MacTips - for Mark's new Mac

Mark · June 2006

Useability tests show x's on tabs is better logical grouping of function to the object it represents

I realize you're just the messenger, but that's the biggest load of horseshit I've ever heard.

Logical grouping doesn't drive usability. But for argument's sake, let's take that to be true. Grouping things that are similar in the same place can take on various levels of meaning. For example, having the x on the right-hand side of the "tab strip" is still grouping them in the same place.

But what is the purpose of the x? To close tabs, right? What if you want to close five tabs? If you put the x on the tab, you've got to move your mouse five times to find each x. But in it's current spot in firefox, you just click five times and don't move your mouse at all. If you are using a touchpad and the x is on each tab, this can get very frustrating very fast.

Whatever. I could go on all day, but it pisses me off when people get so caught up with semantics and it ruins the fun for the user.

imathis · June 2006

I don't know if you ever use Virtual Desktops, but I find them to be pretty useful to keep my programs organized and keep me from being distracted.

8. VirtueDesktops (link)
Definatly the sexiest virtual desktop app I've tried on OS X. Give it a spin. It resonates with beautiful mac ui goodness and it's really handy that you can bind programs to a specific virtual desktop (through the Inspect Applications menu).

kimonostereo · June 2006

Just my .02

- Console and Activity Monitor are your best friends! I have them set up at launch to run! Activity Monitor allows you to monitor your processors, memory and disk space and you can choose to watch this all in your dock! Find it in Applications > Utilities

- Gmail notifier - if you use gmail this is a must.

- Parallels - for when you need to run XP or check your site in XP or anyother OS for that matter.

- Firefox plug-in called FlashBlock. My number one problem with Firefox was flash ads loading and when you have multiple tabs open with multiple instances of flash running it kills your processor! FlashBlock is one of my favorite plug-ins!

- TextMate is my text editor of choice. It's a majpr time saver and even allows you to run shell scripts directly in the interface. If you haven't watched the screen casts to see what this thing can do, don't delay, check it out now! TextMate Screen Casts

- CSSEdit - I use this sometimes just to do a quick style sheet for websites. Great for setup and small tweaks.

- Voodoo Pad - It's like having a wiki in an App. This text editor allows me to save all sorts of snippets, urls, passwords etc. All in wiki like interface with full search capabilites. It can also encrypt pages and it even syncs with your iPod!

- LinoType FontExplorer - Simply the best font organizer out there and it's free. It just works!

check Macupdate.com for latest versions:
- Mplayer or VLC - Plays .avi, wmp and all sorts of other files quicktime has a hard time with.
- Transmission - the best bit-torrent app.

imathis · June 2006

I agree with you about the (x) thing... Common ui devices should be as fixed positionally as possible. I got over it because I hardly use my mouse at all on my mac for that kind of thing. cmd+w to close tabs, cmd+shift+right or left arrow switches between tabs. With SafariStand you can set it up to go back and forth between tabs by typing , and .

And speaking of not using your mouse. One thing that really annoyed me was the way that you could only resize windows from the bottom right. Enter GeekBind.

9. GeekBind (link) - I haven't tested it on intel macs yet
GeekBind allows you to set keyboard shortcuts for widow resizing, hiding, moving and other stuff. So for example I have option+` set so that when I hold those down and move my mouse, no matter where it is on a window, it will drag the widow around my desktop (without disrupting window order). Holding option+ctrl+` allows me to resize the window from anywhere, by dragging in or out from my current position. I adjusted the default settings because the overlays were too opaque, but other than that it's a pretty nice little app.

Edit: Moving a window does not curently work on intel macs, resizing does.

WallPhone · June 2006

Yep, just a messenger. No other real-life experience other than the single firefox X. Ironically, I don't use it, usually right-click then press 'C'.

I guess the moral of the story is that everybody has their prefrence.

