After years of curiosity I've finally taken the plunge and bought a mac. More specifically a Macbook (couldn't justify the extra expense of going pro).
I've set up mail & surfed the web a bit - I'm just using MPEG Streamclip to demux the video off my HDD camcorder, but other than that the little macbook is thus far unsullied by non apple software. Any suggestions hat else I should be installing?
TIA
Well done on joining the dark side!! I can't claim to even know what demuxing even means but can't iMovie do that for you? iMovie will happily import my video camera's files?
Anyway, as for what other software to install:
1) Toast 8 - Think of Toast as being Nero for the PC.
2) MacTheRipper - If you need to rip DVD's
3) Handbrake - If you need to convert DVD's to MP4 and other formats and sizes
4) QuickSilver - Think of this as being Spotlight on Acid (loads of demos and tutorials on You Tube IIRC)
5) Firefox - Never got on with Safari myself
6) Either Office or iWork - iWork can read Office documents and can save in their file format too (might not be 100% compatible??). In some ways iWork is better than Office (Pages is really a DTP program than a Word Processor) and it runs a lot faster too but if you really need full compatibility with M$ than it probably has to be Office. M$ recently launched Office 2008 which is their first Universal Binary version of Office, i.e. it's optimised for Intel Macs, and as usual M$ got it wrong. Once running Office 2008 is faster than previous versions but it takes longer to launch each application and a number of people have reported numerous bugs etc. I've not noticed the bugs, just the long start up times, but then I barely use it.
7) Either Transmit or Cyberduck as a FTP program depending on your needs
Super Duper! For making bootable backups of your system drive (Time Machine can't make bootable backups)
Think that's it
