First new Mac - Software Suggestions
Yesterday I picked up a new MacBook. One of the mainstream electronics/music stores here was having a 10% off sale for one day only on Apple computers.
It's my first new Mac ever. The portability, battery life, and the retina screen is what attracted me to it plus not feeling like a piece of plastic. Alternatively might have looked at a Surface Pro 4, though getting one soon from work. As I travel 3-4 hours a day to work I felt this is perfect on the train. This morning I just upgraded it to Sierra. It runs on an Intel m5, 8GB RAM, with a 512GB SSD. Picture below was on the train setting it up and checking it out when it was running El Capitan.
As I haven't really been much of a Mac user during the OS X years, I was looking for software suggestions from other Mac users. Obviously it depends on what people use theirs for, but I'm looking along the lines of utilities, anti-virus, etc. that people recommend and find useful. Thanks in advance.
It's my first new Mac ever. The portability, battery life, and the retina screen is what attracted me to it plus not feeling like a piece of plastic. Alternatively might have looked at a Surface Pro 4, though getting one soon from work. As I travel 3-4 hours a day to work I felt this is perfect on the train. This morning I just upgraded it to Sierra. It runs on an Intel m5, 8GB RAM, with a 512GB SSD. Picture below was on the train setting it up and checking it out when it was running El Capitan.
As I haven't really been much of a Mac user during the OS X years, I was looking for software suggestions from other Mac users. Obviously it depends on what people use theirs for, but I'm looking along the lines of utilities, anti-virus, etc. that people recommend and find useful. Thanks in advance.
Comments
If you're a Unix guy, look into a package manager like Homebrew or pkgsrc. I myself prefer pkgsrc, but brew is the most popular.
The Mac, unlike Windows, has a healthy ecosystem of good shareware apps. Look into Coda, Pixelmator, and OmniGraffle for what I'm talking about.
Safari is the crown jewel of macOS. It's very battery efficient and has a pretty good UX.
Transmission (for downloading torrents)
The Unarchiver (for extracting compressed files in various formats)
VLC (for playing video. Most WIndows and Linux users use this too)
Microsoft Office (I persoannly find the iWork suite to be a little bit inadequate).
App for Whatsapp (to use Whatsapp on the desktop. Better than iMessage imo).
That's just a few examples of what I personally use. But in the end it all depends on your personal preferences and needs.
Anyway, I would recommend Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for Mac, in case your precious Mac does get infected somewhere. It is drastically different to the Windows version as it is more lightweight and scans the system in just six seconds (no, I am not exaggerating, that is what the developers said on the site). The best of all, it's free. However, it lacks the features that the Windows version has such as malicious website blocking and such. Give it a go if you want.
As for MacBooks, avoid the old models. They're getting over the hill at this point. (If you /just/ need macOS, a VM will do.)
What's so bad about older macbooks?
Yeah I wasn't aware of these CPUs until viewing Apple's website. Without looking through Google, I guess it's an equivalent to a usual i5 CPU but only dual-core (the hyper-threading was removed for the extra 2?), doesn't need a fan, and energy efficient. I wouldn't attempt to play Battlefield 4 on it, but I think for most other uses its quick enough.
Thanks for the suggestions - I like the look of Pixelmator. Fairly reasonable for $30.
I'm generally a Firefox person. What does Safari do to enhance battery life that other web browsers don't?
Thanks. VLC is already installed, I was going to get Office from work's Home Use Program, and The Unarchiver was one I just installed based on your suggestion. I'd have probably ended up installing StuffIt otherwise, as that used to be standard on a Mac years ago.
Can the latest MacOS (i.e. El Capitan and Sierra) run software okay that was originally intended for say Snow Leopard or Lion? Say for argument sake I was wanting to purchase a commercial product (say out of random Office 2011 or Paint Shop Pro) and bought a copy off eBay that was a couple of versions behind, would it generally work? I know Windows tends to be good in that respect.
Backwards compat is a bit iffy, but usually works. If you need Office, 365 is an interesting proposition. iWork is quite different from Office - it's worth checking out to see if you hate it or not.
For browser, keep Safari. It's extremely optimised and efficient. I've stopped using Chrome on Mac and I love how well it runs. Haven't used Firefox though so I don't know. Regardless, it's a great browser. If you've got other Macs or an iOS device, all the bookmarks will sync too so that's neat.
macOS has been fairly decent with keeping up with semi-outdated software. Generally, if it's optimised for Mac OS X Lion or newer, it should work fine, but if it's primarily designed for Snow Leopard, then you might run into some trouble. I ran a copy of Photoshop CS4 at one point on 10.9 Mavericks, and it worked perfectly, but some features that were introduced in Lion like full screen do not work IIRC. Obviously, since 10.7, PowerPC software does no longer work.
