PanaGeek

<title>For new Mac owners</title> Well, all of my Mac evangelization has resulted in a second friend looking to buy a Mac, so I think I need to giver them a few links to help them on the way from new Mac owner to Mac power user.

The first site is <a href=“http://macslash.org”>MacSlash</a>. It is similar in function to <a href=“http://slashdot.org”>SlashDot</a>, except that it focuses on Mac news. There are a lot of Mac news sites, but I like this one, particularly the reader interaction. I may or may not have posted my thoughts there from time to time.

Next, <a href=“http://www.macosxhints.com”>Mac OS X Hints</a> is pretty much what the title says. It is a great source for ways to improve your Mac experience. The reader feedback is a great way of validating the quality of the hint – dumb hints are rapidly exposed, and good ideas are often improved upon.

Continuing in this vein, I recommend using <a href=“http://discussions.info.apple.com/”>Apple Support discussion boards</a> when you are stumped by a problem. Since I “tweak” my preferences I occasionally run into a problem that I can’t resolve on my own. The last problem I had was after the upgrade to 10.4.2 when about half my menu bar icons wouldn’t show up. It turned out that a file that I had deleted under 10.4.1 had caused a conflict after upgrade, so I posted the symptoms and had a response in less than a day.

New computers call (scream) for applications. My favorite for OS X apps is <a href=“http://www.versiontracker.com”>Version Tracker</a>. There are several others out there, usually with the exact same stuff, so this a good enough for a start.

Now, one of the great features of OS X is that is a *nix – a unix clone, more or less. What this means to me, the individual user, is that I can also use tons of software that was written for Linux, FreeeBSD, or just about any other *nix. The place to start looking for these apps is <a href=“http://sourceforge.net”>SourceForge</a>. Its a great site, and I maintain my CoCalc calculator distribution there.

Well, that’s it for starters. Based on your feedback, I will keep this thread going.

<title>First Mac Apps</title> I just received an E-mail from my friend Chuck who just bought an iMac. So, I figured I’d write a quick list of apps that a new Mac user should install. So, here they are in no particular order:

X11 – no link here, it comes on the install DVD. This is important to have, and is worth an “archive and install” cycle.

<a href=”http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/”>QuickSilver</a>. This is my favorite tool for navigating in OS X. Dump the lousy “Spotlight” (as a hotkey at least) and try this.

<a href=”www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/”>Menu Meters</a>. A great way to visualize what’s going on with your Mac.

<a href=”http://homepage.mac.com/dschimpf/”>MacJournal</a>. You may have seen me mention this app before. I really like it as a data storage/blogging app. You can still get a fully functional (no expiration) version at Dan’s site.

<a href=”http://www.caminobrowser.org/”>Camino</a>. This is <b>the</a> OS X version of Mozilla. I have tried several different browsers, but keep coming back to Camino. And I’m not the only <a href=”http://chunaezoh.org”>one.</a>

Finally, there is <a href=”http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/index.shtml”>Text Wrangler</a>. This is a free version of <a href=”http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/index.shtml”>BBEdit</a>. BBEdit is overkill for me, but Text Wrangler has enough to make it one of the best editors out there.

Well, that’s it for tonight. I’m hoping that others will add to this post. Maybe I will have a few topic centric app posts in the future (something like a browser post, a text editor post, or a security post).