digg

Facebook Connect Join Digg About

10 Apps Every New Mac User Should Download

paulstamatiou.com — A list of ten applications every new mac user should download along with descriptions for each as well as a download link. A great resource for any new switchers that might pick up a Mac this holiday season.

Who dugg this? Made popular Dec 20, 2005

Digg DudeWhat is Digg?

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Digg surfaces the best stuff as submitted and voted on by the community. Take the Tour to learn more.

48 Comments

show profanity settings
expand all
  • Rice, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Stupid... Where's Camino?
  • BlueStarr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Instead of Windos Media Player you should have suggested Flip4Mac component($10). Still has a few bugs but compared to WMP in its current state its nearly perfect.
  • Scourge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wasn't this posted a few days ago?

    ---------
    http://scourge.swifthost.net
  • skyfex, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2God I hate these things. What happened to SubEthaEdit? Why should everyone need Nvu?

    Crap
  • Kyderdog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Dump that Crappy VLC...
    Mplayer will play some wmv's and tons of other files...
    http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net/
  • abhibeckert, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Lets see...

    AdiumX - It's got tabs, supports multiple protocols, and you can skin it. In every other aspect iChat is better. So unless you absolutely have to have tabs and multi-protocol, stick with iChat.

    Cyberduck - I use it every day, several times. But how many people need an FTP client?! Almost everyone will never do anything but download from FTP servers, and OS X's built in support for FTP is better at that.

    FireFox - A pretty good browser, but when compared with the other high quality mac browsers (safari, camino, opera, omniweb and a ton of smaller ones), it's far from being "must have".

    iBackup - Great addition, everyone needs a free backup solution. Unfortunately the best one costs $100 a year (.Mac backup is awesome, especially the latest version).

    Nvu - Come on, this app is great for people who build web pages as a hobby, but for most almost everyone it's either way to complex of way to simple.

    Quicksilver - You *must* try this out! Not everyone likes it, but those that do can't live without it.

    Stuffit Expander - His claim of files you need expander to open is way off, finder's integrated decompression feature can handle almost all of them. Still, if you're trying a lot of apps out you'll probably find a .sit every now and then (2 years ago, every mac shipped with stuffit expander, so lots of developers use it), you'll only need stuffit if you're a download junky, or if you happen to find an app that isn't using dmg/zip/gz/bz2.

    TextWrangler - Great app, neck and neck with SubEthaEdit and TextMate, two other editors that he should have at least *mentioned*. If you hack text files, you need one of these three apps.

    VLC and WMP - Meh, you might need these, keep them in mind if you find something you can't play.

    Hmm, 3 recommendations that I actually agree with... Sorry, but this isn't that great of a list. There are *tons* of far more popular apps that aren't listed. I recommend visiting macupdate.com every now and then, just skim read the days releases and try anything that looks interesting.
  • NoOneButMe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I disregard any "Must Have Mac Software" list that includes Firefox, and Stuff-It Expander. Safari fine enough, and the .sit filetype is old - .dmg has better compression ratio.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1wtf is WMP doing on there?
  • Lacero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0VLC is the only app worth downloading from that list.
  • Xinex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0screw any others, vlc is the best player I've used in years
  • sexycatsinhats, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Most of these apps are just alternatives, there is nothing wrong with the official apps we have
  • foetal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0here's another list.
    http://opensourcemac.org/
  • davdav, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Decent list

    +digg
  • NidStyles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I always found that AdiumX was a bit weak, and resource intensive myself.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0That's an ok list...but I like this one better:

    http://madsenblog.dk/?page_id=11

    "Indispensable MacOS X Software"
  • 3Den, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Re: Windows media player - Necessary because of some .wmv formats that quicktime, mplayer, or vlc won't play. Not to be used for anything else.

    Mplayer - Really? I've found it and VLC to be identical in terms of what they can play. Plus, VLC's playlist works right when dragging multiple files (no sorting in mplayer).