Regarding useful software, before paying for Office or trying any other third-party, try the built-in Pages/Keynote/Numbers apps. They're not perfect, but for most things they're more than great enough. You can also save all your documents to iCloud, which means they are synced and you can edit them on your other devices (including Windows/Linux on the iCloud website). Speaking of such, with Sierra, you can enable your desktop and documents to be synced to said service which means they appear on other Macs and devices too (but I'm sure you don't have any other Apple devices right now, so, uh, just saying.) Also, regarding VLC, Quicktime seems to do a good job (better than Media Player) at playback. So you may try to focus on that first before getting to close to third-parties apps that fast. Another advantage is you can record the entire screen through Quicktime and it's power-efficient too.
SPEAKING OF SUCH, completely random, but there are PLENTY of shortcuts on Mac that you may want to learn. For example, Shift+Cmd+3 will take a screen-shot of the display and place it on your desktop (like the print screen button on Windows but better), and Shift+Cmd+4 will take the same screen-shot, but you can select which portion of the screen. Speaking of shortcuts, all existing Windows s/cs like copy/paste/yada yada mostly are still present, but you have to use the Command button instead of the Control button. Oh, and irrelevant, but to CUT files (move them), instead of pressing Cmd+X, you just Cmd+C them and then Cmd+Opt+V to move them instead of duplicating them. The cut function is still present of course, just not for files. I could go on forever, but as a final note, if you go to the Finder (the main desktop interface or a file explorer window) and you press on any of the items on the top-of-the-screen navigation bar, you will not only see which shortcut matches with which command, but pressing Option will ALTERNATE all the shortcuts, just like how Paste becomes Move. Hopefully that wasn't too confusing of an explanation, hehe.
Also, regarding antiviruses, avoid regular antiviruses, as they slow down the computer and the Mac already has multiple layers of such built into the system, added to the fact that viruses are basically non-existent for Mac. Other malware does exist however, so like Bry said, get MalwareBytes but don't have it run in the background, just scan it once a month if you're a responsible user. But as ampharos stated, if you don't download shit, you're much less prone, if at all, to malware. In terms of utilities, can't think of anything rn. But explore the system thoroughly and maybe you'll discover something that won't need you any third-party utilities.
Anyway, kinda cramped all into a long post, but there's a lot to talk about tbh. Hopefully this helps. Don't hesitate asking any questions if you have any.
Thanks for the details, I still getting used to the shortcut keys. The only other thing Apple is my 128GB iPhone 6 Plus and 4 old G4 towers in the shed bought cheaply off eBay a year or two ago. I like being able to boot directly into MacOS 9 or use earlier OS X natively. Having the MacBook may make me want to have a desktop at some stage, though as someone who likes to build their own I'm not fully satisfied with their selection. If Apple sold a Mac Pro tower for about $1,500, that sits between their Minis at the current Mac Pros I could warm up to the idea of owning one.
I'm sure I'll have more though I'll create new threads.
The 5K iMac is probably the best Apple desktop you can buy and maybe even one of the best pre-built desktop computers you may purchase. It costs like a regular 27" iMac, but it has this amazing display (seriously, just go to a tech store and take a look at it) and the performance is excellent too. It's just that with this computer, the display is built-in (so if you change computers you ditch the display along with it) and the upgradability is limited (at least you can change RAM though). The Mac Mini is really weak and the Mac Pro is too expensive.
For the price, the 5K iMac is the only thing that isnt very overpriced. Dell has a 5K monitor but it costs as much as an iMac. But with the iMac you also have a Computer inside. Youcan also do some mid level gaming on it, and its thin af - and lets not forget the os, the most importantthing of a mac. If i had one, i'd dualboot it - windows for gaming and stuff that isnt compatible with mac os.
4k/5k is really overrated and you're not going to really notice an improvement over 1080p, unless you really have a giant ass TV.
Macs when compared to PCs are weak and expensive overall. Also, why is the mac pro a trash can?
For the Mac Pro looking like a trash can, I couldn't agree more.
doubt it. It's a fact that a 1080p monitor and a 4k monitor the same size aren't going to be any different.
They're actually supposed to be. I haven't seen a side-by-side comparison or anything, but the general idea is supposed to be that the higher resolution in a smaller area (increasing the PPI) results in clearer images and thus a higher quality.
But since I haven't actually seen a comparison, I can't tell you for sure if there's a noticeable difference, but one thing is for sure, if you don't have scaling on, elements on the screen will look tiny as fuck.