Switching to Mac

[leonAzul]

I'm pretty sure iPhoto comes with the bundle, but I'd have to check to make sure.

GarageBand, iPhoto and iMovie (aka the iLife suite) are part of the standard package. Pages, Numbers and Keynote (iWork) are paid add-ons, although they are sometimes made available as part of a bundle by a reseller.

 

[arthwollipot]

Once you're set, I recommend looking these up: VLC media player, Perian and Flip4Mac Quicktime extensions, TextWrangler (if you do any sort of code/HTML editing), Skype, Vienna RSS aggregator, the iStat widget, CleanArchiver, and the Omni suite. All are free, except the Omni stuff, of which I use Omnioutliner to make advanced todo-lists.

Cool! I'll definitely be saving this list for later. What do each of these objects do? I assume VLC media player plays media, by which I mean DVDs? What's the iStat widget and the Omni suite? Will these be available in the App Store?

 

[Aidoneus]

Cool! I'll definitely be saving this list for later. What do each of these objects do? I assume VLC media player plays media, by which I mean DVDs? What's the iStat widget and the Omni suite? Will these be available in the App Store?

Macs have DVD and media playback software built in. Some people swear by VLC, but personally, I've never found a use for it, but then again I work with fairly standard file types, so Apple's built in stuff suits me just fine. I have VLC installed, but only for its open-source DVD decryption libraries, which Handbrake uses to transcode.

iStat is a series of apps designed to monitor and tweak your Mac's hardware. The iStat Widget lives in the Dashboard, and gives you at a glance info such as fan RPM, component temperatures and free disk space. If you're not going to be pushing your Mac to the limit (and it sounds like you're not), I'm not sure you'd find a need for it.

The Omni suite I have no experience with, but more information can be found at the website http://www.omnigroup.com

Perian and Flip4Mac are codec bundles which extend QuickTime's list of playable files. Perian is a bundle of codecs covering more formats than I can remember, and Flip4Mac focuses on Windows media filetypes (.wma, .wmv etc.). It's probably worth installing both, "just in case".

Hope this helps!

EDIT TO ADD: Some, if not all, of the Omni products are available in the App Store. iStat is not.

Chipping in on the iWork discussion, all three apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote are available separately in the App Store for $9.99US each, making it definitely the cheapest place to buy them, especially if you only want one or two of the suite.

 

[leonAzul]

Yes, Iphoto should be included. I believe you still get iLife as they call it, including iPhoto, iMovie + iDVD, and Garageband. They also used to include some kind of small game, but I can't find anything on that. Other than that, a number of core applications are considered part of the OS, but you can find alternatives for most - Quicktime, Calendar, Address Book, Facetime, Mail, Safari.

<snipped some good suggestions>

Great suggestions, but I have one small nit-pick.

"Quicktime Player" is the application justly criticised for lack of features compared to other media players out there. "QuickTime" itself is a multi-media platform -- a micro OS, as it were -- that supports any conceivable format, provided it is wrapped in the publicly available plug-in spec. This is what packages like Perian and Flip4Mac provide: plug-ins for additional codecs.

ETA
I see Aidoneus beat me to it. Except they do more than just let one play the files: they also permit exporting and transcoding to those formats.

 

[ThatSoundAgain]

Cool! I'll definitely be saving this list for later. What do each of these objects do? I assume VLC media player plays media, by which I mean DVDs? What's the iStat widget and the Omni suite? Will these be available in the App Store?

VLC plays DVDs, but also movie files. It's good to have on the off chance of needing to watch a movie that Quicktime doesn't play, or if you want to make movie playlists. I've also experienced that it would play obscure DVDs with interaction on them that Apple's player didn't understand. Even though the DVD image quality is supposedly better in Apple's player, VLC doesn't respect "unskippable" DVD content, so you can skip the FBI warnings in Czech if you want. Incidentally, the mentioned Perian extension to Quicktime is the core of VLC compiled to a bunch of codecs, which will enable Quicktime to play more content if you prefer that.

iStat is a Dashboard Widget, meaning mini-application that keeps track of every aspect of your Mac, like processor load, temperature, fan speed, disk usage, network and battery. It's just nifty as well as useful.