    One caveat.. I can't figure out how to get VLC to auto-scale videos playing over svideo to my 16:9 TV (mplayers has an option to do this)
  • Tricky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Where the hell is Limewire?
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1You're thinking about 10 things every new mac owner should know... that was the prequel
    http://www.paulstamatiou.com/2005/11/29/10-things-every-new-mac-owner-should-know/
  • lonegeek, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1kiltak.....that wasnt needed.....ill be a new mac user soon :) :) :) :) :) :)
  • BlueStarr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Really? I should count my blessings then. But like I said in my first post it still has a ways to go. Unfortunately it came to the Mac too late(?)
  • lego, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yeah, no Mac user should live without an FTP client and HTML editor.
  • OttoReverse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"10 Apps Every New Mac User Should Download"...

    Adobe Creative Suite 2, Macromedia Studio, MS Office 2004, Final Cut Studio, Roxio Toast, World of Warcraft, Logic Pro, TechTool Pro, Filemaker Pro, and ffmpegx, available at a torrent site near you!
  • dareiff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I recently bought a G3 powermac on eBay, and though I still don't ahve all the functionality of a mac down, I'm sad to say I may enjoy it more...
    We'll see what happens when Vista comes out..
    I think these lists are useful, but I haven't seen much new from the other lists we've seen.
  • Maskawanian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Cuisine: http://triage-software.com/
  • rrbaker, on 01/15/2009, -0/+0A list of 10 Essential Mac Apps posted to Digg? Gosh, is it Monday already?
  • djdeth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0How many times are things like this going to be posted?
  • andrewkrug, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Nice Digg
  • Amplix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Another one of these?!
  • davidmccabe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Lousy list.
  • Crippen5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0A good list for Mac newbies.
  • japlan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Solid list execpt for Windows Media Player. I was glad to see Flock and Smultron mentioned.
  • Chongo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@Bluestarr - Although your intentions are well, Flip4Mac completly screwed up my system. If you go to MacUpdate.com and look at the programs comments, many people have problems
  • hominid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0lame list .... no digg
  • mcgirt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm totally getting a mactel powerbook. AdiumX > iChat
  • lostngone, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1The only apps you need are

    talk
    ftp
    lynx
    tar
    vi
    find
    grep
    ssh
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+111. Windows
  • TimmyK., on 10/12/2007, -1/+0>>>posted by kiltak "New mac users? Where? :)"



    When was the last time you heard of somebody switching to Windows?
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1http://www.lifehacker.com/software/mac-os-x/10-musthave-apps-for-a-new-mac-owner-143988.php
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0kamizu, my bad... I guess that one passed right by me.
  • Nemokrad, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Just maxed out bandwidth while i was taking the test, dammit.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1New mac users? Where? :)
  • kamizu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0finally a rather more decent list. the other "10 apps" list sucked monkey genitals. btw pstamatiou, i dont think thats the list scourage was referring to. there was another 10-apps list a few days ago, but it wasnt this one.
  • andyatkinson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Yo Stamatiou, why are there 10 of your friends digging your stories every time you submit stories from your own blog? Hopefully you aren't running multiple accounts and using them to inflate your diggs. It's one thing to leverage digg as an advertising medium, but it’s another thing to undermine what is supposed to be a democratic system of promoting stories. Your blog is clearly getting a lot of hits, have you considered not posting your own stories and letting someone else do it if deem your article worthy?
  • theuber1337, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Oh I know, they should add Microsoft Windows!
  • LilMatt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Are these people serious? Firefox? Camino? Flock? There is nothing wrong with Safari. Firefox takes 10 seconds to start up on most Macs anyway. Camino and Flock are total examples of bloat-ware. It's like downloading AOL Instant Messenger for Mac when it already has iChat. Or downloading a calendar application when it already has iCal. Themes and mods? Who cares? If you want to decorate your web browser to make it look pretty, then sure, go for Firefox.
  • crapiolio, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0I think Safari is better than Firefox for nOOb?
  • etx313, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0MAKE IT STOP!! :(

    First thing a mac user should download is... FreeBSD 6.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0MAC IS FOR FAGS.

    PS3 = DEAD

  • Add a Comment

    Login or register to comment!
    Or, sign-in super fast with your Facebook account ...


© Digg Inc. 2009 — Content created and posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain | Terms of Use Updated | Privacy Policy
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.