Ode to Apple

Personally, I would not term myself an advanced Mac user, far none an experienced one. However, I’ve been very enthusiastic about the Mac lately and have been minutely observing many of the cool aspects of the Apple Mac. I still use a PowerBook G4 PPC and I would credit it for all the Mac stuffs that I’ve learnt so far.

Today, let me try to compile a list of applications that you’ll need on the Mac after conversion from a Windows world. This should apply to anyone who is new to the Mac. Nonetheless, you may need few more additional applications depending on your profession. For instance, a Developer who do Design with (Photoshop, XHTML, CSS) will have a slightly different set of applications than a Rich Internet Application Developer (Flash, ActionScript, Flex, Ajax). Whereas, a user who does more of a Community Liaison will have a bit of more slightly different software sets. I may be slightly biased but my observation will be more tuned towards a power Internet User, Web Developer, Multimedia Developer and of course Bloggers.

Most applications listed below will have preference of Free and Open Source over their commercial counterparts. But this will not rule out the fact that some of commercial applications are better than their free, open source competitors. There are many articles written by renowned Mac Users, Mac Enthusiasts, Industry Experts and Gurus about Windows to Mac conversion - the applications to use, et al. This article would be best treated as compliments to such articles and the final decision be taken with your own experience. Most of the Mac applications mentioned here will be cross referenced to their Windows counterpart at the later section of the article, so it will help new converts more effectively. This article will be updated as and when need arises.

Special Thanks to the following Mac Enthusiast who shared their experience with many of the softwares listed below. The list would have been far from complete without them.

• Glenn Wolsey
• Paul Stamatiou
• Derek Punsalan

COST of the Mac Applications listed here sums up to a little over $2,000. The good news is that, an economical/optimal listing can be managed within $200 and a Professional/Advanced listing can be done in about $1,300.

Download the Excel Sheet which I was working on that list the Applications along with their price.

Disclaimer : I’ve neither affiliation nor endorsement for any of the Softwares mentioned in this article.

APPLE MAC APPLICATIONS

EMAIL
Thunderbird is a good option but why look anywhere else when Mac OS X comes with a kick ass Mail Management software - Mail. It has never been this great with emails before. If you are regular with NewsGroups, then Mail won’t be able to do on its own. Thunderbird’s latest Alpha release is a good News Reader.

BROWSER
Safari is good but with Firefox’s add-ons, Firefox comes out as the clear winner. There are Mac enhanced version of Firefox for PPC and the Intel Mac, but I finds the new Firefox 2.0 good and fast enough.

RSS FEED READER
There are many good and free RSS Feed Reader for the mac. After trying out many of them, I settled for NetNewsWire.

PASSWORD MANAGER
KeepassX is an open source Mac counterpart of KeePass (windows) and I never needed to try another Password Management Software. I’m extremely satisfied and happy with KeepassX. 1Passwd and Wallet are commercial alternatives and I’ve heard many good reviews about the same.

INSTANT MESSENGER
Look no further; Adium is open source and the best All-in-One Instant Messenger.

OFFICE SUITE
Here again, I’ve not found any good free or open source Office Suite though NeoOffice came very close. It is sluggish but you can live with it if you don’t use it regularly. NeoOffice is a port of OpenOffice for the Mac. If you are a regular user of Powerpoint Presentations, Documents etc, then you have to stick to Microsoft Office for Mac. I have trying my hand on Keynote which is a part of the iWork Bundle.

STICKIES, NOTES
I use the stickies that comes with OSX but yet to get used to it. I would rather love to use xPad - a notepad, sticky combination. I bought xPad few months back, but you’re lucky, as it now a freeware. Glenn Wolsey says that he is looking forward to Apple Mail 3 for the sticky, notes feature.

TEXT EDITOR
A Text Editor is like your Shoe. I’ve not really found a Text Editor of my ultimate choice though Smultron, which is a freeware, comes very close. May be that I’ve not found my love, I just stick to Eclipse to even write/edit blog articles offline. WriteRoom is a good one if you plan to do some serious writing concentrating totally on your writing. WriteRoom is no longer freeware and is a shareware by now. Apple Pages which is bundled with iWorks is another alternative from Apple.

Well, I switched to TextMate recently, and it makes me feel right at home with many similar features that I enjoyed with TextPad. My final decision is thus with TextMate as the ultimate Text Editor. In fact, I’ve an additional license right now (from the MacHeist Bundle) and am thinking of gifting it away.

IMAGE EDITOR
Photoshop for the real graphic work. For all the other quick and fast image manipulation - cropping, resizing (which you do for dropping on to your blog articles), I would high recommend ImageWell.

FTP
There are many free and open source FTP Program for the Mac but I’ve not found one that comes close to FileZilla or WS_FTP on Windows. After testing many FTP applications for the mac including but not limited to CyberDuck, Fetch, etc. I settled for the commercial software, Transmit. It is perhaps the best FTP Program for the Mac. Transmit is worth every penny of it. I like it so much, I gifted another copy to a good friend of mine.

ADD/REMOVE or UNINSTALLER
On a Mac, it is said that you can simply Trash an APP and that’s it. However, when you delete an APP, many of its dependent, related libraries are left over on your Mac. AppDelete which is free is an amazing software to uninstall/remove your installed applications. It may be noted that AppDelete cannot delete dependent files separately and is very basic. If you are looking for a serious Uninstaller/Remover then AppZapper is the one. AppZapper does an amazing job at just $12.95 (this is a one time purchase with lifetime upgrades). AppZapper can list out all the applications on your mac, remove preference panes files, widgets, plugins, screen savers. It even allows you to delete just the Support Folder, .plists etc.

TORRENT
I tried Azureus, BitRocket, Transmission but I find Xtorrent to be the best torrent software for the Mac so far. However, you may just stay with Transmission which is an open source and light application instead of XTorrent which is not going to be free afterall.

