Essential Mac Software?

[swbsam]

Just got my brand new mac and am a bit limited in my knowledge of what to get. What are some essentials? I.E. On a fresh windows install i always am sure to download Firefox, Winamp, and DVD Shrink (shhh!).

What programs on the mac are must haves? What browser does everyone use? I'm trying camino now - not bad.

 

[Kaido]

A few of my thoughts to get you started:

http://www.orionmods.com/blog/?p=8

http://www.orionmods.com/blog/?p=12

http://www.orionmods.com/blog/?p=14

 

[TheStu]

I personally like Safari, but it is not everyone's cup of tea.
To replace DVD Shrink, use either MacTheRipper, or Handbrake.
If you torrent (Linux ISOs of course ) Transmission is my favorite client.
Get something analogous to AppZapper for when you delete apps, that way they are totally dead.

Finally, I highly recommend (of course I would) reading my 2 guides here on the forums, people have found them useful, and maybe you will as well. I will link to them when I get a chance, i am in a bit of a hurry right now.

 

[GhettoFob]

Adium
VLC
VMware Fusion

 

[ubercaffeinated]

http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/xee.html

Xee

 

[LtPage1]

I tried Camino for a while- I really liked it, but kept running into compatibility issues. With 10.5, I'm back to Safari- it seems to be a little faster and more stable than Firefox. Go get Quicksilver, right now- I use it to open applications more often than I use the dock, or even navigating the Finder. Spotlight is still better for documents, but Quicksilver is instantaneous for applications.

Most comprehensive list I've run across for you:
http://www.applegeeks.com/sm/i....php/topic,1781.0.html

 

[Megatomic]

What do you guys think of Multilingual? Wired recommended it and I used it, so far so good. It took out all the PPC architectures, language packs, and keyboard layouts that I didn't need. Saved me like 5GB of space. Supposedly stripping out the PPC code is going to make the programs launch and run faster, but it was all so quick before that I'm having a hard time seeing the difference...

 

[TheStu]

I personally prefer XSlimmer, but that is because when I got XSlimmer, multilingual had a lot of issues with deleting too much stuff whereas XSlimmer has a networked blacklist that auto-updates. But, MultiLingual is free, and XSlimmer is not, so...

 

[Megatomic]

The blacklist is probably better on XSlimmer, but I did read the What's New on Multilingual and it's blacklist has been updated frequently. So far I haven't seen that I broke anything by using it, but then my system is probably not as customized as others are. Less to break so to speak.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
The blacklist is probably better on XSlimmer, but I did read the What's New on Multilingual and it's blacklist has been updated frequently. So far I haven't seen that I broke anything by using it, but then my system is probably not as customized as others are. Less to break so to speak.

Well, like I said, this was back over a year ago when I last tried MonoLingual, since then I have heard that it has improved a lot. That is one of the things that I have noticed about the mac, most of the 3rd party devs have a rapid development cycle and are constantly pushing out new updates.

 

[Megatomic]

D'oh! It is MonoLingual isn't it, not MultiLingual like I said originally. Thanks for not making me feel stupid.

 

[MovingTarget]

I don't know if Leapord has a similar feature built in, but I'd suggest caffeine, especially if it is a portable that you might use to watch an occasional movie.
iStumbler is pretty good for wardrivin....errr... analyzing the availability of free public wifi hotspots.

The suggestions of others in this thread pretty much cover most of it. You might want to head over the DC forum. I'm sure they'd have some suggestions. Yeah, I'm a part of that too.

Good luck.

 

[erikistired]

caffeine looks interesting.