lizardqueen Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 I'm also a new member of the Mac community, since I've always inherited remade PC's from my uncle's chopshop. I use my computer for searching the internet, school work, creating music, watching movies/tv, listening to music, copying and downloading movies/music/pictures onto iPod or other media. My question is, what would you do with your brand new mac to customize it, or to fit the functions I use it for? Any cool/useful/musthave tricks, free software, antivirus, applications, widgets, etc etc?? Thanks for your suggestions!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cabron Posted January 1, 2010 Share Posted January 1, 2010 Congratulations! Welcome to the club. You only need iLife for Multimedia, iTunes for music and Onyx to optimize your mac. Antivirus is not a necessity in mac. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k22 Posted January 1, 2010 Share Posted January 1, 2010 https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=571489 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cabron Posted January 1, 2010 Share Posted January 1, 2010 https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=571489 (Y) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emmx Posted January 2, 2010 Share Posted January 2, 2010 Another thumbs up from me for that link right above! Here are some of my favorite programs (they can be found easily by searching on Google): 1. Quicksilver (a MUST for Macs): perform almost any action on your mac with just a few keystrokes; start programs, modify playlists, find documents, anything! It's similar to Spotlight I guess. I'm not sure how useful Spotlight is because I have always used Quicksilver. 2. Hazel: Automatically arranges your files for you. It will search specified folders ("Downloads" folder, for example) and based on rules provided by you, will organize your files. Like put your movie files in your Movies folder, pictures in the Pictures folder, etc.) 3. Growl (another MUST for Macs): Alerts for almost anything. It also is skinnable and there are hundreds of skins for this. Alerts for new emails, when contacts sign on/off, alerts for when Hazel moves files, alerts of what song is currently playing. The skin can also be customized based on which application it is displaying the alert for. It's very customizable so it's not like it's going to annoy you with alerts all the time. If it is, you set it that way! lol 4. Safari: Yeah, it comes with your Mac but try to use it instead of Firefox or whatever you're used to using. I gave it a try and now have been using it for months now. I like it's "Top Sites" feature. Where it shows your top sites as thumbnails that update frequently, so you can click the thumbnail and it will "enlarge" to fit to your browser screen, then update. It's a cool way to surf the net. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jamesyfx Subscriber² Posted January 4, 2010 Subscriber² Share Posted January 4, 2010 I'd pick up CandyBar if you're interested in customising the OS. It's basically a Dock and Icon theme system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Growled Member Posted January 4, 2010 Member Share Posted January 4, 2010 Congratulations. Let us know how it goes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
protocol7 Posted January 4, 2010 Share Posted January 4, 2010 If you're into lossless music check out Cog. It handles FLAC, cue files and all those other formats iTunes stubbornly refuses to. Also if you'd like to customise icons but don't want to splurge on Candybar, LiteIcon replicates some of the same functionality and is free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uberv Posted January 5, 2010 Share Posted January 5, 2010 I suggest you XLD for ripping music or converting any lossless music collection,it also supports Quicktime true vbr AAC which is really really good,i use it at Max Q127 and quality is superb. Hydrogenaudio also praises it very much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phantom Helix Posted January 5, 2010 Share Posted January 5, 2010 Antivirus is not a necessity in mac. Fail. You might not get infected on a mac....yet, but it will happen eventually also you can spread windows infections to other computers so why not keep your stuff clean of junk and help stopping the spread of virus/malware/spyware ? Free Mac AV http://www.clamxav.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoomKid Posted January 5, 2010 Share Posted January 5, 2010 Fail.You might not get infected on a mac....yet, but it will happen eventually also you can spread windows infections to other computers so why not keep your stuff clean of junk and help stopping the spread of virus/malware/spyware ? Free Mac AV http://www.clamxav.com/ ah, I remember using that AV for my Mac, long time ago. It was good! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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