Omni were some of the first developers outside of Apple to really get the Mac UI thinking right. They have a range of productivity applications for task lists, Gantt diagrams, graphs, flowcharts and - oddly - David Allen's Getting Things Done. I ended up paying them for their task list software after searching far and wide for a free alternative, and haven't regretted it. Like the Mac experience overall, this software just has a level of polish that has saved me many hours since.

The Omni group have their software on the app store, but the VLC stuff are open source projects you'll have to google. They do have easy installers, though.

I just remembered that I use Colloquy, which is also free, for IRC chat, and Firefox's FireFTP extension for FTP. Forgot to mention it, but what CleanArchiver does is make zipped archives to send to Windows users. Apple's own zip tool includes some Mac-specific hidden files that show up on Windows and can be confusing.

Whew. I've been thinking of compiling this stuff somewhere, but there are good sites for beginners already, like Macrumors.com. Again, good luck.

 

[ThatSoundAgain]

Great suggestions, but I have one small nit-pick.

"Quicktime Player" is the application justly criticised for lack of features compared to other media players out there. "QuickTime" itself is a multi-media platform -- a micro OS, as it were -- that supports any conceivable format, provided it is wrapped in the publicly available plug-in spec. This is what packages like Perian and Flip4Mac provide: plug-ins for additional codecs.

ETA
I see Aidoneus beat me to it. Except they do more than just let one play the files: they also permit exporting and transcoding to those formats.

Yes, you are of course right. I forgot to mention that one of the most useful pieces of software I've bought is a Quicktime Pro license, which enables the transcoding features inside Quicktime player. It's easy to forget that the standard player is somewhat crippled. But that's just for my needs - others will get by fine with the more limited transcoding features in iMovie, or have use for a real upgrade to Final Cut or Premiere which include the advanced functionality and more.

I do like the ease of Quicktime Player 7's export compared to eg. VLC, but then I sometimes have dozens of clips I need to convert and modify quickly.

 

[leonAzul]

Cool! I'll definitely be saving this list for later. What do each of these objects do? I assume VLC media player plays media, by which I mean DVDs? What's the iStat widget and the Omni suite? Will these be available in the App Store?

VLC is focussed on video stream multi-casting. As a consequence, it also makes a decent player of a wide variety of sources. It is designed to broadcast multiple versions from a single source, so it has potential as a file transcoder, but in practice it is an exercise in frustration to use it that way. The codecs are bundled in the application itself using open source libraries, which makes it convenient if one doesn't want to install and maintain the codecs separately.

iStat is a Dashboard widget. That would be a lot easier to demonstrate than to describe in words, but I'll try. The Dashboard appears as a translucent sheet across the screen with mini applications called widgets that display information obtained locally or from the internet. Many are hosted on the Apple site, most are not commercial. I don't know if they will be included in the App Store.

The Omni Group will definitely be part of the App Store. They have an excellent reputation in the Mac community for project management and data presentation software, flow charts, systems analysis, etc.

 

[elgarak]

Another recommendation for photo work: Pixelmator. Think of it as PhotoShop Lite. Not free, but quite cheap. For most of my private photos, I use iPhoto as a library, and Pixelmator for editing.

 

[chulbert]

I've decided that my next laptop is going to be a 13" MacBook Pro.

You are an excellent human being.

 

[Stray Cat]

Well, I do do a lot of work with photography, and I'd like to teach myself to make videos as well (I have a couple of projects I'd love to do sometime). It sorta makes sense that when I've got the budget for it I might as well.

If you've got the money, spend it.
But I do a great deal of photoshopping and video editing work for my job.
I only have a regular 13" MacBook that does the bulk of the work (and an eMac for other stuff) and it's been great with no signs of falling over under the weight of it. The only modification I did to it was to max out the RAM.

 

[carlitos]

Well, I do do a lot of work with photography, and I'd like to teach myself to make videos as well (I have a couple of projects I'd love to do sometime). It sorta makes sense that when I've got the budget for it I might as well.

One big difference between the plain macbook and the Pro is that the Pro has firewire. If you are going to use some video equipment, you might need that. Could be worth checking in advance. I lost use of a video capture card that way.

