Good Programs for the MAC

[DReed]

I'm upgrading from my beat up old Gateway to a new Imac. Looking for peoples favorite mac programs.

Also looking for input from people who use Adobe Photoshop/lightroom and raw images, and how does microsoft office work on this platform...thanks

[Mac]

Congratulations on your upgrade. If you've never used a Mac before, prepare to be pleasantly surprised!

Microsoft Office works fine. You may even want to give iWork a try, as it's a lot cheaper than Office for Mac (roughly half the price of even the student edition of MS Office). It has a word processor (Pages), a spreadsheet program (Numbers) and a Powerpoint-type presentation creator/manager (Keynote). You can download a free trial of it at the Apple site (go to "downloads"). I have both Office and iWork on my iMac - while I've mostly been using MS Office just because of the familiarity, I'm gradually trying to wean myself over to iWork.

Another option to consider is NeoOffice (www.neooffice.org (http://www.neooffice.org)). It's an open-source (free!) software suite with similar features and functionality. I haven't tried it, but it looks very promising.

As far as Photoshop/Lightroom, I have both on my computers (Photoshop Elements 6 and Lightroom 2.5). Since I've started using Lightroom, I rarely ever have a need to open PSE6. Unless you do a lot of pixel-level editing (putting peoples' heads on other peoples' bodies, etc.), Lightroom has all the capability you need for post-processing RAW images. I also think it's a lot easier to use than Photoshop. The cataloguing and keywording makes it easy to manage your photos, and once you get used to its features you can customize the workflow to your liking and really work smoothly/quickly. You can download a free 30-day trial from Adobe, but have your credit card ready - because once you start using it, you probably won't want to switch back to anything else. Worth every penny of the purchase price, IMHO. I highly recommend Scott Kelby's Lightroom book as a learning aid - in addition to teaching you how to use the program, he offers a lot of useful suggestions for customizing the program and setting up your workflow to suit you.

Don't completely dismiss iPhoto either (it comes with the computer). It has rudimentary image processing functions, but the part that's really nice is that you can use your images to create calendars, greeting cards, photo books, posters, etc. which are professionally printed and sent to you. I've seen some of them first-hand, and they're first-class products.

A few other favorite Mac programs:

- Firefox. I like it better than Safari as a browser because there are a lot of add-ons available which greatly increase its functionality.

- Stellarium. A nice astronomy application, if you're into that sort of thing.

- Photomatix Pro. Great for making tonemapped/HDR images from your photos. Not everybody likes the look of HDR, but if it's your bag, Photomatix does a great job of it.

- VLC. A versatile video player which plays all the formats not "native" to OS X.

Sidebar - I had the opportunity to play with a brand-new laptop yesterday with the commercial release of Windows 7 on it. Nothing about it stirred even the slightest urge to switch back to Windows - in fact, quite the opposite. Maybe it's because I've started getting used to the Apple way of doing things, but I found it difficult to navigate the UI and find even the simplest things....very frustrating. Not to mention all the "crapware" installed on the computer, fighting through all the little cartoony and allegedly "helpful" Microsoft pop-ups, etc. No thank you. I was a PC guy from MS-DOS all the way through WinXP, but have gradually switched my household entirely over to Macs within the past year (1 MacBook, 1 MacBook Pro and an iMac) - and I won't be going back. OS X isn't perfect either, but I like it a lot better than Windoze. As their motto says, "it just works"...and I've found that to be 100% true.

[Clutch-n-Throttle]

ooOOoohh! You're talk'n about MAC computers. I thought you were talking about good programs for MAC to go to like, AA, Betty Ford, Jenny Craig, Bow Flex, P90X...:lol:

[Mac]

Ohhhhhh, you funny funny guy, you!!! :razz:

A couple more suggestions (all freeware or donationware):

- Handbrake. Highly recommended video transcoder for ripping DVDs, etc. into H.264 format (and others). iSquint is a similar program (also freeware).

- Carbon Copy Cloner. Makes a bootable backup/duplicate of your entire hard drive. OS X's built-in backup utility (Time Machine) does a great job of backing up your hard drive, but it doesn't create a bootable copy of it. Use Time Machine for day-to-day backups, but use CCC on occasion to be doubly sure.

- Adium. If you're into chat/IM's, Adium handles all your major networks - AIM, Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, etc.

- Gimp. An open-source, very capable Photoshop alternative. It's laid out very similar to Photoshop, has many of the same features, and there's a very active support community for it....lots of tutorials, lessons, etc. floating around the 'net.

- SuperCal. Software monitor calibration. If you don't have a hardware calibration device like the Spyder or X-Rite Eye One, SuperCal will at least get your monitor in the ballpark for gamma, color accuracy, etc. A color-managed workspace is a big plus for photo processing, to ensure accuracy between what you see on screen and what comes out in print.

- 1Password. Keeps track of all your passwords, logins, personal information, etc. Securely encrypted, but interfaces with your web browser to automate your logins (this one isn't freeware - it costs about $40).

