Must Have Apps for iMac?

[bmelans2]

Hello!

We just recently purchased a new iMac 27" for our study that we're finally finishing. We're both students and we're also now trying to get into YouTube and content creation. What are your must have apps or recommendations for us? We already have the default productivity apps from Apple such as Pages and our student fees cover Office 365 so we have Office 2016 installed fully now. 

Any recommendations would be great! We prefer to use the stock apps for browsing and e-mail, are open to alternatives and suggestions for anything else.

Thanks in advance!

[Mockingbird]

Definitely Boot Camp and a copy of Windows 10.

[bmelans2]

Hey Mockingbird,

I thought about doing this to game. How come you suggest this? We had windows before and hated it (sorry if this offends anyone). We have been using MacBook Air for a couple of years, and I used Windows for business until maybe 10 months ago. I'm sold on OS X now.

Thanks in advance for your help everyone!

[Royalty]

Slow Quit Apps - when you accidentally use the keyboard shortcut to close the whole program instead of close a tab - hold Command+Q to close a program

Better Touch Tool (includes snap windows to grid)

 

Those are the ones I'm most appreciative of.

[macoman]

Instead of installing Windows, download steam for Mac... I do not need windows in my Mac. I only play games on steam and obviously I have a PS4 as well.

[bmelans2]

19 hours ago, macoman said:

Instead of installing Windows, download steam for Mac... I do not need windows in my Mac. I only play games on steam and obviously I have a PS4 as well.

 

Thank you for this! If you download Steam for Mac, will it allow you to play PC versions of games? I'm confused there.

 

Thanks!

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

18 minutes ago, bmelans2 said:

 

Thank you for this! If you download Steam for Mac, will it allow you to play PC versions of games? I'm confused there.

 

Thanks!

No, but a lot of games now support Mac OS:

 

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?category1=998&os=mac

 

Games which are marked 'Steam Play',  mean that you buy the game once and it will work on both Windows and Mac operating systems, and sometimes Linux as well.

[satukoro]

36 minutes ago, bmelans2 said:

 

Thank you for this! If you download Steam for Mac, will it allow you to play PC versions of games? I'm confused there.

 

Thanks!

Unfortunately, Steam for Mac is only capable of natively playing games designed for MacOS.

Fortunately, Steam for Mac is capable of streaming a game from a computer on your local network running both Windows and Steam for Windows.

 

The latter option is how I play Windows games on my laptop (MacOS Sierra).

Edited February 28, 2018 by satukoro

[patseguin Global Moderator]

On ‎2‎/‎23‎/‎2018 at 1:54 AM, Mockingbird said:

Definitely Boot Camp and a copy of Windows 10.

Nah, I disagree with that. macOS is the best OS on the planet and for what the OP is doing, there is zero need for Windows.

1 minute ago, satukoro said:

Unfortunately, Steam for Mac is only capable of natively playing games designed for MacOS.

Fortunately, Steam for Mac is capable of streaming a game from a computer on your local network running both Windows and Steam for Windows.

 

The latter option is how I play games Windows on my laptop (MacOS Sierra).

Oh wow I had no idea you could do that. So, I can stream games from my 1080 equipped 8700K machine to my Mac whenever I am in the other room using it? I'm going to try that for sure.

[satukoro]

20 minutes ago, patseguin said:

 

Oh wow I had no idea you could do that. So, I can stream games from my 1080 equipped 8700K machine to my Mac whenever I am in the other room using it? I'm going to try that for sure.

Yup! It'd be a shame to waste my Ryzen7/RX580 build by using my laptop, but this way I get mobility, battery life, and AAA Windows games.

Keep in mind it helps a lot if one (or both) computer(s) is connected over a wired connection due to wireless latency.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

1 hour ago, satukoro said:

Yup! It'd be a shame to waste my Ryzen7/RX580 build by using my laptop, but this way I get mobility, battery life, and AAA Windows games.

Keep in mind it helps a lot if one (or both) computer(s) is connected over a wired connection due to wireless latency.

I've actually taken this to the next level.

My tower has a devils canyon i5 with a GTX 750ti.

 

I jailbroke my PS Vita and now have Moonlight on it to stream games from my PC to my Vita with Nvidia Shield streaming

I personally prefer Nvidias streaming protocol over Steams

 

 

edit: on topic: It's been a few years since i've messed with OSX, i'll have to dig out my MBP, i had some good utilities on there that expanded functionality but cannot remember their names any longer

[spy beef]

Best terminal application: iTerm2

Best hex editor: HexFiend

Best text editor: macVim

Best LaTeX editor: Texpad

Best package manager: HomeBrew

Best virtualization tool: Parallels

Best Pomodoro timer: BeFocused

Best compression tool: Keka

Best IRC tool: LimeChat

Best Visio alternative: OmniGraffle

Edited February 28, 2018 by spy beef

[1337ish]

10 minutes ago, spy beef said:

Best terminal application: iTerm2

I actually prefer RoyalTS for terminal use, just suggesting for the OP to take a look at it as well, everyone prefers different stuff.

 

I also love PathFinder, Little Snitch and istat.

[bmelans2]

Thank you everyone for the tips! Going to leave Steam out of it for now and explore the rest.

[jadison]

I go for free whenever I can...

 

OnyX, AppCleaner, Disk Inventory X, and CCleaner to keep it clean and tuned up.

Multimedia related: HandBrake, Audacity, Just Color Picker, Fotor Photo Editor, GIMP

Evernote (my favorite note taking, cataloging app - I subscribe to Plus edition)

Amphetamine & Itsycal are two very handy apps (I rely on Itsycal several times a day, every day)

TeamViewer for free remote access

Windscribe is the best VPN I've used so far

[UKer]

Tools from the Omni Group are excellent.

 

OmniFocus is by far the best task manager on the market. It allows you to split your plans into projects, supports tags and allows you to create custom perspectives that make managing work easy. They also make replacements for Visio and Project, which in my experience have better interfaces than the Windows equivalent and they support importing and exporting of Visio/Project files. They also make OmniOutliner that is a great planning tool.

 

For writing, Ulysses is fantastic.

 

Affinity Photo is a great Photoshop alternative without a monthly subscription.

 

BBEdit is great for coding if you just want a minimal and fast editor and Coda for websites (HTML/CSS/PHP).

 

PDF Expert is a good alternative to Acrobat, that doesn't have a monthly cost and provides almost all the functionality.

 

Of course, Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro are awesome - the reason I came to Mac in the first place.

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

As someone who uses both Windows and OSX I find HyperDock to be an essential app for OSX.

 

HyperDock will allow you to drag an app to the left and right of the screen and have it fill half the screen, or drag it up to the top middle to make it full screen.

That's something i've just instinctively done for years on Windows now, so its nice to have such a useful feature on OSX also.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

On 2/28/2018 at 7:52 PM, satukoro said:

Unfortunately, Steam for Mac is only capable of natively playing games designed for MacOS.

Fortunately, Steam for Mac is capable of streaming a game from a computer on your local network running both Windows and Steam for Windows.

 

The latter option is how I play Windows games on my laptop (MacOS Sierra).

REALLY??????

 

 

Thank you for this post.  I have a very competant gaming PC but my main computer is my Mac.  So I can leave my gaming PC in the closet turned on and run my games via my Mac from it???