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

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

#71

Post by inovica »

mrtron wrote: post #64
PStamatiou wrote: post #35

I just got a Macbook Air and listed the first things I installed/uninstalled when I got it. Might be of use. It's at the end of this post: http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/03/06/how-i-got-a-macbook-air-...

Happy with the air? I really considered getting one and a powerful desktop...but decided to wait.

I love mine. I was sceptical at first but its been a lovely machine so far.... and I've owned 10+ Macs in my time.

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

#72

Post by koolmoe »

tx wrote: post #65
bouncingsoul wrote: post #23

Honestly, I would hold off installing a bunch of software until you have a need for it – or at least until you can appreciate the problem it solves. OS X comes with a lot of tools out of the box, and I think it'd be better to stick with that stuff until you outgrow it or are no longer satisfied with it. For example, people will recommend the VLC player, but QuickTime with the Perian plugin is what I use: more stable…

How did you get away with iChat? I don't know a single person on AIM account, everybody is either on Yahoo/MSN or even ICQ.

You can do GoogleTalk on iChat as a Jabber account.

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

#73

Post by ericb »

ericb wrote: post #70
bayareaguy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like this may be your problem: http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/2007-Au... Ryan Schmidt suggests: Please verify whether you have /usr/bin/gnutar. If you do not, then your Mac OS X installation is incomplete. I believe gnutar is provided by either BaseSystem.pkg or Essentials.pkg from the Mac OS X DVD, both of which are quite essential to Mac OS X's functioning.

WOW. I just grabbed gnutar from a buddy who installed Leopard from CD. His machine had gnutar and mine didn't. Now, macports is happy as a clam. Seems bizzare that I didn't have it. I found one other person who had the same problem with a factory install. Weird. http://nullstyle.com/2007/10/27/how-to-build-imagemagick-and...

As a breadcrumb for anyone stumbling across this via google, I also had to install the latest X 11 to get the X windowing to show me anything. X 11 is grayed out on my install disks in the optional installs for leopard. Until upgrading X 11, the terminal window would run and the X 11 process would launch, but no visible window would appear.

http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/xquartz/wiki/X112.1.4

Now the macports putty is working. Sweet!

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

#74

Post by akkartik »

inovica wrote: post #71
mrtron wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happy with the air? I really considered getting one and a powerful desktop...but decided to wait.

I love mine. I was sceptical at first but its been a lovely machine so far.... and I've owned 10+ Macs in my time.

It's lighter than an X61, yet has a larger screen. That's what the thin-ness buys me.

I'd still have gone with a thinkpad if they came with anything but #$%# vista.

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

#76

Post by johnca »

Text utils: TypeIt4Me (expands your codes into frequently-typed text) and JumpCut (multiple clipboard).

MenuCalendarClock replaces your menubar clock with with a menu of a simple calendar (ties in with iCal too, but i don't even use that).

As soon as Aion is updated for Leopard get it if you deal with time zones.

Alarm Clock 2 wakes you up to your selected iTunes playlist (with gradually increasing volume).

UnRarX deals with .rar files.

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

#78

Post by tx »

rms wrote: post #67
tx wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get away with iChat? I don't know a single person on AIM account, everybody is either on Yahoo/MSN or even ICQ.

Are you or your friends from outside of the USA? Seems like AIM is only really popular in the USA.

Hm... some of them are (ICQ users), but the American portion of my contact list is split between Yahoo and MSN. For some of them those messengers are "corporate standard", i.e. everybody at work is running one of those two. Another sizeable group of corporate IM contacts is on Skype, and growing fast, due to the encryption I suppose. Frankly, I've never heard of AIM until I bought a Mac last month.

Am I on an island? :-)

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