Ask YC: Mac virgin wants to know, what would you install?

#1

Post by ericb » Fri, Mar 07, 2008, 4:09 PM UTC

Previously due to work and other reasons (I have a large amount of windows knowledge) I have been a windows user. This week, my first mac book pro arrived.

I'm looking for developer tools and tweaks, and cool programs that I'd know if I was a mac regular. On windows I'd point myself to sysinternals programs, registry hacks like opening a command prompt in a folder from explorer and registering dll's from a right click, tortoisesvn, putty, etc. For background, I'm doing development in rails at the moment.

So what do you suggest? So far I have quicksilver and growl.

Re: Ask YC: Mac virgin wants to know, what would you install?

#2

Post by moog » Fri, Mar 07, 2008, 4:18 PM UTC

Textmate, Transmit, CocoaMySQL.

A nightly build of WebKit AKA Safari is much faster than Safari out-of-the-box. You can get it here: http://nightly.webkit.org/

Re: Ask YC: Mac virgin wants to know, what would you install?

#3

Post by mattculbreth » Fri, Mar 07, 2008, 4:31 PM UTC

Textmate of course.

After that I'd get MacFUSE from Google Code for connection to Unix boxes, CheckOff for simple task lists, Twitterrific, xPad for notes, pgAdmin3 for PostgreSQL, Mailplane for GMail accounts, iWork08 or NeoOffice for Office apps, Parallels for virtual machines, and Adium for chatting.

You're all set then!

Re: Ask YC: Mac virgin wants to know, what would you install?

#4

Post by fiaz » Fri, Mar 07, 2008, 4:34 PM UTC

I always get cool stuff from the following links. You'll learn a hell of a lot from what you find here and it will be useful virtually everyday:

http://del.icio.us/tag/mac+osx

http://del.icio.us/tag/macosx

http://del.icio.us/tag/mac

http://del.icio.us/tag/osx

You'll also discover all the cool ways Macs are being used and it might even give you some new ideas on how you can use your Mac in ways that are not possible on Windows.

I would also suggest that you first see if there is a way to install ANYTHING Unixy via MacPorts (as posted by another user). This is a VITAL component for developing on Mac OSX.

Re: Ask YC: Mac virgin wants to know, what would you install?

#5

Post by boredguy8 » Fri, Mar 07, 2008, 4:37 PM UTC

It's not a developer tool, but it does mean you can put your MacBook Pro -on- your lap. http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23049

I'm also a big fan of SubEthaEdit for collaborative editing. http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/

Re: Ask YC: Mac virgin wants to know, what would you install?

#6

Post by bayareaguy » Fri, Mar 07, 2008, 4:38 PM UTC

First, the basics:

Signup with the Apple Developer Connection (ADC)[1].

After that you will want to install XCode. You can get that from the ADC or from the install cd.

You should then install macports[2] so that you can easily get BSD tools and utilities.

There is also a friendly GUI shareware app called Port Authority[3] you can use to maintain your ports tree.

[1] - http://developer.apple.com

[2] - http://www.macports.org

[3] - http://www.codebykevin.com/portauthority.html

I'll skip the whole code editor issue. XCode has one and you'll probably want to use some other one you already know about in addition to it anyways.

Some of my must-have utilities:

Disk Inventory X [4], so you can see where all your space went.

Hex Fiend [5] is a good open source no-frills hex editor.

[4] - http://www.derlien.com

[5] - http://ridiculousfish.com/hexfiend

When I need to write technical documentation suitable for printing, I use Scrivener[6], with MultiMarkdown[7], TexShop[8] and MacTex[9].

[6] - http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html

[7] - http://fletcherpenney.net/MultiMarkdown

[8] - http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop

[9] - http://www.tug.org/mactex

Finally, here are a few things I've already posted to YC in the past.

FreeDup - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=89078

KeyCue - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97555

Top 100 Essential Mac Applications - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=110233

Re: Ask YC: Mac virgin wants to know, what would you install?

#7

Post by axod » Fri, Mar 07, 2008, 4:39 PM UTC

I don't actually bother installing much desktop software these days. Just a good text editor, browser, subversion...

Re: Ask YC: Mac virgin wants to know, what would you install?

#8

Post by comatose_kid » Fri, Mar 07, 2008, 4:43 PM UTC

Vienna is a great free RSS reader. Colloquy is great for IRC.

Re: Ask YC: Mac virgin wants to know, what would you install?

#9

Post by mcavalletto » Fri, Mar 07, 2008, 4:47 PM UTC

For what it's worth, the apps I normally install on a new development box include TextMate, Cyberduck, QuickSilver, OmniGraffle Pro, Photoshop, and Skype.

Re: Ask YC: Mac virgin wants to know, what would you install?

#10

Post by optimal » Fri, Mar 07, 2008, 4:47 PM UTC

I don't have much to add, but how do you like your MBP so far?

I've had mine for almost a year and like it very much. I liked my Dell laptop running Ubuntu, but I do prefer the (more expensive) Mac hardware. The fan runs almost silently when compared to the Dell and, okay, it's just a nicer design too.