Buying a Mac...

Cupara

Well-known member
I need advice on keeping things straight and in working order.

First are there any must have programs or apps that I should have on my MacBook Pro? I am getting the 13.3 inch monitor, 128 GB SSD, and 4 GB RAM and I have one app bookmarked to buy for it to help me keep things straight with my 4 classes.

I know there is no need for defragging on an SSD. Is there any concerns I should take note of? Any programs that I should use to create XenForo mods and iPhone apps?

BTW, I have a month to prep for bringing the new Mac into my home. Yes my first Mac, I'm so excited, King Kovifor was the reason I started looking at getting one.

Thanks
 
As for Mail, I tried a lot of Mail Clients, but finally I returned to the default Mail App in OS X
It's all you need.

Some programs I oftenly use:
  • CCleaner for Mac: Keep your Mac clean for unnecessary files. (It's very popular for PC, recently came out for Mac)
  • AppCleaner: If you want to remove an app, it can be done with this removal tool. It searches all related file and removes them.
  • VLC: VLC Player for Mac
  • TextWrangler: For simple file Editing
  • Coda 2: For scripting purposes
  • Adium: An all-in-one messaging system (MSN, Facebook, AIM, ...)
  • Downloading iMessage Beta is good if you use iMessage on your iPhone/iPod/iPad
  • If coming from Office in Windows, I suggest you buy Office for Mac. I just love it. It's (in design) nicer than the Microsoft one and it works as well as it did on Windows. I don't see a reason to switch to Keynote and Pages (Apple's PowerPoint and Word)
 
I like VMware Fusion in case I ever need to install Windows, Linux or any other OS.
I have Windows computers already and a linux system, thanks for the suggestion.

As for Mail, I tried a lot of Mail Clients, but finally I returned to the default Mail App in OS X
It's all you need.

Some programs I oftenly use:
  • CCleaner for Mac: Keep your Mac clean for unnecessary files. (It's very popular for PC, recently came out for Mac)
  • AppCleaner: If you want to remove an app, it can be done with this removal tool. It searches all related file and removes them.
  • VLC: VLC Player for Mac
  • TextWrangler: For simple file Editing
  • Coda 2: For scripting purposes
  • Adium: An all-in-one messaging system (MSN, Facebook, AIM, ...)
  • Downloading iMessage Beta is good if you use iMessage on your iPhone/iPod/iPad
  • If coming from Office in Windows, I suggest you buy Office for Mac. I just love it. It's (in design) nicer than the Microsoft one and it works as well as it did on Windows. I don't see a reason to switch to Keynote and Pages (Apple's PowerPoint and Word)
Very nice, I intended to get Coda 2. Adium not sure about considering I rarely use messengers. I will be getting my Mac after OS X Mountain Lion is released so iMessage should be out of beta by then but I def want that.

What about an FTP program? I'll have to house my beta app somewhere so if I lose it on my system I have a backup. LOL
 
I have Windows computers already and a linux system, thanks for the suggestion.


Very nice, I intended to get Coda 2. Adium not sure about considering I rarely use messengers. I will be getting my Mac after OS X Mountain Lion is released so iMessage should be out of beta by then but I def want that.

What about an FTP program? I'll have to house my beta app somewhere so if I lose it on my system I have a backup. LOL

Perhaps you're familiar with FileZilla?
It's also on the Mac.

There's another one I use: ForkLift. It's a clean and easy tool to do FTP'ing.
I wasn't sure if I'd buy it, but I finally bought it because it was on sale for $1. It's pretty good, but I won't say it better or less good than FileZilla in what it does. It is better in the looks though :)
 
Perhaps you're familiar with FileZilla?
It's also on the Mac.

There's another one I use: ForkLift. It's a clean and easy tool to do FTP'ing.
I wasn't sure if I'd buy it, but I finally bought it because it was on sale for $1. It's pretty good, but I won't say it better or less good than FileZilla in what it does. It is better in the looks though :)
I thought WS_FTP was made for Mac but it is only for Windows. Soooooooo I will compare all FTP's suggested.

I use Cyberduck.
Thanks
 
Trying out Windows versions of each FTP program suggested if one exists. I can't wait to get my hands on Coda though.

I have used Filezilla, not impressed. I need a solution where I can have multiple connections, one to my main site, one to my test site, and one to my new site I'm building.
 
I know there is no need for defragging on an SSD. Is there any concerns I should take note of?
A bit off topic, but fragmentation is more a NTFS / Windows problem. EXT4 and Mac filesystem don't have the same problems, unless your disk starts nearing full. Not saying NTFS is bad by design, it's just a different philosophy behind those systems.
 
A bit off topic, but fragmentation is more a NTFS / Windows problem. EXT4 and Mac filesystem don't have the same problems, unless your disk starts nearing full. Not saying NTFS is bad by design, it's just a different philosophy behind those systems.
Not off topic at all. My MacBook Pro will have a 128 GB SSD so not HDD at all. Don't think SSD has to be defragged at all but never hurts to be safe.
 
I don't think it is recommended to defrag a SSD at all, it can significantly reduce the lifespan of it, and I have heard allot of people have problems with corrupted filesystems after defragmenting SSD's. I am not really familiar with Mac filesystems though, but free space fragmentation might be a problem if you are one of those that quickly run out of harddrive space. For most users, I think these will be theoretical problems, you would rarely encounter them.
 
As for Mail, I tried a lot of Mail Clients, but finally I returned to the default Mail App in OS X
It's all you need.

Some programs I oftenly use:
  • CCleaner for Mac: Keep your Mac clean for unnecessary files. (It's very popular for PC, recently came out for Mac)

I didn't know they had released a Mac version so thanks for mentioning it, am downloading this now!

As for mail clients I have never got on very well with the default mail program and use Opera instead, since I prefer the way it filters mail (particularly only showing unread mail in the main pane if you want, so you can have mutliple unreads over a period of time to create a sort of "important list of stuff still to deal with").

I also use Textwrangler.

For word processing and spreadsheets I use OpenOffice - it's free and very good IMO.

What do people use for image viewing? I use Xee but it's nowhere near as nice as Irfanview on the PC.
 
SourceTree is a great git client. And it's free.

I have used Filezilla, not impressed. I need a solution where I can have multiple connections, one to my main site, one to my test site, and one to my new site I'm building.

Not sure which version you were using. But Filezilla for Mac allows you to have several tabs open to different servers.
 
I didn't know they had released a Mac version so thanks for mentioning it, am downloading this now!

As for mail clients I have never got on very well with the default mail program and use Opera instead, since I prefer the way it filters mail (particularly only showing unread mail in the main pane if you want, so you can have mutliple unreads over a period of time to create a sort of "important list of stuff still to deal with").

I also use Textwrangler.

For word processing and spreadsheets I use OpenOffice - it's free and very good IMO.

What do people use for image viewing? I use Xee but it's nowhere near as nice as Irfanview on the PC.

It's even in the Mac App Store, in the TOP 10 Free downloaded apps.
Well, Word is better in my opinion. And 110€ is a fair price :) Of course if you really want something free, Open- or LibreOffice are good.

I just use Preview for Image viewing. It's good enough for what I need it. :)
 
If you're getting the 128G SSD, isn't that the MacBook Air, the one with out an optical drive?

I'm getting my wife a Mac soon, and I'm thinking about getting the standard MacBook Pro 13", with a "stardard" drive (500GB or so?). She needs the DVD drive.

I didn't know that the non-Air MacBook Pro in 13" had an option of 128G SSD. I might try that instead.
 
For email you might want to try Postbox; it has some of the best Gmail support.

It's for Mac and Windows (I use it on Windows).
 
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