LOCAL WEB SERVER
MAMP is an Out-of-the-Box solution for your local webserver needs. It comes inbuilt with an Apache server running PHP, MySQL and SQLite complete with eAccelerator, phpMyAdmin, SQLiteManager and is extremely easy to setup. While the free version is good enough, there is a Pro version of MAMP that will set you back by $49.00.

MUSIC PLAYER, MANAGER
iTunes from Apple.

VIDEO PLAYER
Quicktime from Apple, the open source Media Player VLC is a good alternative.

PHOTO MANAGEMENT
iPhoto from Apple. More advanced professional photographers seem to prefer Aperture. However, iPhoto is far and enough for all your photos. Get FlickrExport if you want to upload photos to Flickr from iPhoto directly, efficiently and easily. I beta tested Adobe Photoshop LightRoom but it was too heavy for common users, let’s leave that for professional photographers.

DEVELOPMENT IDE
Eclipse and/or the various Distros including Flex Builder, CFEclipse, MyEclipse, WPT is the supreme Development IDE.

GAMES (casual break play)
I stopped playing games long back. For light play, I like Minesweeper alternative for the Mac, Chess and of course the Titris clone - Quine.

UTILITIES / BACKUPS / BURNERS / MISC
Toast Titanium is the ultimate Disc Burning Application. However, Burn is good open source alternative with a less features for the less demanding users. While we wait for the Time Machine in the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 aka Leopard, SuperDuper would do a good job to Backup and Clone your data. SVN is good for Version Control of your Projects, codes. You can integrate SVN with Finder. QuickSilver is an awesome tool to help you work easily with applications, contacts, music, and other data.

MICROSOFT WINDOWS SOFTWARES

This article’s target is mostly those new Windows-to-Mac converts, so it would be fare if I complete the article with the Windows Software counterparts to the Must-Have Software list. However, I’ve not used Windows in the past 8-10 months and the list here are from what I used earlier.

EMAIL / RSS FEED READER / NEWS READER
Thunderbird is an extremely good email program. With its 2.0 alpha release, it even has NewsReader support besides email and RSS feed management. However, for the business professionals Microsoft Outlook fare better with its easy integration with many other softwares, sync data, take notes. I was a heavy Outlook user with the Newsgator Inbox plugin to read and manage RSS Feeds. FeedDemon is the ultimate Standalone RSS Feed Reader. My reason for using Newsgator Inbox Plugin was that it was able to double up as a NewsReader too.

BROWSER
Of course, Firefox. Internet Explorer, Opera etc can be used for testing.

FTP
I started off using WS_FTP which is a commercial software but moved to FileZilla, an open source FTP Program which is an amazing software. Unless one is a sys-admin or do heavy FTP stuffs, FileZilla will fit the requirements. I find WS_FTP to be a real heavyweight.

ADD/REMOVE or UNINSTALLER
Windows comes with its own Add/Remove Software inbuilt though there are other commercial softwares that does much more enhanced functions. However, the one that comes with Windows is enough in most cases.

PASSWORD MANAGER
Keepass is a free and extremely cool Password Management Software.

INSTANT MESSENGER
The standard version is free but the one time license Pro version of Trillian is my ultimate choice for the All-in-One Instant Messenger. There are many other good competitors but I never tried any of them and was happy with Trillian.

OFFICE SUITE
Microsoft Office Suite is not cheap at all at. If you are fine with a little sluggish replacement then of course OpenOffice is the ultimate Microsoft Office replacement.

STICKIES, NOTES
The Notes of Microsoft Outlook never worked for me and thus I turned to Stickies. It is free and an extremely efficient sticky for Windows.

TEXT EDITOR
If you are not comfortable with it, you will never be productive. The Windows Notepad is never enough for anybody and everybody have some sorta Text Editor of their choice. I would not really say which is the best as many of them are equally good, it was just a matter of habit and discipline one develops with a particular Text Editor. There are a plethora of Text Editor ranging from commercial Paidware to Freeware and open source ones. My ultimate choice was Textpad which is a paidware. If you are looking for a free one, then Notepad++ is the ultimate choice.

IMAGE EDITOR
Of course for the real, actual graphic work, it is Photoshop. Paint.Net is a free and a nifty tool for quick and fast image manipulation.

TORRENT
I never really use torrents so, it would not be that accurate but Azureus was a good enough tool for me.

LOCAL WEBSERVER
There are lots for windows, my favorite was WAMP.

MUSIC PLAYER, MANAGER
WinAmp is not bad but iTunes is the de facto Music Player, Manager.

VIDEO PLAYER
Windows Media Player, QuickTime, VLC.

PHOTO MANAGEMENT
ACDSee. People find irfanView to be a good and free alternative but I was never happy with it.

GAMES
Games have their own realm and I am not a gamer at all. Thus, I am not good with this section. My usual first task after a successful windows installation was to remove all the Games. However, on a lighter vein, if I have to play something, then it was either Solitaire or Minesweeper.

DEVELOPMENT IDE
Eclipse and its variants including, Flex Builder, CFEclipse, MyEclipse, WPT. TopStyle Pro is my favorite CSS Editor and I would even recommend it highly for beginners. It has a good context sensitive help, CSS sweeping (cleaning) capability. However, Eclipse even can be a wonderful CSS Editor if plugged in with a CSS Editor Plugin. Aptana standalone or the plugin is a good Web Development IDE for Eclipse. Color Schemer is a good tool if you are involved with designs.

UTILITIES / BACKUPS / BURNERS / MISC
Nero is one of the professional Media Burner. However, a free burning software which does most of the common task is CDBurnerXP Pro. TortoiseSVN is a must-have SVN tool.