I figure out how I want to migrate.

Quicken for Mac is OK but seems like a bad port of a Windose product. If your accountant uses Quicken for Windows then don't bother buying Quicken for Mac. The export process really stinks.

[Uncle Ted]

I do quite a bit of web authoring. I use Dreamweaver for content creation along with wamp which gives me Apache, MySQL, and PHP on local machine for testing before kicking stuff up to the remote server. I see that there is a similar thing on the Mac platform called mamp. Anyone use that?

I use Rapidweaver which is not as powerful as dreamweaver but does the job I need.

I haven't used MAMP. I have installed apache and other open source using macports, however. Note that a web server comes pre-installed on macs (System Preferences -> Sharing -> Select "Web Sharing" to start it). At one time it was apache but I don't know what they are shipping now.

[Jeff Lebowski]

General question: On Windows I use a little utility called Faststone Capture to do screen captures. The best thing about it is that it has a little pop-up that magnifies the screen by the cross-hairs when you are capturing an area. Also gives nice control over output format, default location, etc. I understand that the mac OS has some basic screen capturing built-in (including Grab), but has anyone used one of the many Mac OS screen capture apps that you particularly like?

[Uncle Ted]

General question: On Windows I use a little utility called Faststone Capture to do screen captures. The best thing about it is that it has a little pop-up that magnifies the screen by the cross-hairs when you are capturing an area. Also gives nice control over output format, default location, etc. I understand that the mac OS has some basic screen capturing built-in (including Grab), but has anyone used one of the many Mac OS screen capture apps that you particularly like?

I have always just used grab and its many shortcuts...

Command-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop
Command-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop
Command-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop
Command-Control-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard
Command-Control-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard
Command-Control-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it to the clipboard

Note that you can zoom in/out by doing Command-Alt-= and Command-Alt-- anytime/any app.

To change the output format of grab you can do the following in a Terminal window:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type <image_format>
killall SystemUIServer

Where <image_format> is jpg, tiff, pdf, png, bmp, pict, etc.

You can also capture screen shots in a script using the screencapture command (see "man screencapture" in the Terminal).

[Uncle Ted]

Things I don't like:

-Menu bar stuck to top of window. Makes much more sense to attach it to app like they do on windows.

The theory behind why the menu bar is at the top of the screen on a mac...

One of the basic principles that informs the Mac OS X menubar is something called Fitts' Law, which I first learned about from John Gruber of Daring Fireball in a post here. To keep things brief, however, I'll just quote a short introduction from the Wikipedia:

In ergonomics, Fitts' law is a model of human movement, predicting the time required to rapidly move from a starting position to a final target area, as a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target. Fitts' law is used to model the act of pointing, both in the real world, for example, with a hand or finger and on computers, for example, with a mouse.

To summarize: Fitts' Law is about how far you have to travel to hit a target, and how easy that target is to hit. Apple implemented these concepts (and I'm sure plenty of others) when designing their menubar by pinning it to the very top of the display, not only from a hierarchal standpoint (you can always look to the very top left of your display to find out exactly which app you're in), but also from a 'make it easy as possible to hit this' perspective. You can simply fling your mouse 'up' and you're at the menubar; even if you click on the very top-most pixel above File, Edit or Help, you'll still hit that menu item and activate it. It's a seemingly minor detail, but one that can help quite a bit during one's daily computing.
[...]

[Brian]

iTerm
Emacs
QuickSilver
Keynote!!!!!!!
Keynote!!!!!!!
growl
mac ports
omnigraffle
nethack
zsh