Call all Mac users

[mesyjesse]

Well i final jumped on the bandwagon and bought a mac and got it today. I got a refurb MacBook. It was only 800 dollars and was too cheap to pass up. Now on to my question. What are your favorite things you do on your mac and or programs you use. Also any accessories do you think are worth the money

Thanks
Jesse

 

[G66]

Congrats on the Mac.

Check out http://www.opensourcemac.org/

I recommend Perian and Handbrake for starters.

 

[kwsoccerkid]

The best thing I like is you can go on do what you have do and not have any problems. I have a refurb macbook and I love it both of my kids have macbooks for college and they never have any problems with them. I used to
have PC's and I will never go back.

Good luck and enjoy

 

[robertgp124]

Take a look at TUAW.com. Lots of Mac stories (and a lot of iPhone ones too). It may give you some ideas on things you'd like to try. You may want to take a peak at MacBreak videos on iTunes for tips on how to do stuff.

I don't have any Mac specific stuff that I have to use. I just love that my Mac works and that I don't have to fight it the way I fight with Windows on a regular basis.

Congratulations - hope you enjoy your Mac!

 

[CelticBelle]

i just switched to mac last year. Im now in love. My favorite things about it are that everything works together seamlessly. It is a must to set up your email accounts in mail. I love that i dont have to check all 4 of my emails constantly and that saves me alot of time. I love ical too. I could never get my calanders and outlook to work on PC, but this is a breeze!

i also use handbrake. Love my iphone too, but thats another thread

 

[mesyjesse]

Thanks guys

I am using handbreak right now and love it. I used it on pc and it was slow and buggy. I must it has been very painless so far

Thanks again

 

[dpuck1998]

First thing I did is download firefox to replace the horrible safari browser.

 

[DisneyCrazyX5]

I switched to Firefox too.

 

[MinnieDiva]

Huh, I love Safari.

I love iMovie/iDvd. You can do some amazing stuff with them.

Be careful with Handbrake....I'm still using 0.9.2 as the newer update was VERY buggy and either didn't do the job or crashed the machine. I haven't looked to see if there was a fix to that.

 

[cslittle999]

Firefox over Safari on a Mac? No way. Firefox is so slow. Even 3.5. Safari on Snow Leopard is even faster.

My first recommendation for a new Mac user would be to buy a large external hard drive and start using Time Machine. Very comforting to know you can restore the entire machine.

 

[OKW Lover]

Funny. I use both Safari and Firefox (just upgraded to 3.5) and like them both. I'm using Safari most of the time, but there are still a couple of sites that seem to be easier to use with Firefox.

A big plus of Firefox is the extensive list of add-on's you can use. I'm particularly fond of adblock plus and flashblock. Adblock plus blocks those advertisements so you never see them (unless you want to on a particular site). Flashblock stops that annoying flash animation that seems to get in the way of actually providing useful information on many sites - like Disney's.

 

[Nicole786]

I use Tweetie if you use twitter, and iPhoto is my favorite of the ilife programs

 

[mesyjesse]

its a great system i am using firefox right now. Also i hope to buy a time capsule for back ups.

thanks
jesse

 

[jlmarr]

We use iPhoto and iWeb - it's easy to transfer a set of pix from iPhoto to iWeb and then presto you have a web page. We use both Safari and Firefox for web browsing, Thunderbird for email (it's a descendant of Netscape mail), Graphic Converter for special graphics work that iPhoto isn't up to, Time Machine for backups (saved our bacon once), Preview for viewing PDF's instead of Adobe Reader, and dare-I-say-it Microsoft Excel and Word when the occasion requires it.

 

[G66]

I have a 500GB Time Capsule. Highly recommend it. I use it a little unconventionally with a TB usb hard drive plugged in. The Time Capsule holds and streams my iTunes library and the TB drive is partitioned. Part Time Machine to automatically back up my laptop data and part as a manual back up of my music files from the Time Capsule. It all works quite well. A testament to Apple design.

I also use Firefox. Foxmarks is a plug in that allows you to sync bookmarks between multiple computers.

 

[sarahsar]

I switched to Mac a couple of months ago after being a longtime Windows person, and I couldn't be happier. I absolutely love it. I got a refurbished MacBook Pro in perfect condition for a good price from the Apple web site.

As for what programs I use - I use iTunes, iCal, Address Book, Microsoft Entourage for e-mail, MS Word, Tweetie, Safari _and_ Firefox (I can't get on to my work VPN with Safari, unfortunately, but it works with Firefox). iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD are great. I love the Keychain program for keeping track of passwords. It took forever to transfer all of my info from my Windows password program, but now it works great and is very useful. I use Time Machine backing up to an external hard drive, and I have another external hard drive for manual backups.

I also use VMware Fusion to run Windows XP Professional. You can do this with Boot Camp for free, but if you do need any Windows programs, it is nice to have something like VMware (there is also a program called Parallels Desktop), because you can run Windows just in a separate window right on the Mac desktop without rebooting, copy things back and forth, and so on. But since I made the switch there are very few things I still use Windows for. Just a couple of quirky programs that I haven't found an easy Mac equivalent for.

 

[dpuck1998]

I switched to Mac a couple of months ago after being a longtime Windows person, and I couldn't be happier. I absolutely love it. I got a refurbished MacBook Pro in perfect condition for a good price from the Apple web site.

As for what programs I use - I use iTunes, iCal, Address Book, Microsoft Entourage for e-mail, MS Word, Tweetie, Safari _and_ Firefox (I can't get on to my work VPN with Safari, unfortunately, but it works with Firefox). iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD are great. I love the Keychain program for keeping track of passwords. It took forever to transfer all of my info from my Windows password program, but now it works great and is very useful. I use Time Machine backing up to an external hard drive, and I have another external hard drive for manual backups.

I also use VMware Fusion to run Windows XP Professional. You can do this with Boot Camp for free, but if you do need any Windows programs, it is nice to have something like VMware (there is also a program called Parallels Desktop), because you can run Windows just in a separate window right on the Mac desktop without rebooting, copy things back and forth, and so on. But since I made the switch there are very few things I still use Windows for. Just a couple of quirky programs that I haven't found an easy Mac equivalent for.

Fusion is awesome! I use it for the DVC Planning software

 

[Plumeria9]

First thing I did is download firefox to replace the horrible safari browser.

Ditto this. Some websites might give you trouble w/ the Firefox, but then you can hope to use the Safari. I bought a refurb black MacBook, LOVE it! Enjoy!

 

[sshaw10060]

I use parallels instead of fusion. I just upgraded to 4.0 which is a huge improvement.

 

[dpuck1998]

Ditto this. Some websites might give you trouble w/ the Firefox, but then you can hope to use the Safari. I bought a refurb black MacBook, LOVE it! Enjoy!

If a website doesn't work with Firefox then I don't use that website!!