Here is one source for anybody who is interested: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009210.html

rbl · June 2006

Wow! Almost everyone has named the best apps out there and tips. I'll just add a few worth mentioning:
- Lets start with Macupdate.com (MU) and VersionTracker.com (VT). This is where you'll find the latest updated software with comments, reviews and screeshots by other mac users. Search the following apps there.
- Marc Liyanage's PHP and MYSQL Packages
Mac OS X as an Apache server already built in but you need these packages to install PHP and MYSQL. Then using Terminal (to edit the httpd.conf) and NetInfo Manager to add records, you can add as many virtual servers as you want and develop your web apps offline, sipping beer on couch

- CocoaMySQL or MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser (both from mysql.com) for all your SQL needs
- SunriseBrowser is a web browser aimed at the web designers/develepers audience and has a lot of useful features
- Xyle scope is like a CSS "reverse engineering" app. If you do CSS, this is a lifesaver.
- OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle (or the pro versions) are my brainstorm storm apps. I can outline my ideas with OO and then put them on a visual context with OG.
- DEVONthink PRO is my secondary brain. It's a "everything" manager so you don't need to remember everything.
- Merlin is "the" project manager for the mac platform. Still a bit unknown but it will rock your socks off

- I'm a web designer/developer and I do all my code in BBEdit. It's expensive but it's the best.

- WebnoteHappy is a bookmarks manager done right.
- Endo a rss reader and much more.
- Color Schemer Studio and Color Consultant Pro are one of those apps that you'll need when you are doing web design work.
- DiskCatalogMaker creates a blazing fast searchable database of all your (removable) media.
- VLC (videolan client) is the best opensource video player for the mac.

- Finally I must add that Apple's iLife apps and default system apps are the most useful things you'll have on your mac. While in the windows world each app has it's own view and way of doing things, on the mac side almost everyone relies and integrates on/with those (fantastic) apps that come with the OS.
Address Book probably the perfect example. If you have a bluetooth phone, you can use iSync to sync your phone's address book with your mac's Address Book (app). The vast majority of apps that have or need an address book, will choose to integrate with Apple's than to add their own address book.
- And because Apple has numerous guidelines for developers to follow, most keyboard shortcuts will work on all apps so most hard core mac users end up using their keyboard > 80% of the time. Add tools like Quicksilver or LaunchBar and your productivity will increase even more.

Congratulations on your new mac and welcome

imathis · June 2006

I used to use bbedit all the time... Now I mainly use textMate. I really like collapseable code structures, and I like how I can set it to auto-save when the application loses focus. That way I simply have to cmd+tab to safari and refresh. Fast.

lech · June 2006

Mark, it's apples way of making up for the lack of video games :) /me runs out of here blazing fast before the zealots come after him.

Kosmo · June 2006

/me runs after lech *Blaaargh* Just kiddin' one thing I have learned about Mac is that after I got one, it was the most entertaining thing in the world, before my freetime was about 80-90% of WoW and after the tidy whitey came it was ooh about 3-5% of WoW and 110% of Mac :D Other computers where shunned upon and dirty Winnie and Linux UI was the pheer, the PHEEEER I tells you, I tells you what! Ofcourse WoW and Mac are friendsters so it was ok for WoW, but my face time with PC is a fraction of what it used to be.

3stripe · June 2006

Widgets. Turn em off to free up some memory! I only ever looked at the weather one cos it's pretty... I too have wondered about games for the Mac... I still have zero! Which is pretty crazy considering how many I used to have on my PC a few yeers back... Any recommendations? Especially network games... I'd be up for a a wee game against any of you folks sometime....

Kosmo · June 2006

Well MMORPGs are my #1 favourite, for the last 6-7years I have been constantly a subscriber to some MMOG or other. Mac has WoW which is my current venue, but then there are some shooters (popular ones get ports fo shizzle) Battlefield 1942, HALO, UT2004, Doom3, Quake 4, Call of Duty 2 and believe me when I say Civilization 4 is INSANE, I'm a fan of Sid's games and have been from the first Pirates and Civ4 hooked me so bad. Also one of the best lan games is Command & Conquer Generals and I usually start some shit with my cousin in it, that and Warcraft 3 ofcourse. Darwinia is THE awesum! From those what I mentioned I propably own all of them in some form or another (read. PC/Console) but what I play on my Mac is WoW, UT2004, C&C Generals, Warcraft 3 and Civ 4. And when Parallels gets the DirectX9 fix just go to the game store and buy yourself some PC games and run them no problem 100% ok you the man!

