so what's so great about macs?

[nageov3t]

ok, sorry for the inflammatory title

I bought a macbook air today -- I was in the market for a new laptop, it was in my price range, and I figured what the hell, let's see how the other half lives.

I've been playing with it all afternoon, and it's pretty cool. great build quality, even if it did take me 30 minute of googling on my smart phone to figure out how to left click

I'm just wondering, though, are there any "killer apps" or must-have programs on the Mac that I should be exploring?

also, on a side note, is there actually any use for the desktop? I see there's a second page that I can three-finger over to that has neat little widgets and stuff, almost like an android phone, but it would be cool if I could just simplify things and put those widgets on the same screen as everything else.

 

[JSt0rm]

must have apps?

rarmachine

vlc

cyberduck for ftp

I use a mac for work and invoicing and browsing the web. I just grabbed a ipad 2 and dont really touch my macbook anymore but my macpro gets abused used 12 hours a day 7 days a week.

 

[Paperlantern]

ok, sorry for the inflammatory title

I bought a macbook air today -- I was in the market for a new laptop, it was in my price range, and I figured what the hell, let's see how the other half lives.

You mean other 10%.

I've been playing with it all afternoon, and it's pretty cool. great build quality, even if it did take me 30 minute of googling on my smart phone to figure out how to left click

You mean right click.

I'm just wondering, though, are there any "killer apps" or must-have programs on the Mac that I should be exploring?

also, on a side note, is there actually any use for the desktop? I see there's a second page that I can three-finger over to that has neat little widgets and stuff, almost like an android phone, but it would be cool if I could just simplify things and put those widgets on the same screen as everything else.

Sometimes its not as easy to get to the desktop as it would be to just gesture over to the screen where those icons live. Its almost like an instant "here's everything you would probably use". Personally i like the 4 finger upswipe to see all open windows more or less tiled on the screen, or I use the classic "alt-tab" (command-tab) to switch between windows.

The two finger drag to scroll is just genius though for infinitely faster usage of the web browser without a mouse.

 

[nageov3t]

er, no, I meant left click. lol

I wasn't aware that there was a "click" to the trackpad, I was just trying to tap it (like how every other trackpad works). I discovered that you could press hard and click eventually, but I spent half an hour thinking that my trackpad was broken.

(once I figured that out, I was able to enable tapping... surprised that it's not enabled by default, though)

 

[jhansman]

Why, doncha know, they just work. Unless they don't.

 

[Kadarin]

er, no, I meant left click. lol

I wasn't aware that there was a "click" to the trackpad, I was just trying to tap it (like how every other trackpad works). I discovered that you could press hard and click eventually, but I spent half an hour thinking that my trackpad was broken.

(once I figured that out, I was able to enable tapping... surprised that it's not enabled by default, though)

Heh.. I agree that it should be enabled by default. I admit that when I first encountered the multi-gesture trackpad on a Macbook Pro I had the same experience, but it didn't take me a half hour to figure it out

 

[alent1234]

Macs are unix in a nice hardware package

 

[Red Storm]

Macs are unix in a nice hardware package

This, which is why I never find myself looking at Windows notebooks. Not only is their build quality more often than not less than equal (especially that trackpad!), not having Windows as your main OS is one of the pros.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Must-have apps? Surely you are not suggesting...

But in all seriousness, I think it really depends on your workflow.

Still clinging to Windows? It doesn't get a lot better than Parallels 7. You get to run Windows, per usual, but the three-finger swipe brings you back to Mac, and another three-finger swipe means Windows. Doesn't get any easier than that, really. Same thing applies to Linux. Plus under Windows, 3D acceleration is supported and quite fast, so some recent games, most older games, and of course a lot of CAD and modeling software under Windows... just work. A shame 4GB is the sky.

Media player? Surprisingly, it's not VLC. The new cool kid on the block is MPlayerX, and on top of launching and closing faster than VLC, it's more light-weight, supports about the same count of media formats, and the interface is a lot more elegant. Free download under App Store.

