It's official, I'm joining the dark side

[DarkWolf]

Ordered my 24" iMac yesterday. :D

I was planning on waiting for Leopard, but my laptop's screen decided to take a dump, and so I found myself in the market for a new computer sooner than expected. (I'll eventually replace the screen... this was more a kick in the pants/excuse to finally bite the bullet)

So, other than the obvious ones (Parallels/Fusion, Bootcamp, Quicksilver, Handbrake, Mac The Ripper, iTunes), any OSX users got suggestions for various apps? Mainly looking for suggestions for ftp software, bittorrent clients, productivity apps like text/html editors, cd/dvd burning software... and anything else you can think of that you use or have come across and found useful at times.

Other than that, I'm hoping it gets here by Friday so I'll have the weekend to tinker, but it may be mid-next week. Either way, the wait is already killing me :D

[I Stang U]

i'll post up some of the crap im using when i get home.. but you must have Toast..

[Sgt Beavis]

You'll need an office app of some sort. I've got Office 2004 but NeoOffice works fine. Office 2008 is coming this fall.

Unison: Newsgroup reader
Adium: IM client
MacPar: For assembling PAR files downloaded from newsgroups
Tiger Cache Cleaner: for Mac maintenance.
VLC. Excellent media player..
iWork if you are doing any presentations. Keynote is hugely superior to Powerpoint.

[DarkWolf]

Probably gonna go with Open/NeoOffice for my office suite needs. I am interested in iWork though... don't really need it, but it seems like it could be very handy for the few times I want to put together a quick layout or presentation.

Big fan of Gaim/Pidgin, so Audium is a natural though I'd forgotten about it. Thanks for the reminder :)

Also probably going to pick up Delicious Library and finally get all my shit organized. I always forget who has what of mine... just had some friends move to Oregon this weekend, and they brought back my Indiana Jones collection and I was like "Oh yeah!"... I'd completely forgotten I'd let them borrow it almost a year ago.

Also, I initially thought about Toast, but I've also been hearing about Disco lately and it looks pretty slick.

[evil jose]

Kick ass Jay! Another Mac convert! Why did you have to order your iMac? Did the Apple store not have it in stock? I think I Stang U has the same 24" iMac. Wish I could afford it :(

I use NeoOffice as well and it's awesome for a free product. I even loaded it up on some of my PC's. Josh hooked me up with a copy of MS Office but

Onyx is another great app I use for maintenance.

Check out the following links for some interesting apps and hacks.

http://lifehacker.com/software/lifehacker-top-10/top-10-mac-os-x-tweaks-261579.php

http://lifehacker.com/software/top/download-of-the-day-onyx-mac-197935.php

http://lifehacker.com/software/lifehacker-top-10/top-10-mac-utilities-259649.php

http://www.imafish.co.uk/articles/post/articles/130/52-ways-to-speed-up-os-x/

[evil jose]

[QUOTE=I Stang U]i'll post up some of the crap im using when i get home.. but you must have Toast..[/QUOTE]

Toast as an awesome app. I never like Roxio until I bought my Mac. Been a big user of Nero for my burning apps on a PC. Now I use Toast pretty regularly as well as Popcorn.

Oh, another program you might want to look into is Little Snitch. It's a firewall app and a friend of my recommended it to keep his software from communicating back with the manufacturer to do automatic updates and checks of his "backed up" software. He had some apps that after it checked for an update it would no longer work and he wound up having to format and reinstall everything.

[Sgt Beavis]

Toast 8 lets you download videos from your TIVO.

Still slow as shit but its there. You can also burn TIVO programs to disk..

[DarkWolf]

[QUOTE=evil jose]Kick ass Jay! Another Mac convert! Why did you have to order your iMac? Did the Apple store not have it in stock? I think I Stang U has the same 24" iMac.[/QUOTE]

I had completely forgotten about the Apple Store. Only place I remembered locally was Fry's, and they didn't have a 24" with 2gb ram like I wanted.

Wish I had remembered the store though... the wait is killing me :( Estimated delivery on Tuesday.

Wish I could afford it :(

I wish I could too :D Hooray for low interest offers on a credit card I've had for years, but never use it.

I kept flopping back and forth between it and a 17" MBP. The iMac won out due to it being all in one, like a laptop... but with a giant screen. Drool.

I'll be checking those links hopefully Tuesday :D

[evil jose]

[QUOTE=DarkWolf]I had completely forgotten about the Apple Store. Only place I remembered locally was Fry's, and they didn't have a 24" with 2gb ram like I wanted.

Wish I had remembered the store though... the wait is killing me :( Estimated delivery on Tuesday.



I wish I could too :D Hooray for low interest offers on a credit card I've had for years, but never use it.

I kept flopping back and forth between it and a 17" MBP. The iMac won out due to it being all in one, like a laptop... but with a giant screen. Drool.

I'll be checking those links hopefully Tuesday :D[/QUOTE]

Ya, I wound up getting an Apple Credit Card and buying my MacBook that way at the Apple store. I'm actually surprised you forgot about the Apple store but don't know if you got one near where you live.

[mk5.0]

Comp Usa also carries mac's.

[DarkWolf]

I know there's an Apple Store in Frisco, just forgot about it :-/

Ah well, it's here now and I'm playing around trying to figure things out. Already got Firefox downloading. iChat works with AIM, and since that's pretty much the only IM I use anymore, I might stick with it for the voice/video chat. Definitely going to check out Audium though, since I don't really ever do voice/video chat outside of something like Teamspeak, Ventrillo, or Skype.

Not really a fan of the keyboard and mouse, though I'll probably stick with the keyboard, because the one I have for my laptop sucks worse. At least until I get around to getting something better. Definitely not gonna be using the mouse. Ick. My MX1000 is sooooo much more gooder.

Ahh, FF's done, time to set it up :)

[DarkWolf]

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=A0732045

Oh sweet, sweet temptation ... less than $350 for a 1TB firewire 800 hard drive? I dare say fuck yeah!

[I Stang U]

i keep looking at that.. ive had it in my cart for a few days now... /sigh

[Sgt Beavis]

[QUOTE=DarkWolf]http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=A0732045

Oh sweet, sweet temptation ... less than $350 for a 1TB firewire 800 hard drive? I dare say fuck yeah![/QUOTE]

They make another version of that with Gigabit ethernet. That should work really well with Time Machine when Leopard is released.

[DarkWolf]

Slick! I got the Airport Extreme when I ordered the iMac though. I think I'm going to hook up a couple external drives I've got that I tend to transport between computers.

The TB drive is just soooo tempting. I needs it! Definitely perfect for Time Machine, and my audio, video, animation, and digital art projects.

Shit that thing is gonna get full quick, I can already tell. Working on a video project right now that's already over 100gigs. Gonna need a FW800 hub at some point :) Or a gigabit hub, if they can be connected directly to the mac (either crossovered or hubbed).