Comments | metanomaly: To Mac-owners:

metanomaly

To Mac-owners:

Jan 14, 2011 10:22

After hemming and hawing for years, I finally bought myself a Macbook Pro a few nights ago. It's arriving today and I want advice from Mac-owners on what the most useful apps, software, accessories, etc are, if you'll indulge me! I use a beastly PowerMac at work but I haven't outfitted it with anything particularly fun, just the basics to get my ( Read more... )

technophile

Comments 3

hezul January 14 2011, 19:30:09 UTC

I've been using Macs since I was in elementary school, and while I've had the AppleCare plan on some of them, I don't think I've ever actually needed it. Pretty much every problem I've ever had has been minor and easily fixed myself.

I don't do much accessorizing or installing new things on my computers, because admittedly mine are just glorified web surfing/paper writing machines. So I pretty much...pick up a wireless mouse for those occasions when I feel like dicking around in Photoshop, install SNES9x to play old games and FFView for reading comic books, and call it a day. But there are some nifty apps recommended in this post!

techno4tomcats January 14 2011, 23:31:36 UTC

Laptop cooler? I would suggest it. They do run hot when you multi-thread and it can get toasty.
AppleCare. Well I had to sell it when I worked for Apple and this is what I generally said to customers. I'd say YES to it if you spend over $2,000 on your new baby. Macs are notoriously long lived, but I did encounter the high end machines tend to have a shorter lifespan due to the heavy workload they have. It's a big outlay now, but knowing that all internal components are covered for three years is worth it, IMO.

RAM wise, I'd say yes to the 8GB of RAM. If it was not an i7 processor I'd say don't bother (eg; the entry level Macbook Pros) but since it can handle and utilise the RAM chips and you want to run the machine hard and fast, why not?

fluffyduck January 14 2011, 23:49:01 UTC

Woowoo congrats!

1. They run pretty hot, even when running something silly like Flash, so I bought a laptop table (Dave) from IKEA. Dave's my best friend. :D

2. I love my keyboard skin, but that's because I have a pet. Just invest in a really nice laptop bag.

3. Completely. I didn't need it for my first two Macs, but as they've gotten more popular their build quality has gotten less reliable. My last power adapter tried to MELT AND SET ITSELF ON FIRE and it was covered by AppleCare.

Are you still studying? You should be getting a discount on the computer AND your AppleCare, or at least there's a free iPod in there somewhere!

4. Compare RAM prices with PC notebook RAM of the same specs; you can always self-install PC RAM later.

5. Colloquy, Connect360, Scrivener, TextWrangler, Skim, ComicBookLover, Steam, Nambu, WriteRoom and Transmit are some of my favourites... Camino is my main web browser. I think you'll really like TextWrangler! Anyway, now that Macs have an App Store you can try out stuff to your heart's content!