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Essential Apps for Macbook Air Owners???

I

iGrant

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 20, 2006
542
0
Ridgeway
Hey Guys,

I get my new Macbook Air (well used but new to me) tomorrow and I was wondering what are some apps that ya'll consider to be essential for the Macbook Air? Here is the list I have so far, but I want ya'lls imput:

smcFanControl
iFreeMem
Quicksilver <-- never heard of this one before

Also I have heard coolbook, but am hoping to avoid it with smcFanControl.

Thanks
iGrant
 
T

three

Cancelled
Jan 22, 2008
1,484
1,225
ClickToFlash (Safari) or Flashblock (Firefox) when web browsing, these are a life saver for any Revision A or B MacBook Air.
 
I

iGrant

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 20, 2006
542
0
Ridgeway
three said:
ClickToFlash (Safari) or Flashblock (Firefox) when web browsing, these are a life saver for any Revision A or B MacBook Air.
Click to expand...

Arg I knew I forgot something, I've heard about ClickToFlash, but was wondering if there was one for Firefox as well.

. . . can't wait for the day we have a Native Google Chrome browser for the mac . . .

-iGrant
 
iSee

iSee

macrumors 68040
Oct 25, 2004
3,540
272
iGrant said:
iFreeMem
Click to expand...

It's a little better if you do not use this.
It just clears a disk cache that will be cleared anyway if the memory is needed for anything else.

It should be pretty harmless, but does prevent the cache from doing its job.
 
Spanky Deluxe

Spanky Deluxe

macrumors demi-god
Mar 17, 2005
5,285
1,789
London, UK
three said:
ClickToFlash (Safari) or Flashblock (Firefox) when web browsing, these are a life saver for any Revision A or B MacBook Air.
Click to expand...

Why just for Rev A and B? I thought overheating due to Flash use was only a problem on Rev As. Aren't Rev Bs essentially the same internally as Rev Cs?
 
miniConvert

miniConvert

macrumors 68040
Mar 4, 2006
3,264
3
Kent, UK - the 'Garden of England'.
I'm on a Rev A 1.8/SSD with Snow Leopard and I don't use any 'tinkering' apps. It's fine, just leave it alone to do its own thing! :D

Grab the apps you need. Personally I've learnt to love Safari for web browsing, and as most of what I do is web based that's my core app. Office 2008 for Mac is good, though, well, good enough, if you need it.
 
GoCubsGo

GoCubsGo

macrumors Nehalem
Feb 19, 2005
35,742
155
thegoldenmackid said:
I don't think that there are any apps that are different from any of the other lists that we do. Try this.
Click to expand...

Actually for the Air there are a few apps that are more important to the Air than the other notebooks. You just couldn't know this if you haven't owned an Air. :rolleyes:

iGrant what rev did you end up buying? I'd say coolbook is an option.
 
edcrusher

edcrusher

macrumors newbie
Nov 27, 2009
19
0
:apple:Hey Guys I am new to the MBA, in my opinion these are nice apps to Have on the MBA:

Prey
Prey is a lightweight application that will help you track and find your laptop if it ever gets stolen. It works in all operating systems and not only is it Open Source but also completely free.

iAlertU
iAlertU is the first of its kind alarm system for your Apple MacBook computer. Basically iAlertU is a car alarm for your Apple Mac. iAlertU uses the built in sudden motion sensor (SMS) device to detect movement of your Apple MacBook and triggers an audible and visual alarm. The alarm can also be triggered by keyboard and mouse/trackpad movement. The alarm is designed to continue sounding even after the Apple MacBook screen has been closed.

ZumoDrive
Take ALL of your music, photos, and docs everywhere!
Cloud Storage that Feels Local (1GB Free)
Perfect for Netbooks and Smartphones
Automatic Backup & Sync

Evernote
Welcome to your notable world. Use Evernote to save your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then find them all on any computer or device you use. For free.

VLC
VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, MPEG-1, mp3, ogg, aac ...) as well as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, and various streaming protocols

Monolingual
Monolingual is a program for removing unnecessary language resources from Mac OS X, in order to reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space. It requires at least Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and also works on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).


Click to flash is deftly a must also last version flash player.

I think using Onix to disable the safari cache will loads the webpages faster, so this avoids the 4200 :s drive to search for cache :)


:apple:
 
L

LinMac

macrumors 65816
Oct 28, 2007
1,270
43
Flash 10.1 prerelease is excellent on the Macbook Air for about 15 minutes until your browser crashes. 15 minutes after you restart your browser it will crash again then repeat that over and over.

Flashblock or Click to Flash are definitely needed.

Don't mistake the Macbook Air Rev. A for having a problem. Flash is terrible on my Macbook Pro 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo. The Rev. A is just a weaker machine so the unnecessarily heavy software will weigh it down more.
 
J

jimboutilier

macrumors 6502a
Nov 10, 2008
647
42
Denver
xslimmer - save space and load apps faster
smartsleep - sleep faster and save space
bokeh - if you find you are regularly CPU bound you can focus priority on a particular app
crossover - If your windows needs are more limited than a real VM and the apps you need to run run in crossover
iDefrag - if you had an HDD baed MBA this not only defregments (as an erase restore can do) but optimized file placement and directory structures (still only need once or twice a year unless you run an almost full disk a lot).
VLC - ditto - much lower cpu needs than QuickTime or Flip4Mac
Onyx or Cocktail - both great
SuperDuper! - image backup for a bootable backup/restore option on a USB HD
Carbonite or Mozy - or similar online backup to keep your files safe between image backups

Good luck with your new AIR - they are great machines.
 
edcrusher

edcrusher

macrumors newbie
Nov 27, 2009
19
0
Ohhh I almost forget it!!

Aol radio app... Who needs its entire music collection w/ this service... Not me... so I recovered 10 GB of my hand picked music.
 
spriter

spriter

macrumors 65816
May 13, 2004
1,460
586
iGrant said:
Hey Guys,
Also I have heard coolbook, but am hoping to avoid it with smcFanControl.
Click to expand...

I use CoolBook although not primarily for keeping the temps down and fans from coming on, but for the extra battery life.

Seriously, I never thought my MBA could come anywhere near to matching my old MacBook's 5 hours at the library in Office but it's practically the same :D
 
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