Buying a Mac...

[Anthony Parsons]

I like VMware Fusion in case I ever need to install Windows, Linux or any other OS.

I actually got rid of VMWare Fusion 4 and switched to Parallels instead, as VMWare latest version is buggy as all hell with Lion and more resource intensive than Parallels is.

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 would add to this, if you plan on using something like virtual ware to run virtual environments within Mac, then from experience you need 8GB RAM minimum. If you use bootcamp alone, ie. boot mac or boot Windows, then 4GB is fine... but if using virtualisation, 8GB is a minimum.

Our systems actually have 16GB installed due to using virtualisation through Parallels, and just running Lion + Windows 7 in a virtual environment chews just over 8GB default.

 

[a legacy reborn]

Where to start...I guess I can just make a list of awesome apps that are, well, awesome. I will only list apps that you might not know, browsers, social apps, and the such will not be listed as you probably already know they exist(ie. FireFox, Twitter, Filezilla, etc.)

Keka(good file archiver)

MAMP Pro - Mac, Apache, MySQL, PHP. Great for a development installation of xF among other things.

MarsEdit - In case you plan on running any blogs, great interface.

Mactracker - Just a good tool if you are interested in the history of Apple.

BetterTouchTool - Allows you to specify more touch gestures.

mSecure - Wonderful password-keeping tool.

Notational Velocity - Works wonders for taking notes and can be integrated with SimpleNote so that your notes will sync to the SimpleNote website and can therefore be accessed cross-platform.

VirtualBox - Works just as well as VMWare Fusion IMO and it is free.

ScreenFlow - If you plan on making tutorials or demonstrations then this is your friend!

Dash - $20 for the full version(had to say this because it is a sneaky app that disguises itself as free) but it is great to have all your programming language's docs in it as well as snippets.

Coda 2 - Useful for coding but I mostly use it for the reference books it has because I already have DreamWeaver.

Growl - You can use this as a temporary replacement to Mountain Lion's notification system.

HandBrake - If you have any .avi's or any other incompatible video format for Mac then you might want to use this to change them to something that is compatible, eg. .mp4.

Friendz - If you're an Xbox junky like I used to be or you just want to be able to keep in contact with friends then this is the app to use, works with Growl .

Adium - Someone mentioned this before, great messaging app.

Remote Mouse - Turn your phone into a mouse for your Mac.

Pulp - Great way to organize your news feed(s).

iWork - I personally favor iWork over Microsoft Office but to each his/her own.

That about sums it up, good luck with your Mac!

 

[Erik]

If you are considering Coda 2, take a look at Espresso as well. I looked at both and although it was very hard to make a decision, I ultimately decided on Espresso, at least until Coda improves some things that work very well in Espresso.

 

[bhuwan]

You won't regret buying a Mac
-mac user for 10+ years

 

[Cupara]

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.

Yeah I intend to use an external drive to store all my programs that get installed to save space on my Mac for school stuff.

SourceTree is a great git client. And it's free.



Not sure which version you were using. But Filezilla for Mac allows you to have several tabs open to different servers.

Oh I know but Filezilla kept crashing on my PC so I finally went back to IpSwitch.

I'd definitely recommend Coda 2 for FTP as it is very convent with a text editor already built in, and also a (SSH) terminal if you need that.

I checked out Coda 2 and quite a few apps. I'm getting Coda 2, Transmit, and CandyBar from the Panic group.

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.

Yep it is through my college bookstore. It comes with a 64, 128, or 256 GB SSD. The 256 is the 15" and the 128 I'm getting has a 15".

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).

Thanks, I'll give the Windows version a try first.

I actually got rid of VMWare Fusion 4 and switched to Parallels instead, as VMWare latest version is buggy as all hell with Lion and more resource intensive than Parallels is.


I would add to this, if you plan on using something like virtual ware to run virtual environments within Mac, then from experience you need 8GB RAM minimum. If you use bootcamp alone, ie. boot mac or boot Windows, then 4GB is fine... but if using virtualisation, 8GB is a minimum.

Our systems actually have 16GB installed due to using virtualisation through Parallels, and just running Lion + Windows 7 in a virtual environment chews just over 8GB default.

Nope, no plans as I have plenty of Windows machines and a Linux machine.

Where to start...I guess I can just make a list of awesome apps that are, well, awesome. I will only list apps that you might not know, browsers, social apps, and the such will not be listed as you probably already know they exist(ie. FireFox, Twitter, Filezilla, etc.)

