MacTips - for Mark's new Mac

Kosmo

I got friends, honestly. Tho, 99% of my friends are gamers so care to give a guess how many of them owns a Mac :D

pbear

I'd recommend MAMP (Apache/PHP/MySQL) for offline development. You already have Apache on the Mac (and PHP, just needs to be enabled) but this is a nice distribution. Don't have to open up your machine with Personal Web Sharing. When you're done with it (or mess it up, like me) just drag it to the Trash.

I e-mail with PowerMail. Not free, but it searches wicked fast. Thorough filtering system. PowerMail + SpamSieve = perfect!

Personally I hide the Dock as far away as possible and use DragThing as my application launcher. Completely customizable. Depending on how you work, Butler or Quicksilver may be better. Give DragThing a spin just for kicks though.

I also find Unsanity's FruitMenu indispensable. People have differing opinions about "haxies," but on my 1024x768 tiny iBook screen it's a must.

precid

someone above mentioned you needed to install the entropy packages for php and mysql, but it's actually already there. open up your httpd.conf /etc/httpd/httpd.conf uncomment the following LoadModule php4_module libexec/httpd/libphp4.so AddModule mod_php4.c save and restart apache and you're off to the races. mysql is also installed by default, and you can get at it through the command line or through what I think is the rock awesomest mysql gui, CocoaMySQL. using personal file sharing isn't really opening up your machine, it's just a switch for apachectl, and apache has a virtual host running at /~user/ but you can set up your own virtual hosts pretty easily. Here is a guide http://www.evolt.org/article/Enabling_Virtual_Hosts_on_MacOS_X/18/13138/

imathis

BootCamp (link)
I just played battlefield 2 and Oblivion last night on my BootCamped Mac. I've never seen these games run so smoothly and look so nice! I was getting at least 100fps in bf2 even with 4x anti-aliasing and all the settings cranked as high as they go. I can't believe the power in this can trounce all my other computers.

ellin

'While typing this I can press cmd+shift+; to do a spell check on this input field... pretty sweet." This doesn't work for me? Does it matter what programe you're in? Usining Firefox..

Kosmo

Suweet, just ordered my own MacBook Pro 15,4" 2.16Ghz - 2gb ram - x1600 256mb - 100gb hdd - Superdrive It should arrive sometime next week if all goes well.

imathis

yeah... I think you have to be in a cocoa application, such as safari. If you like FF better... you can use Butler for a quick dictionary check. I can hover my mouse over any word and press ctrl+cmd+d and it does a sweet dictionary check overlay.

bugsmi0

Butler is not better than quicksilver not even close, I actually uninstalled butler it was crap and slowed the mac down. quicksilver is high recommended though its fast as lightening. also recommoended url well and tiger lanuch

imathis

it doesn't slow me down...

bugsmi0

Butler is a joke if you ask me along with the other nonsense apps used to lure people into paying for other useless apps

imathis

Wow you're pretty passionate with your ad hominem attack there. I'll give quicksilver another try, perhaps it has improved some since I last used it.

Colin

Back on track - Stattoo (http://www.panic.com/stattoo/) rocks. Unobtrusive quick access to Mail, iCal, Weather, clock, and more on your desktop. Blends right in.

bugsmi0

quicksilver rocks I only recommend sure things that work!!

nothing against butler just that it is too buggy and very slow and unreponsive, it freezes up most of the time
so I don't recommend it, I think they tried to put too many things into one basket. Quicksilver is awsome and no app can replace it not even butler.

panic.com has some cool apps, I use transmit that's a great FTP for mac