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mgzilla

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 28, 2009
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New Jersey
As you may have already realized, A LOT of new Mac users are just now getting their brand new beautiful 21.5" or 27" iMac. Also, some are still waiting for theirs to arrive (currently waiting for the i7 in my sig to get here Monday or Tuesday!) so this would be great to pass the time.

I'm a beginner Mac user (though I have used my friends' before), and I just want to know, free or not, what programs/software do you recommend? Whether it keeps your Mac going strong, helps with this or that, or is just plain fun...

Thanks in advance!
 
Handbrake + VLC player + Meta-X

this rips DVDs to iTunes format. All are free and are amazing. Handbrake does the work, meta x tags the files. Vlc is just needs to be installed so the DVD can get ripped.
 
Paperless, for storing digital copies of receipts.

Transmit, for FTP.

Synergy (the KVM, not the iTunes helper) for single keyboard/mouse sharing with your old PC. :)
 
You can also take a look at this apps bundle that they are giving away for free at the moment:

http://www.macheist.com/

Most of these are shareware costing 20 bucks each but they are now given away for free. I'm sure you will find at least one of these apps useful :)
 
Handbrake, VLC player, Vmware Fusion 3.0, I would hold on off windows 7 till bootcamp has drivers for it....yes people have managed to get it running but if you are just starting out I would stick with vista or XP if you have to have a windows side to boot too. I have windows 7 in VMware that takes care of any windows needs I might have.
 
Internet browser - Firefox
IM Client (AIM, MSN, Facebook, Yahoo!, etc.) - Adium
Bittorent Client - Transmission (lightweight), or uTorrent
Media Player - VLC
 
Here are some in no particular order:

xACT, Max, ALL2MP3, iTunes-Lame, Stuffit Expander, AppZapper, Toast, Carbon Copy Cloner, Disk Inventory X, OmniDiskSweeper, iStat Menus, Perian
 
Adium, smcFanControl, Google Earth, Onyx, Transmission, VLC, Perian, Glimmer Blocker, TweetDeck, Little Snitch, Firefox, Mac Fuse, Growl & iWork.

Those are some of the first things I put on my Mac.
 
hi i ordered my imac27, and it will be my first mac computer. someone told me i need open source drivers to use usb external harddrives in ntfs file format. could you link me to a good one please?
 
As already pointed out we have existing threads on this. Please use those instead. Thanks.
 
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