Indie and other macheads

[Kesomir]

So, I just received a shiny 27" imac i5 for work and been playing with it all day.

Sadly it has a faulty hard drive so is being collected and replaced (hopefully tomorrow).

Now, I have set myself up with a shiny new copy of CS5 Design premium, open office, fugu (might change that), parallels and rdc 2

but would like a good, free text editor a la notepad++ for times when powering up dreamweaver is an overkill.

would be mucho interested in any recomendations, as well as other generally good recomendations of 'must have' utilities and apps.

[steven winslow]

Dude,  Macs come with TextEdit built right in.  Just go to your Applications folder and open up TextEdit and you'll be sitting right in the middle of a sweet little text editor.  And it's free....well, you had to buy a Mac to get it, but the app is free.

[Cameron]

Hey, Kesomir,

Have you checked out Komodo Edit?

[Ben Russell]

We use and recommend Komodo Edit as a programmers editor.

It's free, run's everywhere, and has almost every tool I want. There is currently nothing better available for me, at any price.

http://www.activestate.com/komodo-edit/downloads

(Komodo IDE is expensive, and they try and use the website so that you end up buying it...)

Other tools:

Disco - CD burner.

Flip4Mac - WMV support

SnapzProX - video recording, like FRAPS.

TinkerTool - GUI for tweaking hidden OS X settings, like PowerToys for windows, don't really need it under Snow Leopard though, they got it right so far.

I have a few others, but that's the core. I just switched to my MBP and I didn't need to install many extras, almost everything I need from a computer comes in the box ready to go. <3

(Except Xcode, which was like a 2gig download! Yuck!)

[MaidenFan]

What MAC system are you running Indi-. I've got a Macbook Pro with a Nividia 9400M and a Nividia 9600M GT.

[Ben Russell]

15" MBP, stock. Apple has the specs. (Honestly don't really know or care, it's i5, quad core, has a nice GPU and 4 gigs of ram. Done.)

[MaidenFan]

Cool, sure beats windows.

[Ben Russell]

The difference between Mac and Windows comes down to this...

Mac: You run a system update, it says it has to reboot, you say it's allowed to reboot, you go make a coffee and come back to Terminal and Safari refusing to quit in-case you lose work.

Windows: You go and make a coffee, you come back, Windows update has run and all your work is gone.

This is not exaggeration, this is truth. Today's working truth.

Why people buy it I will never understand.

[Kesomir]

LOL@Indie.

While I have never experienced this issue - as you can set it to download but not install updates without promt - I might argue that the windows approach would teach you to take more care of saving open work, as a power cut can do the same.

I do use terminal windows a fair bit and take a lot of care with the 'power to really screw things up' approach - so those things don't bother me too much.

I'll grab your recommendation -as cameron and indie picked up, I'm looking for a programmers text editor - with syntax highlighting.

I can't find a decent sftp client with a norton commander interface like the amazing winscp - from what I've searched this does not exist right? Fugu has the interface but is buggy and abandoned code, and cyberduck is the better choice but no commander style interface.

As for os x vs windows.. hehe (this isn't my first mac, but last os I used was system 8)

They both have advantages and disadvantages - quite frankly I prefer gnome on linux, but want/need the convenience of buy app, run app and am hooked on creative suite - photoshop, acrobat pro and indesign really, although flex builder and illustrator occasionally (illustrator's ui sucks, I've used much 'better' vector packages).

My opinion only from 1 day of playing only - no flame please

Task bar > dock (linux or windows task bars)

Enter on a folder to open it is quicker navigation than to edit it.

I miss double click on bar to maximise/demaximise

Mac and Linux connect to windows shares is vastly superior to windows connect to nix and mac shares.

Setting up shares using the Command K, smb:// appears to give faster access to remote folders than navigating through the mounted shares on the filer.

gnome/kde are far more configurable than osx or windows

gnome/kde have more special effects than os x (2 choices for window minimise on mac - no choice on win - gazillion on compiz et al)

windows 7 has more ui candy than os x currently

os x looks much cleaner

win 7 snap feature is missed

legacy mac os drivers work on osx in a way that legacy windows drivers do not.

I need to find a list of ui shortkeys and hints and tips

I'm hoping not to see the general slowdown over time effect you get with windows

[StevenM]

Yeah, yeah. But my PC has TrackIr ( Booomm Headshot  ;D )

I have both a PC & Mac on my desk. Both are just tools for doing the job. I'm more productive on the clunky PC than on that reality distorting thing called a Mac. But that is due to historical reasons and me not being a hipster or a genius.

[Ben Russell]

...I concede that my laptop has Vista on it. It gives you the option to defer reboot but if you're not there, oh well.

It's an internal team joke that the Windows Update is coming to get you, so save everything and get ready. Really, it is.

As for saving documents, that's not the issue, between Dropbox and version control nothing is ever lost.

My systems are laptops, power spikes are moot.

For me, the issue is "working context".

Rebooting your machine is like clearing off your workbench. If I could "^s to save hibernate state" every 10 minutes.....

Ctrl-F2 will get you into the Apple menu.

There's a system prefs panel where you can enable full GUI keyboard access.

Cmd-` for "alt tab between only this apps windows"

Keyboard shortcuts can be sent to apps that have only been focused with the cmd-tab reticle.

(cmd-tab three times to "glare at" some other app, cmd-q to quit it, it goes away, you go back to work.)

Now this next one, is pure magic.

The file system, is smart, really smart. You can rename files and folders and move things around (same-disk context probably gets us) and you don't get .... tripped up, it just works. Sometimes you need to cd . or pwd to figure out where the hell you are, but its mostly great.

My biggest dissapointment is that symlinks and Finder Aliases aren't very friendly with each other.

...remap the expose keys. The defaults suck for me. Try this:

Enable F-Keys instead of "magic apple keys" by default so you have to use fn-... for volume etc.

Map expose:

F3: desktop

cmd-F3: all app windows

fn-F3: ALL windows (apple magic expose key!)

I find this a much more useful setup than defaults.

Finder is.... yeah, average. But I prefer it over vista's explorer or nautilus. I haven't spent quality time with seven.

There's a power version called PathFinder you might like.

There's also an pref pane, shareware, cant remember the name, but it gives you _real_ control over sambas share list. Not this poxy users only stuff.

.....pretty much all my friends love linux but use Macs, for reasons youve found, they just go, and when you need power, it's there.

[Ben Russell]

Yeah, yeah. But my PC has TrackIr ( Booomm Headshot  ;D )

I have both a PC & Mac on my desk. Both are just tools for doing the job. I'm more productive on the clunky PC than on that reality distorting thing called a Mac. But that is due to historical reasons and me not being a hipster or a genius.

Sure, I don't mind which people use. I was a Windows user for many years, swore by them, didn't go near a Mac until OS 10.3

I have a drawing app (Alibre) that only runs on Windows, it works with parrallels, but I'm not paying for that -and- Windows...... I'll just use my windows laptop thanks. It already does the job i want it to.

[StevenM]

Alibre (the personal edition) looks interesting, i've been looking for a more accurate modeler than Silo. Does it export to obj?

[Ben Russell]

No, .stl is the only really useful mesh format it spits out at those price levels.

It's been a while since I used it, I haven't tried using it with X-Plane yet. It would be possible with some work, blender will import .STL

I don't know if it's worth the effort though.

I like Alibre for the accuracy, and more importantly, the constraint and "assembly" tools, where by it is very smart about putting things together, gaps between faces, simulation part motions, and so forth.