Good software for Mac at University?

[Sam Symons Veteran]

Kia Ora,

Bought my first MacBook a month back, in anticipation for University (and I needed an upgrade) which starts next week. Just wondering; what's some good software for taking notes, etc, during lectures? Currently I have Office 2008 with Notebook view, but what other programs do you guys recommend? I'm taking computer science if that's any help at all :) Please note I'm willing to pay for applications.

Cheers.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

TeXShop, a frontend for MacTeX - the Mac version of TeX.

It will take you a weekend to get the hang of TeX. Thankfully there's a lot of documentation out there. Is it worth learning TeX over using a WYSIWYG program? In my opinion: Yes. TeX is the best tool to properly typeset mathematical formulae, which make for a major part of writing papers in Computer Science.

Oh, and: The software mentioned above is free.

[Sam Symons Veteran]

Thanks, Mephistopheles :)

Anybody else? Any good apps for taking down, notes, etc?

Downloading TexShop now.

[NienorGT]

sorry but LOL at Office 2008 Notebook...

THIS is the King of notebooks: http://www.circusponies.com/

Look at the full video tour here: http://www.circusponies.com/store/index.ph...ub=introduction

(Notice, the tour is using the version 2, not the 3)

I can't think about my school live without NB3 anymore :p

If you don't want to manage your work into the NBs, get SchoolHouse 2.

http://www.loganscollins.com/schoolhouse/

If your Calendar software is iCal, get Organized as Widget, You will almost never need to lunch iCal just to check your courses...

http://www.islayer.com/apps/organized/

Edited February 18, 2009 by NienorGT

[Sam Symons Veteran]

I've had a few looks at NB3, so I think I'll nab the trial and give it a shot :) And, yeah, Office 2008 Notebook is a bit average.

[Arkanius]

That Notebook program looks excellent but, it won't cut it for my Engineering classes

I need to do Equations and graphs and it seems there is no such option

[acnpt]

For taking notes, my opinion is just to take pen and paper. Its less distracting and easier for diagrams + equations.

You can always type the notes onto macbook then.

Here in the UK, the majority of people who take latops to lectures just **** around on facebook or games the whole time.

[9UnknownMen]

Unfortunately for you there's no peer for Office 2007 OneNote for OSX(unless you run via Coherance/Unity in VM) . It was lifesaver my senior year and I wish I had it earlier. If you're going into Engineering or Computing just be ready to embrace Windows and Linux as there is no room for Fanboi's in those fields.

[the evn show]

When I took comp sci the programs I used most were:

• Microsoft Word because iWork wasn't out
  
• OmniGraffle for any time I needed a chart
  
• XCode assuming you're taking standard comp-sci courses you'll be writting C, C++, Java, etc.
  
• VirtualPC (you'd use VMWare or Parallels today) because sometimes you just need Windows or some other OS
  
• TextMate is the best text editor ever. ever
  

There were some things where I just had to use Windows: Rational Rose and the MFC/.Net courses I took required it. For the most part I got along just fine with a compiler, text editor, and standard issue word processing applications.

I bought a tiny cheap tablet like this one to jot-down diagrams/notes during lectures: it was much more responsive than the tablet PCs that were just starting to come out and it works way better than trying to use illustrator with a trackpad or the horrible diagramming tools in Office.

It was gold for things like chemistry, physics, and even calculus.

[PNWDweller]

I picked up "Process" through the Macheist last week and from what I can see it looks pretty good for school notes.

[Brian M. Veteran]

I'm currently doing Comp Sci too, and the software I use on a daily basis is:

MyNotes - Note Taking

iWork - Self Explanatory Really

OmniGraffle - For Diagrams

TextMate - For any code

Versions - An incredibly pretty frontend for Subversion (when you're coding, even if its just you, subversion comes in incredibly handy, and even though I'm usually against GUI Frontends, Versions is incredibly cool).

[the evn show]

Versions - An incredibly pretty frontend for Subversion (when you're coding, even if its just you, subversion comes in incredibly handy, and even though I'm usually against GUI Frontends, Versions is incredibly cool).

If you're using subversion and textmate: consider the projectplus plugin.

[Sam Symons Veteran]

Unfortunately for you there's no peer for Office 2007 OneNote for OSX(unless you run via Coherance/Unity in VM) . It was lifesaver my senior year and I wish I had it earlier. If you're going into Engineering or Computing just be ready to embrace Windows and Linux as there is no room for Fanboi's in those fields.

Don't worry; I have Windows installed via VMware, only been using Mac a month :p The only reason I'd prefer to have Mac software is due to VMware draining battery a bit quicker than without having it running.

[Brian M. Veteran]

If you're using subversion and textmate: consider the projectplus plugin.

I have tried it, however, I also use other programs to edit files within the same repos, so it's easier to not have it built in.

[Konstanov]

Safari: To Download Porn

And that should get you through University.

[Rudy]

If you're going into Engineering or Computing just be ready to embrace Windows and Linux as there is no room for Fanboi's in those fields.

I'd say you're wrong, at my university the whole Computer Science degree was done on Unix computers (we didn't have Windows computers :) yay!). So having a mac made perfect sense (its part of the reason why I switched) as it's 100% Unix compatible (comes with all the command line tools and X11). One of the professors had a powerbook and always recommended that students get a Linux PC or a mac if they had the extra money.

[Sam Symons Veteran]

The good thing is that for my main Java course this year, they have a supplied a software CD that they will be using throughout the year and it's all Mac compatible. I have 'Things' for my project management, complete with it's iPod touch sibling, so that front is covered :)

[Rudy]

The good thing is that for my main Java course this year, they have a supplied a software CD that they will be using throughout the year and it's all Mac compatible. I have 'Things' for my project management, complete with it's iPod touch sibling, so that front is covered :)

as far as I know all the Java IDEs are 100% compatible with OSX so there shouldn't be any problems (and Java is made to be cross platform compatible so you're in luck.....as long as you don't take evil .net course ;))