Keka(good file archiver)

MAMP Pro - Mac, Apache, MySQL, PHP. Great for a development installation of xF among other things.

MarsEdit - In case you plan on running any blogs, great interface.

Mactracker - Just a good tool if you are interested in the history of Apple.

BetterTouchTool - Allows you to specify more touch gestures.

mSecure - Wonderful password-keeping tool.

Notational Velocity - Works wonders for taking notes and can be integrated with SimpleNote so that your notes will sync to the SimpleNote website and can therefore be accessed cross-platform.

VirtualBox - Works just as well as VMWare Fusion IMO and it is free.

ScreenFlow - If you plan on making tutorials or demonstrations then this is your friend!

Dash - $20 for the full version(had to say this because it is a sneaky app that disguises itself as free) but it is great to have all your programming language's docs in it as well as snippets.

Coda 2 - Useful for coding but I mostly use it for the reference books it has because I already have DreamWeaver.

Growl - You can use this as a temporary replacement to Mountain Lion's notification system.

HandBrake - If you have any .avi's or any other incompatible video format for Mac then you might want to use this to change them to something that is compatible, eg. .mp4.

Friendz - If you're an Xbox junky like I used to be or you just want to be able to keep in contact with friends then this is the app to use, works with Growl .

Adium - Someone mentioned this before, great messaging app.

Remote Mouse - Turn your phone into a mouse for your Mac.

Pulp - Great way to organize your news feed(s).

iWork - I personally favor iWork over Microsoft Office but to each his/her own.

That about sums it up, good luck with your Mac!

Keka was the name of the app I was looking for, thanks.
Thanks for the great list, I will definitely go through and bookmark them for me to get.

If you are considering Coda 2, take a look at Espresso as well. I looked at both and although it was very hard to make a decision, I ultimately decided on Espresso, at least until Coda improves some things that work very well in Espresso.

Interesting, I will check out Espresso, thanks.

You won't regret buying a Mac
-mac user for 10+ years

Oh I know I won't, my wife played with a demo model at the bookstore and she fell in love with it, she is thinking of getting one through her college in August.

 

[Jeremy]

I checked out Coda 2 and quite a few apps. I'm getting Coda 2, Transmit, and CandyBar from the Panic group.

Coda 2 + Transmit = My Sole Workstation. I still have Coda (1) installed, and may fire that up from time to time for the dedicated visual CSS editor.

 

[Cupara]

Coda 2 + Transmit = My Sole Workstation. I still have Coda (1) installed, and may fire that up from time to time for the dedicated visual CSS editor.

Wondering when you would reply. LOL

Thanks, I know for sure I am getting both of those unless I find another coding editor that is better than Coda 2.

 

[Jeremy]

Wondering when you would reply. LOL

Thanks, I know for sure I am getting both of those unless I find another coding editor that is better than Coda 2.

I read it minutes after you first posted. The only editor I've seen come close to Coda's usefulness to me is Espresso. Coda still reigns supreme. The books have been invaluable to me in every language I use. Transmit is just beautiful and also built into Coda. Remote editing = amazingness.

 

[Cupara]

I read it minutes after you first posted. The only editor I've seen come close to Coda's usefulness to me is Espresso. Coda still reigns supreme. The books have been invaluable to me in every language I use. Transmit is just beautiful and also built into Coda. Remote editing = amazingness.

Are there a tone of information to help with PHP coding and Zend?

Also what drive do you have? HDD or SSD?

 

[Erik]

Yeah I intend to use an external drive to store all my programs that get installed to save space on my Mac for school stuff.

Do it the other way around - keep your programs installed on your Mac so you have the speed advantage of an SSD (very quickly launching applications) and maybe keep your most used files on the SSD, but otherwise store your data on another hard drive (and maybe back it up in the cloud).

Are there a tone of information to help with PHP coding and Zend?

There is a PHP reference book, which is pretty much just a simplified version of the function references available on php.net. There is no Zend reference built in.

I just bought Coda 2, because I had a $100 App Store gift card to burn. It's really hard to decide whether I want to use Coda 2 or Espresso 2 more - both have some really nice advantages and irking disadvantages. I think I'll probably lean towards Coda 2 and fire up Espresso when I need the visual CSS editor and/or Espresso's very nice code navigator. If Panic would bring the visual CSS editor back to Coda 2 I would be sold (figuratively, since I already bought it)...

 

[Cupara]

Do it the other way around - keep your programs installed on your Mac so you have the speed advantage of an SSD (very quickly launching applications) and maybe keep your most used files on the SSD, but otherwise store your data on another hard drive (and maybe back it up in the cloud).