Speaking of App Store, check it out if you are missing small tidbits. It has quite a collection now.

If you are into fixing photos and working on colors, Lightroom 3 is pretty good. Aperture 3 is another good alternative.

Making music? GarageBand is where you get started. Then the rest depends on whether you really need more control. This one likely came pre-installed.

Making movies? iMovies is where you'll pull the trailer, preview, release, ending, and spin-off of pretty much any home movie. But if you are trying to win a Grammy award, try Final Cut Pro 7. Final Cut Pro X if you feel like you are just not that "pro" at making movies.

Those should be enough to get you started. Mac has just as many applications as Windows, or someone lost count, so I think you'll have to explore the rest of the land by yourself and see what is there.

 

[TheStu]

Back when they had a visible button, OP wouldn't have had a problem left clicking.

I first switched to OS X back when XP was number 1, Vista was still called Longhorn and 7 wasn't even rumored.

I was in school, so using the system like 14+ hours a day, and I very quickly fell in love with the increased speed and efficiency at which I could work compared to how things were in Windows. I had 512MB RAM in that little guy, and with that I was able to have XP open in a VM, Office, iTunes, Safari and Firefox, terminal, eclipse, xcode (sometimes), textedit and a handful of other things open. And with Expose, I was able to move between them very quickly.

Nowadays, I use my laptop significantly less, certainly nothing on the level of what I used to do. But, unless PC makers finally figure out how to make a decent trackpad (and then make it work well in Windows), I won't be getting anything else. Yes, for the $1200 or so (after tax) that I spent on my Air I could have gotten the 17" beast of a gaming system that I friend bought, but I feel that my money was well spent, even if it is the older core 2 model.

I have always preferred VMWare over Parallels, but the latter has made huge improvements in the past few years, much more so than VMWare, so maybe I should give it another whirl.

I prefer Quicktime due to the lack of window chrome, but like VLC for videos with subs and more off the wall codecs.

DaisyDisk is great for visualizing how much space you have on your drive

XSlimmer to reduce the footprint of your applications

 

[GTSRguy]

to get your gadgets to show up on your current screen, i have a button on my keyboard that looks like a speedometer its on F4 Key. If that doesn't do it, there is a system pref somewhere that tell the comp to not keep the widgets on a separate desktop, then that button should work. Use 4 fingers (thumb = three) and spread them all apart, and it goes to desktop (like ctrl+d in windows). Do that same motion but pull together, and it jumps to all your apps. You can choose which apps go on this screen, for quick access. To organize all your screens, swipe three fingers upward. I have the setting on my trackpad so that touch acts like a click, so i don't need to actually push down and click it. So, for me, right click it touch the trackpad with two fingers. If none of this is working then maybe these are things you can turn on or set up in trackpad pref. Im assuming your air's trackpad has the same functions as my iMacs trackpad. to scroll down webpages, use two fingers up or down. To go back in safari, use two fingers to the right, and it wipes away the current screen an goes back a page. Forward a page is opposite.

There are a lot of cool things to do and lots of new methods of doing things, i would def dive in as much as you can. Some killer apps are garageband, iMovie, iPhoto, photo booth, I'm new myself though. Top right corner is spotlight, same thing as win 7 quick search, you can find anything from there. I don't remember what win does, but spotlight will separate your results into categories.

 

[MotionMan]

ok, sorry for the inflammatory title

I bought a macbook air today -- I was in the market for a new laptop, it was in my price range, and I figured what the hell, let's see how the other half lives.

I've been playing with it all afternoon, and it's pretty cool. great build quality, even if it did take me 30 minute of googling on my smart phone to figure out how to left click

I'm just wondering, though, are there any "killer apps" or must-have programs on the Mac that I should be exploring?

also, on a side note, is there actually any use for the desktop? I see there's a second page that I can three-finger over to that has neat little widgets and stuff, almost like an android phone, but it would be cool if I could just simplify things and put those widgets on the same screen as everything else.

