Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

new MBP owner

B

bigjt11

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 21, 2007
8
0
hello

i have just purchased myself a new shiny macbook pro 17", as i wanted a new laptop and decided there are much better things out there than Vista, also been a unix sys admin, i liked the reliability of the Mac, been built on a unix back end.

Im now deciding what sort of applications i need to get hold of, can anyone give me some advice, im after media players, office suites, burning software, instant messenger, photo editing software, etc

Any advice would be much appreciated and looking forward to playing with the Mac, and seeing how much better than windows it is

John
 
Congratulation. Have fun with your new MBP.

Sorry I can't be of help.

I mainly use Quick Time Player with lots of add-ins.

For office suite, there is MS Office 2004 or any open office compatible with Mac OS X.
 
Welcome :)

Although this list hasn't been updated in ages the software list still includes some tips on where to look and what to try. The link is in my signature.

Hope that helps :)
 
mac pretty much have the multimedia dpt on lock with quicktime and itunes.
I play all my videos through quicktime and my music through itunes.
For office application you might want to take a look at neooffice.org or openoffice.org
you can also use microsoft office (it rocks on a mac).
You can also try iwork from apple.

Instant messaging use ichat or i think the name is uranium is a multi purpose messaging app.
 
Adium is the best IM client for Mac in my opinion. It's highly customisable and works with as many IM services as you can imagine, although it doesn't provide webcam functionality.

Enjoy your new MBP, I want pics!
 
Congrats on your purchase! I love my MBP, and I know you will too!

Adium is great for managing multiple IM clients.

Microsoft Office 2004 is the only choice for an office suite, in my opinion. It runs rather sluggishly through Rosetta right now, but you should see a HUGE performance bump when Office 2008 for Mac comes out.

Try Aperture for photo management, or try Adobe Lightroom (currently in Beta). Both will work well with Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Hope that helps! Enjoy the MBP!
 
I find that I can't send files through Adium.. I use iChat most of the time because it I can... pluse.. It supports audio and video chat.

If you get tired of Safari as I did you may want to look into Camino. Seems to be the most stable and least laggy browser i've used.

If you're gonna be trying out a lot of applications i recomend appzapper. It makes sure there are no files left behind. Sometimes dropping an app into the trash doesn't remove these.

There are also some cool widget out there. If you wanna keep track of your system I recomend iStat Pro.

For burning I use Toast Titanium 8 works great. Also if your into making DVDs or backing up copies.. I recomend Mac the Ripper to rip the data from DVDs. It can then be burnt using Toast.

As for photo editing ... I'm a Photoshop man.. I'm getting by useing CS2 on my windows machine. Waiting for CS3 before I install it on my MBP.
 
Like others have said, Adium is great! And if you like downloading torrents, Azureus is good as well as the P2P client Acquisition. Oh and don't forget Flip4Mac!!! It is essential for viewing .WMV and .AVI files. Handbreak is great for ripping DVD's to your computer. VLC is also a good video player that plays nearly everything. Hope that helps!
 
bigjt11 said:
hello

i have just purchased myself a new shiny macbook pro 17", as i wanted a new laptop and decided there are much better things out there than Vista, also been a unix sys admin, i liked the reliability of the Mac, been built on a unix back end.

Im now deciding what sort of applications i need to get hold of, can anyone give me some advice, im after media players, office suites, burning software, instant messenger, photo editing software, etc

Any advice would be much appreciated and looking forward to playing with the Mac, and seeing how much better than windows it is

John
Click to expand...

Your a unix sys admin and you were using Vista? Anyway, I started using OS X about a year coming from linux.

Here is what I use;
From apple; Address book (for contact management of my IM/e-mail/cell numbers), iSync (for syncing backups, and with my BT phone), iCal, ichat (for the video chat), Mail, Safari.

I use adium for most of my IMing needs. I'd like to ichat, but it doesn't do MS Live or yahoo. Also it only lets you be signed into one account type at a time. 10.5 fixes the second issue.

Azureus for bittorrents

Chicken of VNC (recently upgrade to Apple remote desktop) for VNC client (server is built-in).

http://perian.org/ to add support to QT for playing most media types. Flip4mac for wmv, and VLC for whats left.

Cyberduck for FTP

MediaFork/HandBrake for ripping DVDs

iPhoto for maniging photos you take with your camera. It's photo editing is limited, but does anything I need.

iTunes for media mangement

iWork is great for spreadsheets and text docs. You PC should include a trial for it.

Max for ripping CDs(uses LAME).

Poisoned for P2p

Safari for web browsing

smultron for editing files over FTP threw cyberduck

UnRarX for unraring rar archives

tunnelblick for openvpn

visualhub for converting files to mp4

http://www.macports.org/ for any unix program I want to add.

and I use VMware and Parallels for running windows and Fedora core when I need to troobleshoot something.
 
cheers

thanks for all the advice ,looking forward to setting my mac up, just found out from apple, should be receiving it on friday or monday at the latest

thank god, no more dodgy windows system crashes
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back