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Apple Fanboys, Lend Me Your Ears

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Well folks, the time has finally arrived, I'm getting a Mac at work and making the switch! With help from some co-workers, I was finally able to convince my boss to let me go Mac as my main laptop. Personally, I imagine he was just tired of hearing me whine.



Anyway, now that I'm going Mac, I want to ask you, Mac faithful, what software I need to have. I humbly ask you to please give me your suggestions with links on where to find them! But as a baseline, this is what I KNOW I'm going with.

  • Boot Camp/Parallels (not sure XP or Vista Business)
  • Adobe Photoshop CS3
  • Adobe Illustrator CS3
  • Adobe Lightroom CS3
  • Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
  • Adobe Flash CS3
  • Adobe Fireworks CS3
  • NetNewsWire
  • Firefox
  • Notes 7.0.2

I want to wait until the new MS Office is out for the Mac, but I might not be able to wait that long. In that case I'll either go NeoOffice or stick with the older Mac Office.

So some things I need include a good Mac FTP client, a CSS editor as good as TopStyle, a universal IM client (although the new Trillian Alpha works through a browser), Something like NotesPing to test Notes connectivity, a good VNC client, and a good Remote Desktops client. Anything else that works well for connecting to Windows and helping a switcher is welcome! Lastly, anyone have something that automatically syncs Google calendar with Notes, or iCal with Notes?

Thanks in advance for your help!!!

| Posted at 9:58 AM on 04/23/2007 | Add/Read Comments (7) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This  Add To Reddit  Add To NewsVine 

Add/Read Comments

1 - I do not have a working Mac currently, but you need to get QuickSilver. It is the best Mac software out there by far. Single keystroke to do so much.

I also would suggest getting the educational version of Mac Office. It is the best office suite UI on the planet ... you will see much of the work that IBM has done to OOO for the IBM Productivity Editors in 8 comes from how Mac Office works. That team is just amazing when it comes to UI.

Posted by John Head At 01:12:10 PM On 05/05/2007 | - Website - |


2 - Don't bother with Boot Camp.. Parallels is where it's at. Create your own images or even import an existing Virtual PC image into Parallels. This way you are still running the Mac OS (which is the reason you're wanting a Mac in the first place)...

Otherwise, here's my take on things:
- Cyberduck does a decent job with FTP and is absolutely free (coming from someone who has Transmit as well)
- Coda is a brand new CSS/HTML editor from Panic (just came out yesterday I think) and has been getting good reviews
- The text editor to end all text editors is TextMate (integrates nicely with Cyberduck as well)
- Go with Adium for all of your IM needs. Does every IM I've ever needed (MSN, Yahoo, AIM, GTalk, etc)
- Chicken of the VNC is my VNC client of choice
- Not familiar with Notes Ping, but remember you always have the Terminal at your disposal (not sure what special functionality NP has?)
- For Office clients, I either use Office 2007 within my Windows image or OpenOffice natively on the Mac side
- MSFT Remote Desktop for Mac works fine (though is not optimized for Intel is always kinda "laggy")

Posted by Mike M At 09:10:03 PM On 04/24/2007 | - Website - |


3 - Some Mac guys on my tech list say iChat will do the job as a universal client:

Yahoo/MSN config: { Link }

Google Talk: { Link }

Mike

Posted by Mike Oliveri At 09:56:03 AM On 04/24/2007 | - Website - |


4 - For FTP I like Fetch: { Link }

CSSEdit is actually better than TopStyle IMHO: { Link }

And for IM you can't beat Adium: { Link }

Matt

Posted by Matt White At 12:58:42 PM On 04/23/2007 | - Website - |


5 - For FTP I use Panic's Transmit { Link }
For IM I use Adium and Skype
For Remote Desktop I use the MS RD client for OS X

Posted by Bruce Elgort At 11:31:36 PM On 04/23/2007 | - Website - |


6 - Wow, Les must be getting soft in his old age.

Don't forget Roxio Toast (you'll like the Tivo Decode manager) Roxio Popcorn for Burning DVDs, MacTheripper for decoding DVDs, and QuickTime Pro for Video exporting. (Jeff should be able to get you a license.) OmniGraffle is also a good visio replacement.

Posted by Justin Golden At 05:27:01 PM On 05/02/2007 | - Website - |


7 - Congrats and good luck, man! With luck I won't be far behind you, though I'm going to at least wait for the next version of OS X so I don't have to pay an upgrade tax right away. A friend of mine who works in IT and is also a writer recently got fed up with M$ and bought himself an iMac, and he loves it.

For FTP, I had one of my artists grab CyberDuck: { Link } It does FTP as well as SFTP/SCP.

Take care,
Mike

Posted by Mike Oliveri At 09:52:49 AM On 04/24/2007 | - Website - |


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