How much research did you do before spending over $1,000 on a computer?

As for apps, if you still need to run Windows, Parallels is the way to go (I use it all the time at work).

Carbon Copy Clone, SuperDuper and ChronoSync are great for backups and archives.

Cyberduck for FTP.

Handbrake for CD/DVD archiving. MicroVideoConverter and Video Monkey also.

NeoOffice and TextWrangler for those odd files that won't open in Office (and other uses).

RightZoom for "fixing" the green button.

Transmission for torrents.

VLC for video playback.

MotionMan

 

[Bateluer]

How much research did you do before spending over $1,000 on a computer?

As for apps, if you still need to run Windows, Parallels is the way to go (I use it all the time at work).

Carbon Copy Clone, SuperDuper and ChronoSync are great for backups and archives.

Cyberduck for FTP.

Handbrake for CD/DVD archiving. MicroVideoConverter and Video Monkey also.

NeoOffice and TextWrangler for those odd files that won't open in Office (and other uses).

RightZoom for "fixing" the green button.

Transmission for torrents.

VLC for video playback.

MotionMan

How does NeoOffice compare to LibreOffice?

 

[MotionMan]

How does NeoOffice compare to LibreOffice?

I have never used LibreOffice.

MotionMan

 

[Bateluer]

I have never used LibreOffice.

MotionMan

Its the fork of OpenOffice.org after Oracle bought Sun and behaved like a dick. A large chunk of the OOo devs went to LbO when they forked. I use it on Windows as my primarily office suite, I installed it on the MBA, but haven't done much with it on there yet.

 

[silverpig]

I don't like cyberduck for FTP. I was using it over my LAN and it doesn't do 100 Mbit speeds well at all. It chokes up and you get stuck at like 10 Mbit or worse (or at least that was the case last I tried it). I use transmit as my ftp/scp client.

 

[MotionMan]

Its the fork of OpenOffice.org after Oracle bought Sun and behaved like a dick. A large chunk of the OOo devs went to LbO when they forked. I use it on Windows as my primarily office suite, I installed it on the MBA, but haven't done much with it on there yet.

Yeah, I know what it is. I just have never used it.

MotionMan

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I don't use OOo or LbO on Macs. Don't like the X11 requirement and relatively clunky interface. Fortunately work has an Office site license so I get a take-home code for $10.

That said, I prefer LbO on Windows. We hates, hates, HATES the ribbons, precious... yesss... hates...

 

[MotionMan]

I don't use OOo or LbO on Macs. Don't like the X11 requirement and relatively clunky interface. Fortunately work has an Office site license so I get a take-home code for $10.

That said, I prefer LbO on Windows. We hates, hates, HATES the ribbons, precious... yesss... hates...

I have Office on my Mac, but, since my work uses WordPerfect, I sometimes need to open a WP file at home.

I much prefer to use Word over OpenOffice.

MotionMan

 

[dionx]

Quicksilver for an app-launcher

 

[alfa147x]

Quicksilver for an app-launcher

Why is Quicksilver better than SpotLight?

 

[Rottie]

Desktop: 2.5 GHz e5200, 6GB RAM, 120GB SSD, 2*1.5TB, GTX260 216 896MB, Windows 7 64
Laptop: 1.4 GHz C2D, 4GB RAM, 64GB SSD, 320m, OS X 10.6.6
Devices: HTC Surround, iPhone 1, iPod 5.5 30GB

Is this your first gen MacBook Air?

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Why is Quicksilver better than SpotLight?

It's quicker and you can customize it more. Alfred from the App Store is another good choice.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

I like the way OSX destroyed my Win7 partition when it updated. That's a nifty feature.

Edit - also the feature that disconnects me from WiFi every 15 minutes. Great productivity feature right there.

 

[TheStu]

Is this your first gen MacBook Air?

Well.... it is a 2nd/3rd gen Air frame, so no drop down doors, uSATA stick SSD. But it would be a first gen 11" Air. It is the Oct 2010 Model.