3stripe · June 2006

Well aye, but not if you bought an iMac a couple of months before they went Intel, like me :( I played Command & Conquer to death on a PC (altough I think the first one is still my fav, mostly because of that cheat were you could build things anywhere you wanted)

Kosmo · June 2006

I think it's a bad move on Apple's part not to do something to those who bought PPC Mac just few months before they introduced Intel Macs. Even a rebate could help a litte. But there is a non universal version of all of those games (or most of them) I mentioned. It's a misperception that Macs don't have games, they have all the good games, just the games that suck ass haven't had the Mac treatment, and honestly, do we miss something if we can't play a game that sucks ass?

3stripe · June 2006

Mac games would be all graphics and no gameplay I reckon... ahahhahah

Kosmo · June 2006

I really don't understand the funny behind that, have you looked lately what kind of GPUs Macs have these days? Power Mac comes with GeForce 7800 GTX with 256MB memory, that is the "older" (7900 is same chip just clocked higher) flagship nVidia card (I have one of those in my PC) and the ATI Radeon x1600 is more than enough to run modern games with all graphics settings to the max. Only Macs that can't run modern games on max settings are Macbook and Mac Mini. (and what I heard about Macbook, the integrated graphics chip has some kick to it)

3stripe · June 2006

I mean OS X and Apple products in general are very pleasing in the eye, so it follows that their games would be, possibly to the detriment of the gameplay...

Kosmo · June 2006

Well, despite the neat look of the Mac OS X it has superior usability over Winnie the Crash and Linux. Few weeks ago I applied to the beta of Vista, and all I got from it was that I'm not going to upgrade. It was neat and all, had some very welcome additions but.. it was still windows, which in turn means that it still had it's flaws and own quirks. Don't get me wrong, it again was far superior to XP like XP was to 2k and so on, but if the core ideology of the OS is flawed, no amount of bettering will remove it if it is built on top of the core ideology. I propably will be in contact with Vista enough through work, but I have decided to let go of windows PCs, I'm going for Macs and Consoles. Macs will get hell of a lot more attenttion now that porting games to it is easier than before and the virtualization seems promising so if I ever need to pop to windows I still can do it without a commitment.

jsanders · June 2006

had a discussion just like this in my little corner of the internet when i bought my mac.

two things i didn't see mentioned:

SSHKeychain - gui ssh keychain, interfaces with the apple keychain for passphrases.
Fugu - gui scp client. i haven't had a lot of opportunity to use this yet, but don't let the website throw you off... it looks a lot better than their site.

edit: also, textwrangler, is a feature-stripped, free version of bbedit, for those of us who only want to edit save and exit.

Quicksilver does so much more than just launching apps.

like what? i've had a nagging suspicion that there's a LOT more to this little program than just launching programs via the keyboard (which is cool as hell), but no one that i've seen use it really knows. what more can it do?

imathis · June 2006

9. iAlertU (link)
An alarm system for your MacBook Pro. Use your remote to "lock" your mac. If someone moves it (setting off the built in motion sensor), closes the screen, or touches the trackpad / keyboard the alarm will sound. Muting doesn't work as it overrides that option. Oh and it also makes a cool car lock and unlock sound. Even if you don't use it for "security" it's still pretty jiggy.

Bruce A · July 2006

Well, it's not a first person shooter or a heavy strategy game, but I'd like to recommend Quinn. It's a Tetris clone, and it has a network play feature so you can play against your friends (assuming you've got any

). It's free, too, though sadly it's not yet Universal.

MacTips - for Mark's new Mac

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