 

[maggot9779]

IMO, most of the things you can get with iLife you can get for free. OpenOffice, GIMP, VLC and so on. I use them on Mac and Windows and they are pretty powerful. (VLC can pretty much play anything)

 

[elgarak]

IMO, most of the things you can get with iLife you can get for free. OpenOffice, GIMP, VLC and so on. I use them on Mac and Windows and they are pretty powerful. (VLC can pretty much play anything)

You get the current version of iLife for free with every new Mac. However, none of the software packages you mentions is equivalent to anything in the iLife package.

OpenOffice: Productivity suite. Apple's equivalent is iWork.

GIMP: Photoeditor. Apple does not make one, but has basic editing capabilities in iPhoto and Preview. GIMP however does not have the library functions (organizing of photos by event or faces) of iPhoto.

VLC: Video player with encoding/conversion options. That's in Apple's Quicktime, sort of. Also not part of iLife.

In principle, you're right. You CAN get all in iLife for free (but, in my experience, none of the free equivalents for iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand are working just as well, easy and comfortable as those programs). Just not with the programs you mentioned. But it's kinda moot, as iLife is free for every Mac user (until a new version comes around).

 

[Stray Cat]

One big difference between the plain macbook and the Pro is that the Pro has firewire. If you are going to use some video equipment, you might need that. Could be worth checking in advance. I lost use of a video capture card that way.

Don't the latest regular Macbooks have Firewire?
I bought mine three years ago and this has one Firewire and two USBs.
If it hadn't had Firewire I wouldn't have bought it because, as you say, DV Cameras use Firewire.

 

[elgarak]

Don't the latest regular Macbooks have Firewire?
I bought mine three years ago and this has one Firewire and two USBs.
If it hadn't had Firewire I wouldn't have bought it because, as you say, DV Cameras use Firewire.

The current generation of white polycarbonate MacBooks do not have a FireWire port. Earlier generations had one FireWire 400 port. Mine has one, same as yours. Forgot when exactly they removed it.

 

[Uncle Otto]

While I have all These Mac Owners in One Place

I'm about to dump Mac Mail. This problem has happened 4 or 5 times now. And I have gone to the Apple Support Forums with this to no avail.

All of a sudden, my Inbox and Sent folder just vanish. All the emails prior to two or three days ago just go away. I have changed no settings. Everything was working just fine and out of the blue they're just gone. I use Yahoo as my primary email address and that's what I have set up as POP on the Mail program because I pay the extra bit to have Yahoo email Plus.

Fine.

So I do another "restore", and I now have recovered all the missing emails from Time Machine. All is not lost. I also have copies of everything on the Yahoo mail servers. What in the hell is going on? About once every 2 1/2 or three months this happens. It's annoying. But I'm tired of dealing with it and I'm either going to look at another client program or just revert to strictly web-based email.

Anyone in here have any ideas? Also, can anyone recommend a good Macoid support forum other than the ones at Apple? Also, this morning, I clicked on the Sent folder, and all the missing emails reappeared in the list pane, but if I click on anything older that two or three days ago all I get is a blank reading pane.

 

[lionking]

I've also decided to get a Mac, but an iMac as I already have an iPad and a Windows laptop. There's one thing I want to check though. The sales guy at the Apple Shop told me that the movies I have on my current computer (on an external hard drive to be precise) would not be able to be read by the Mac. I could burn them to a DVD and watch them though. Not the end of the world, but still a pity.

Is the sales guy right?

I'm far from an expert I should add.

 

[arthwollipot]

One big difference between the plain macbook and the Pro is that the Pro has firewire. If you are going to use some video equipment, you might need that. Could be worth checking in advance. I lost use of a video capture card that way.

The 13" MacBook Pro doesn't have a Firewire port. The two larger models do.

 

[leonAzul]

The 13" MacBook Pro doesn't have a Firewire port. The two larger models do.

According to this, the new 13" MacBook Pro has 1 FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b) port, 2 USB 2.0 ports, and 1 Thunderbolt port. The previous model was the same except for a Mini DisplayPort instead of Thunderbolt. Are you sure you haven't confused this with the poly-carbonate MacBook?

 

[leonAzul]

sorry, double post