calling all mac users!

[Matt.]

I just bought a mac book pro 15 inch, this being my first mac I was looking for some advice, what are some good apps to download or whatever. I'm currently looking for an instant messenger, but anything else I should have please let me know!

I love my macbook pro so far!

 

[RonJ]

Matt, I hope you bought the extended AppleCare plan. Mine has required multiple visits to the Apple store.

 

[Mr. Jollypants]

I used Adium, it was a good program.

 

[253eg]

IM wise, Adium was the best. opensourcemac.org has plenty of free mac programs.

One program I found that was great was CleanMyMac, you can find it on some torrent sites.

ClamXav is a virus scanner you should look into.

 

[Matt.]

I'm using adium currently... not really a fan

 

[253eg]

I'm using adium currently... not really a fan

How come? It's highly customizable. It's basically the Pidgin for Macs.

Look into Nocturn and GeekTool to change the menu bar black and to add 'widgets' to your desktop.

 

[00_Civic_Si]

Ive had a mac for 6 yrs and i've never heard of this bullshit. wtf.

 

[253eg]

Ive had a mac for 6 yrs and i've never heard of this bullshit. wtf.

lol have you looked at all? I learned a lot from insanely mac forums.

 

[Kswest]

Adium is what's up. If you like to sail ships out too see, rape and pillage any and all villages you come across, you may want to install VLC and grab vuze for any plunder you come across on the sea (in order to open chests to find booty). I mean other than that I'm looking at my applications folder and really the only stuff that isn't stock on here anymore is; adium, vuze, utorrent, google chrome, last.fm, microsoft office, skype, WoW, ventrilo, and rosetta stone. Nothing too exciting. Now, if I went over to macbook which was my computer all throughout college and half of last year, that may be a different story.

 

[JiuJitsu_greg]

Visualhub to convert digital files to .iso's. X360iso hacker to hack and burn xbox iso's. Adobe master collection for creative projects. Geektool for awesome desktop mods. Transmission for torrents. Calibre to convert PDF to ePub. Kismac for breaking wep encrypted networks. Must have vlc for watching videos.

 

[Matt.]

I dunno whats up with vlc but its killin my resources, anything that requires less? Maybe I need to spring for more ram? I only got the 4gb, seems like everyone upgrades these to 8gb

 

[Matt.]

whats a good spyware program too?

 

[steviezee47]

ichat is decent

 

[Kswest]

I dunno whats up with vlc but its killin my resources, anything that requires less? Maybe I need to spring for more ram? I only got the 4gb, seems like everyone upgrades these to 8gb

Hmm. That's odd. Though, if you're running VLC, you should be watching a movie and nothing else, so I don't have a clue why you would care minus if it was slowing the video down. I personally have never used anything but VLC and I've been in Mac since 2004. You could use quicktime I guess but I never was a huge fan of it.

I looked on my laptop and the few programs I used the most were snes9x, smcfancontrol, and VisualHub, though I'm pretty sure VisualHub is no longer available unless you search hard. I mean I had other things like photoshop and what not, but nothing too exciting. I play world of warcraft, type my papers, do my presentations, and use the internet/email/etc. on it. I hated PC's so I made the switch years ago, the interface alone would keep me around vs a windows computer.

 

[253eg]

My iMac only maxed out to 4gb and VLC never lagged or ate resources. I'd have VLC running, adium, tranmission, chrome/firefox running and it never skipped or stuttered.

 

[Matt.]

oh, i'm using vlc for music and stuff, what should I use for music then?

 

[Kswest]

Just stick with iTunes, it runs a lot faster than anything you'll find. I heard Amarok was supposedly porting over but I still haven't cared enough to look recently.

Edit: OOOh. Audion3 looks cool too.

 

[joe7987]

IM -> iChat (always worked great for me, never had a need to go to anything else)
Maintenance -> OnyX and IceClean. I run these two once every month or two months and my mac runs like new, no matter how much porn I've been watching.
Music ->iTunes
Music download -> Poisoned (though i'm not completely thrilled with it)
Torrents -> Vuze
Word processing and stuff -> NeoOffice

Those are the essentials for me.

I've never had a need for antispyware or antivirus. My computer just hasn't gotten bogged down like my old PCs did. My mac is approximately 4 years old. The only problems I've had with my mac is the charger. It's nice because if somebody trips on the cord, the computer won't go down with it. Unfortunately, the cord stresses very easily and is expensive to replace. Your mac may have come with the new style cord though. I just got one of these. I don't know if the issue has been fixed with these or not.

 

[Logan98036wa]

get win.rar for mac then just search what you want in google and type mediafire rar. behind it and download it there. works good for music.

 

[Matt.]

joe I'm pretty sure they fixed the power cord problem, every review I watched on youtube said something about the new cord