Mac essentials

From Perceptual Learning Wiki

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

[edit]

Mac Essentials

Mac OS X is a great platform but there are some third-party apps that make it even better. The following lists software that various people have found useful.

[edit]

Mac Specific Software

[edit]

Launchers and Navigation

  • Quicksilver -- a general purpose launcher, and much more. This is likely my most frequently used app, but all of its features are not particularly well documented. The creators of Quicksilver have an amazing sense of style! One can only wish that all software was so elegant. Still in beta version. For similar alternatives, there are also Butler and LaunchBar
  • PathFinder -- A replacement for the Finder. The Finder is really kind of crappy, and this is a good alternative. It is not intended to replace Finder but it does add numerous valuable features.
[edit]

Latex and Bib management

  • TexShop -- GUI for interacting and editing .tex files and their produced pdfs. I use this rather than Emacs, as I find the interaction between the .pdf and .tex file in this is really great.
  • BibDesk -- GUI for interacting with .bib files. I really like this interface, and I have had few problems with it, unlike the most common bibliography software, EndNote (which I would avoid like the plague). I've also heard good things about Bookends, and I like to use Reference Miner to search through PubMed for easy drag & drog integration with BibDesk.
  • Latex Equation Editor -- small little app that can generate little .pdf snippets of equations -- good for including in powerpoint/Keynote presentations, or just testing code.
[edit]

System Monitoring

  • MenuMeters -- An app that let's you see a lot of diagnostic information in the menu bar at the top of the screen, including memory usage, bandwidth usage, and processor usage (like xload).
[edit]

File transfer/ SSH management / Remote Access

  • Fugu A good gui for sftp/ftp applications. I like this one, as it has the ability to do sftp, which a lot of free ftp guis don't. Other options are Cyberduck (allows sftp, but it always choked when connecting to some Sun machines for me) and Fetch (as of Jan 2007, it didn't do sftp).
  • SSHKeychain -- A GUI for managing SSH keys pretty easily.
  • SSH Tunnel Manager -- A GUI for managing SSH tunnels easily.
  • Chicken of the VNC -- The best VNC client software that I've found, primarily because it can utilize tight encoding. However, I generally just use the x11 app vncviewer (installed via fink).
  • OSXvnc -- a VNC server for your OS X box. It works ok, but isn't optimal, as the remote access actually takes over your desktop, rather than having an additional desktop that is independent of what's on the console (like in x11). You can use this in "view only" mode to do conference calls, etc. Again, this will likely become obsolete with OS X v10.5, but it works well in a pinch.
[edit]

Open source repository

  • fink -- a great repository for x11/unix apps, including gawk, tkl, latex, grace, emacs, octave, etc. Comes with its own "FinkCommander" GUI that makes updating pretty easy. Requires developer tools to be installed (Developer Tools comes on an install disk, and upgrades can be accessed here).
    FYI, Fink installs itself and all of its packages, with the exception of Xfree86, in a directory named /sw, thus completely separating it from the main /usr system directory. If problems occur with Fink-installed packages, you can simply delete the entire /sw directory tree without affecting your system. You may want to add /sw/bin and/or /sw/sbin to your PATH or remember to make symbolic links in /usr/bin. You can change the default path in FinkCommander> Preferences> Paths.
[edit]

Miscellanea

  • MenuCalendarClock -- Allows you access to all your calendars from the menu bar, which can be handy, as iCal is memory hog...
  • OmniGraffle -- really great product that allows you to make very nice vector graphics easily. All of the Omni group products are quite good, but this one is particularly good.
  • Virtue -- A Virtual Desktop manager. This will likely become obsolete as of OS X v10.5, but it works pretty well for now. As an alternative, there's also Desktop Manager.
  • Psyscope X -- PsyScope for OS X. This is the OS X port of Psyscope. They've fixed a lot of bugs from the OS 9 version os Psyscope, but I am not sure if they've done complete diagnostics with it to determine how accurate it is due to differences between the OS 9 and OS X operating systems.
  • GeekTool -- I used to use this software a process monitoring (having a constant transparent top on the desktop), but it can be used for other things (e.g. having am updated dopplar map for monitoring weather, etc). Not sure if the SF version was updated, but this is a branch of the software that should work on 10.4 (Yay for open source).
[edit]

Mac Ports

  • AquaMacs -- Aqua emacs combines the flexibility of GNU Emacs with the look and feel (and some keybindings) of Aqua (Mac OS X) window manager. Most standard Emacs keybindings (e.g. C-x C-s) work too. Other ports are Emacs.app or Carbon emacs (only for Intel). You can customize Aquamacs bindings any way you want.
  • MS Office for Mac -- Yes, it costs money but it's worth it. The real MS Word, Excel, and Powerpoint work much better than the substitutes. Mac Office 2004 also includes MS Entourage, which organizes your email, calendar, contacts, and can sync with your Treo or Palm Pilot. (Note: Entourage is not Outlook) Subsidized licenses are available through your university and part of the money goes to the Bill Gates Foundation.
  • Gimp.app -- GIMP port to OS X. I use this quite a bit.
[edit]

General Software That You Want Installed on Your Mac

  • Firefox -- Great web browser that works seamlessly on all platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac). Among other things, it makes it trivial to maintain the same set of bookmarks on all platforms. Just export bookmarks to (html) file, sftp it to any machine, and import it back.
  • Skype -- Free client for voice over IP (VoIP). SkypeOut also allows you to call ordinary telephones worldwide for a few cents per minute flat rate.
[edit]

Resources Every Mac User Should Know About

[edit]

Web Sites

[edit]

Books

  • Mac OS X Bible by Samuel Litt, Thomas Clancy, and half a dozen other authors. The Tiger edition is published 2005. Total novices will find plenty of screenshots and seasoned geeks will find thoughtful comments on various architectural issues. Covers all applications that come preinstalled on your Mac.
  • Mac OS X Tiger for Unix Geeks by Brian Jepson & Ernest Rothman, 2005, http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/macxtigerunix/index.html -- It's not as simple as just opening a Terminal and typing su. Did you know that first you must enable the root account from the NetInfo Manager in the GUI? And what about the Spotlight metadata?


See also Help Files

Retrieved from "http://cogmod.osu.edu/wiki/index.php/Mac_essentials"
Personal tools