- Antivirus, malware, etc. Fuggedaboutit....this is OS X! There are no known virii "in the wild" for Macs. There are two known trojans, but both were in pirated software downloaded from torrent sites. Macs are much more secure than Windows boxes, and are virtually unaffected by worms, browser exploits, "drive by" malware downloads, etc. Unless you frequent some reeaaalllllyyyy sketchy sites and d/l a lot of pirated 'warez, you can forget about bogging your system down with all the anti-whatever crapware. If you spend some time reading on the various Mac forums, you'll find that the vast majority of Mac users don't run any kind of anti-virus/malware apps at all other than the firewall built into the OS (which is a snap to configure and very non-intrusive).

There are a ton of freeware and open-source OS X apps out there...it all depends on what your wants/needs are. The apps that come packaged with iLife (included on your Mac with the Leopard/Snow Leopard OS) are surprisingly capable, full-featured and easy to use. At anything less than a pro musician level, GarageBand is a great multi-track DAW (digital audio workstation). iMovie can turn out some very professional-looking video productions, and you can use iDVD to produce (what else?) DVDs. Not much to say about iTunes that hasn't already been said - it's pretty much the standard these days for music libraries. I've never found a need to use anything other than the Mail application that comes with OS X, and it also has a decent RSS reader built into it.

[Clutch-n-Throttle]

Another great freeware/shareware program is NeoOffice.

NeoOffice is a full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation programs) for Mac OS X. We have created an office suite that is adapted to the unique needs of Mac users by taking the features in Sun Microsystems' OpenOffice.org office suite

[cjincognito]

Another great freeware/shareware program is NeoOffice.

But does Intergraph (MicroStation) run on a Mac? :wink:

[iSeeHP]

Congratulations on your upgrade. If you've never used a Mac before, prepare to be pleasantly surprised!

Microsoft Office works fine. You may even want to give iWork a try, as it's a lot cheaper than Office for Mac (roughly half the price of even the student edition of MS Office). It has a word processor (Pages), a spreadsheet program (Numbers) and a Powerpoint-type presentation creator/manager (Keynote). You can download a free trial of it at the Apple site (go to "downloads"). I have both Office and iWork on my iMac - while I've mostly been using MS Office just because of the familiarity, I'm gradually trying to wean myself over to iWork.

Another option to consider is NeoOffice (www.neooffice.org (http://www.neooffice.org/)). It's an open-source (free!) software suite with similar features and functionality. I haven't tried it, but it looks very promising.

As far as Photoshop/Lightroom, I have both on my computers (Photoshop Elements 6 and Lightroom 2.5). Since I've started using Lightroom, I rarely ever have a need to open PSE6. Unless you do a lot of pixel-level editing (putting peoples' heads on other peoples' bodies, etc.), Lightroom has all the capability you need for post-processing RAW images. I also think it's a lot easier to use than Photoshop. The cataloguing and keywording makes it easy to manage your photos, and once you get used to its features you can customize the workflow to your liking and really work smoothly/quickly. You can download a free 30-day trial from Adobe, but have your credit card ready - because once you start using it, you probably won't want to switch back to anything else. Worth every penny of the purchase price, IMHO. I highly recommend Scott Kelby's Lightroom book as a learning aid - in addition to teaching you how to use the program, he offers a lot of useful suggestions for customizing the program and setting up your workflow to suit you.

Don't completely dismiss iPhoto either (it comes with the computer). It has rudimentary image processing functions, but the part that's really nice is that you can use your images to create calendars, greeting cards, photo books, posters, etc. which are professionally printed and sent to you. I've seen some of them first-hand, and they're first-class products.

A few other favorite Mac programs:

- Firefox. I like it better than Safari as a browser because there are a lot of add-ons available which greatly increase its functionality.

- Stellarium. A nice astronomy application, if you're into that sort of thing.

- Photomatix Pro. Great for making tonemapped/HDR images from your photos. Not everybody likes the look of HDR, but if it's your bag, Photomatix does a great job of it.

- VLC. A versatile video player which plays all the formats not "native" to OS X.

Sidebar - I had the opportunity to play with a brand-new laptop yesterday with the commercial release of Windows 7 on it. Nothing about it stirred even the slightest urge to switch back to Windows - in fact, quite the opposite. Maybe it's because I've started getting used to the Apple way of doing things, but I found it difficult to navigate the UI and find even the simplest things....very frustrating. Not to mention all the "crapware" installed on the computer, fighting through all the little cartoony and allegedly "helpful" Microsoft pop-ups, etc. No thank you. I was a PC guy from MS-DOS all the way through WinXP, but have gradually switched my household entirely over to Macs within the past year (1 MacBook, 1 MacBook Pro and an iMac) - and I won't be going back. OS X isn't perfect either, but I like it a lot better than Windoze. As their motto says, "it just works"...and I've found that to be 100% true.



Ohhhhh that's why they call you "Mac".
:cool: