Hey Mac Fans, Help Me Out...

[Anderton]

So I have an Intel Mac, and I use it...but I pretty much use it like an appliance: Open programs, use them, save stuff, etc. My understanding is that there are all kinds of Cool Mac Things under the hood that Windows doesn't do.

 

Basically, I have two questions:

 

1. Should I update to Leopard? Are the horror stories over?

2. Most importantly, what cool, Mac-only stuff am I overlooking? What are your favorite Mac goodie-type features?

 

I'm sure I'd discover them over time, but I'm looking for an "SSS jumpstart." Thanks!

[Anderton]

And please - no Mac vs. PC, as I am a Mac AND PC guy.

[Jeff da Weasel]

 

1. Should I update to Leopard? Are the horror stories over?

 

 

Craig, I never had ANY problems with Leopard, but you can't look at any one case as being typical in regard to your experience. The reason I've had zero problems is that the applications and hardware interfaces I use are relatively new, and therefore didn't run into any compatibility issues.

 

I'm currently running 10.5.5 and it's been solid as a rock for me. YMMV.

 

 

2. Most importantly, what cool, Mac-only stuff am I overlooking? What are your favorite Mac goodie-type features?

 

 

I don't know enough about Vista as an OS to give you an objective comparison. I do know that 10.5 is a snappy OS, and has almost never hung up or crashed on me, ever. It certainly plays well with all of my creative applications I use for business (Adobe's CS3 suite), for music, and for the more mundane business apps I use (word processing, spreadsheets, etc.).

[spokenward]

I like the Easy envelopes widget.

 

I have not yet found a Vista "gadget" that I need.

 

and this application:

I love the free (as in beer) and mighty, mighty Text Wrangler.

[Gus Lozada]

I have 10.5.3.

Pretty solid. Pro Tools runs like a champ. Live runs like a champ. Reason, too.

All the hardware interfaces run smooth and nicely. Dream.

 

About "Mac only" stuff...

 

- GarageBand. Very simple, but good enough to use a synth or two and have fun with loops. Good scratch pad.

 

- iTunes + iPod + iPhone combinations. They work better in Mac. How surprising!

 

- KeyNote !!! Way better than PowerPoint. The attendants to my clinics simply love the animations and stuff.

[Anderton]

 

I have 10.5.3. About "Mac only" stuff... - GarageBand. Very simple, but good enough to use a synth or two and have fun with loops. Good scratch pad. - iTunes + iPod + iPhone combinations. They work better in Mac. How surprising! - KeyNote !!! Way better than PowerPoint. The attendants to my clinics simply love the animations and stuff.

 

 

That's the kind of stuff I'm looking for...keep it coming!

[Duddits]

 

2. Most importantly, what cool, Mac-only stuff am I overlooking? What are your favorite Mac goodie-type features?

 

 

The iLife suite is great for putting together whatever they put together with absolute ease (iPhoto, iWeb, iMovie, iDVD, Garageband). However, the ease-of-use that makes iLife apps so delightful for others may make them less so for you. You appear to have some uncanny ability to use anything you pick up with ease (is it the same with others from whatever tech savvy world you originate?), so I'm not sure you'd favor their ease-of-use over limits in editable parameters.

 

For the rest of us, namely, Earthlings, Cats, and Cat Earthlings, the ease of use of the iLife apps is fantastic. You can quickly make "real" things with almost no technical knowledge at all. I don't know any other media software that is as easy to use and fundamentally robust. For example, Garageband shares the same sound engine as Logic, so it doesn't sound any worse, but lets you get to work with almost no learning curve.

 

While the latest version adds features that make it bearable for a first stage in a serious workflow, you do hit a wall if you're expecting the kind of flexibility you get with the kind of apps you're used to. If I were reviewing Garageband, for example, I could easily make a list of inexcusable omissions (no MIDI out WTF?! - actually, there's a workaround, sorta). But that would miss the point. For many users, its interface makes it accessible, so they would actually use it, and would never touch any one of 20 competitors with equal parts features and intimidation.

 

Again, you're such an untypical user, that I'm not sure you can appreciate the delight in simply using an application to create something that requires no tech background, or is at least familiar to anyone with basic computer skills. If you can imagine, for example, the first time you attempted to rewire Reason into ProTools during a hurricane while improvising on the guitar, the lights had gone out, and the interface, an experimental next-generation prototype in the form of a handful of circuit boards, was floating gracefully on top of a water column filling your room, and everything just... worked! Because you're Craig Anderton! Well, that's the feeling others get when they use an iLife application on the Mac. If you know what I mean.

[slight-return]

 

And please - no Mac vs. PC, as I am a Mac AND PC guy.

 

 

ha get a cray and a spark station!

[Jeff da Weasel]

I should probably comment that I use the iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote that roughly correspond to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and find them great. On a 95% basis, they are fully compatible and document interchangeable with the Microsoft versions, and were very inexpensive compared to getting the full Office for Mac suite.

[GVDub]

I, like Jeff, have never had any problems with Leopard. Running 10.5.5 on a 2.4GHz 15" MacBookPro and my old G4 Powerbook. Haven't updated the G5 tower yet, as I won't be doing that until I can get the DP6 upgrade (I'm still on 4.6 which isn't Leopard-friendly).

 

As a Mac-only cool tool that you might dig, check out Scrivener , a writing and organizational tool. It's kinda hard to describe, exactly, but it's a great tool for getting an idea massaged into a book or article. I'm a big fan of a software recreation of the old Trinome polyrhythmic metronome called 'Quadranome', although it has a Windows version, so it doesn't qualify under the Mac-only banner, but it's just cool, if you're into that sort of thing.>

[bp]

http://techspansion.com has shut their doors and it's a shame. Visual Hub was a great simple conversion program that I prefer in MANY ways to Apple's Compressor.

 

Grab a copy if you can. Worth every penny.

[Dreabfly]

All of my problems have been worked out in Leopard. It took about a month, but it seems that after they released the 3rd update, everything settled. You make want to check the Apple discussion boards for your particular machine, though.

 

As for cool programs, I'm gonna ditto iLife. So easy to do really advanced things. I got into video editing with iMovie and am always amazed at what you can do with that program. For amateur home movies and slideshows, I think it really is the best thing out there.

 

I also love everything at this site:

 

http://www.yellowmug.com/

 

Love love snapndrag and easyframe from them. And then there's Fetch for super easy FTP-ing (if you do that).

 

Also very cool (at least I think) for audio engineers is the whole .Mac/iDisc account thing. You can use it as an interim file drop for clients or other engineers to exchange large files without sending them out to some random site. For $100 a year - that's pretty cool if you work with large files a lot and get tired of figuring out how to schlep them here and there. You can even use it as a place to access your work between home/work studios.

[tremolounge]

I like OmniFocus as an organizer/to-do app (y'know, what they used to call Personal Information Managers):

 

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/

 

Their OmniGraffle is very nice as well, for diagramming, creative flow-charting, whatever...

 

I like to keep an eye on macupdate.com for updates, new releases, etc.; everything from major apps to freeware.

[ggm1960]

I'm at OS 10.4.11 for the foreseeable future. The Mac is a lot friendlier for app developers, every copy of OSX contains the Xcode program. Certainly nothing comparable in PC land.

 

Besides the multitude of "high end" music specific programs I use on my MBP I kind of like the little shareware Strobe Tuner program I have on it and a couple cool MIDI freebies are MidiPipe and Midi Monitor. The dock certainly can be very handy and the Finder makes it pretty easy to get around. Personally I think widgets are a stupid waste of resources and I disabled that right away.

 

Hardware wise I really like the better tolerance of the MBP for switching USB/firewire devices in and out.

 

I miss the delete key when doing text!

 

For the record I have no intention of giving up any of my PCs anytime soon either!

[deanmass]

- Leopard is worth the upgrade, but responds very well to max ram. My Intel MacBook has 4 GB and just cooks.

 

- Rather than point out many add-ons, I would say learn to leverage the OS features, such as the Widgets ( I use a couple for lyrics pulls from itunes and To Do lists), expose and spaces ( in sys prefs). Turn on the accessability options if for no other reason than the screen zoom, which is awesome.

 

- Use the command line in OSX- You are an old timer like me, so there are things you can do in the terminal that are way faster than GUI. Killing programs, telnet, etc.

 

-OpenOffice went Native Intel Mac this week. Check it out.

 

- Get CoRD for remoting into your PC's from the mac

 

-If you use a Cisco VPN out from the mac, the versions are very picky, and a total PITA to download. Save it to somewhere, cause Cisco's mac support is spotty.