There is a PHP reference book, which is pretty much just a simplified version of the function references available on php.net. There is no Zend reference built in.

I just bought Coda 2, because I had a $100 App Store gift card to burn. It's really hard to decide whether I want to use Coda 2 or Espresso 2 more - both have some really nice advantages and irking disadvantages. I think I'll probably lean towards Coda 2 and fire up Espresso when I need the visual CSS editor and/or Espresso's very nice code navigator. If Panic would bring the visual CSS editor back to Coda 2 I would be sold (figuratively, since I already bought it)...

Thanks, guess I can use an external to house my school files and files that are for coding.

I'm anxious to get Coda 2 and get my Mac now.

 

[Forsaken]

Do it the other way around - keep your programs installed on your Mac so you have the speed advantage of an SSD (very quickly launching applications) and maybe keep your most used files on the SSD, but otherwise store your data on another hard drive (and maybe back it up in the cloud).

There is a PHP reference book, which is pretty much just a simplified version of the function references available on php.net. There is no Zend reference built in.

I just bought Coda 2, because I had a $100 App Store gift card to burn. It's really hard to decide whether I want to use Coda 2 or Espresso 2 more - both have some really nice advantages and irking disadvantages. I think I'll probably lean towards Coda 2 and fire up Espresso when I need the visual CSS editor and/or Espresso's very nice code navigator. If Panic would bring the visual CSS editor back to Coda 2 I would be sold (figuratively, since I already bought it)...

He should install only programs that would get an actual improvement (Adobe products) otherwise its wasted space.

Most programs do not take advantage of SSD speeds however.

 

[Cupara]

Here is a list of programs I am getting:

• OmniFocus
• Camtasia
• Quicktime Pro
• Drive Genius
• Sparrow
• CCleaner
• AppCleaner
• TextWrangler
• Coda 2
• Transmit
• CandyBar
• Adium
• Cyberduck
• Forklift (Not sure on this one, may stick with Cyberduck only)
• MAMP Pro
• BetterTouchTool
• Friendz

Not sure if there is anything else I will want or need until I have looked through the Mac App Store.

 

[Erik]

• Drive Genius

Can't remember which model you are getting, but if it's one with an SSD remember that you really do not want to defrag SSD's, it will destroy them.

You also have 3 FTP utilities in that list. I would strongly suggest you pick the one you like the most and learn how to use it efficiently rather than using all three.

Other than that seems like a pretty good list, here are some you may not know about that you may find interesting:

• CheatSheet
• ColorSnapper
• CodeRunner
• Sublime Text 2 (great for general text editing, if you want fast and useful code editing without having to power up a whole IDE)
• Kaleidoscope

And of course the usual suspects, Chrome, Firefox, Spotify, VLC, Dropbox, uTorrent, etc.

 

[Cupara]

Can't remember which model you are getting, but if it's one with an SSD remember that you really do not want to defrag SSD's, it will destroy them.

You also have 3 FTP utilities in that list. I would strongly suggest you pick the one you like the most and learn how to use it efficiently rather than using all three.

Other than that seems like a pretty good list, here are some you may not know about that you may find interesting:

• CheatSheet
• ColorSnapper
• CodeRunner
• Sublime Text 2 (great for general text editing, if you want fast and useful code editing without having to power up a whole IDE)
• Kaleidoscope

And of course the usual suspects, Chrome, Firefox, Spotify, VLC, Dropbox, uTorrent, etc.

Which ones are FTP and I will select from those.

Thanks for the other apps, they are bookmarked. I already have VLC on my list, missed it somehow. Dropbox is a must for me. Not sure about uTorrent or Spotify.

 

[DRE]

I wanna buy one but I'm not sure what to get. I'll go to Best Buy today and play with stuff.

 

[Arty]

Check out Path Finder.

Its a replacement for Finder. I don't think I could work without it. You can open different directories in separate tabs, queue copying/moving files, it offers quick access to applications from menu above tabs, tabbed terminal and lots of other stuff.

 

[raytrails]

As I've always said; get a life, get a Mac

 

[Kintaro]

I tried different ftp clients (free or paid)... for massive upload I use FileZilla, for little things: ForkLift, Fetch or Cyberduck.

 

[Erik]

Which ones are FTP and I will select from those.

Transmit, Cyberduck, and Forklift are all FTP clients. I use Transmit and love it, but I haven't tried the others.