Jason Alexander

Must-have apps and answers for Windows Mac converts

So, in my ongoing task to convert people over to the Mac platform (at least for day-to-day work), I was able to convert Eric Smith, of CodeSmith fame.

He had been asking little questions here and there for a few weeks, and one day I got a rash of questions throughout the day. Lo and behold, the next day he came to work with a brand new, fancy schmancy Macbook.

So, after having taken the red pill, he had lots of questions of what apps were must-have's, how does he do certain things, and so on. With that in mind, I thought these were all great questions! So, I'm going to cover them here.

What are the must-have apps for Windows converts on a Mac?

FireFox and/or Camino - I'm not a big Safari fan, personally. And, I love FireFox. Now, add in a little Mac flare and you have Camino. It's awesome.
Quicksilver - This is THE must-have launcher app. I rarely ever use my task bar any more in OS X. A quick control+spacebar, start typing, three letters in (typically) hit enter. Bam. Done.
Adium - Awesome messenger application. Supports MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, GTalk and so on. Highly customizable and has tabbed conversations. Greatness.
Thunderbird - If you have your own personal IMAP or POP accounts that you check, I like T-bird. It's a bit of a hog, so I don't leave it open. But, it's great for getting in, replying and getting out. I'm looking forward to Gmail IMAP support.
Flip4Mac - This lets you play WMV or WMA within Quicktime on the Mac. Must, must have.
Growl - Many Mac apps will use Growl to do toast pop-up's like you're used to on Windows.
DoubleCommand - With my MacBook Pro I have weird keys that are in odd spots (or at least spots I'm not used to), and I have keys missing all together. DoubleCommand lets me change and re-map keys on the keyboard.
smcFanControl - This lets you change the settings of how the fan works on a Mac. As you've probably heard, Macs tend to run a little hot sometimes. For me, I like running smcFanControl and setting the default speed of my fans a little higher so that it stays cooler all around and doesn't need to kick in so often. The plus side to this is that the settings stick so that if/when you boot over to BootCamp in Windows the settings stay.
iStatPro - This is a great Dashboard widget that lets you watch and monitor the resources of your machine, including CPU, memory, harddrive usage, processes, etc... this is a MUST have.
CallWave Widget - This is visual voicemail before the iPhone got it. I talked previously about how I switched my mobile's voicemail over to CallWave. Using this widget you can view and listen to your voicemail all from the Dashboard. For introverted hermits like myself, this is awesome.

Other tips:

Apple -> System Preferences -> Dashboard & Expose - Set the top right corner to "All Windows" and the bottom right corner to "Desktop". This lets you move your mouse to the top right corner and Expose will kick in, showing you all windows that are open, laid out for you to pick and switch to. This is THE way to move between windows on a Mac instead of the old alt+tab (although, that works on a Mac too). Moving your mouse to the bottom right corner will clear all the windows out of the way, showing your desktop. This is ideal when you have a ton of windows open (like I'm apt to do) and you can move everything, clck on something on the desktop, move back to the bottom right corner and everything restores behind your newly opened window.
Dashboard - Press F12 - This is Dashboard. You can install all kinds of widgets and such. Install the few useful ones I have listed above.
Trackpad settings - If you are on a Macbook with a trackpad, you need to go into Apple -> System Preferences - Keyboard & Mouse -> Trackpad and check "Use two fingers to scroll" as well as "Tap trackpad using two fingers for secondary click". The first option lets you use two fingers and with a scrolling motion on your trackpad you can scroll anything on the screen. Very, very handy. You'll get used to this and love it. The second option lets you tap the trackpad with two fingers and do a right-click on anything. One of the big misconceptions of Macs is that there's only one mouse button. Wrong. Only if you let it only have one mouse button. ;)
Spotlight - Anytime you have a question, get lost, can't find a setting or a screen, using Spotlight. This is the little search icon/textfield that is on everything. Remember that Spotlight is contextual based on whatever screen you're on. If you're in System Preferences and type "network" in it it will highlight all icons within System Preferences that have to do with networking. If you click the magnifying lens at the top right of the screen and start typing, it will show you all files that have the name of what you're typing or have contents that may contain the text you're typing. Very handy for beginners when feeling your way around OS X.
Locations - If you have different network setups at home vs. work you'll want to use Locations. Apple -> Location -> Network Preferences... will open the network preferences screen. Clicking on the Location drop down you can edit locations and add in various network profiles for how you want to configure your separate networks. Then, whenever you change physical locations simply go to Apple -> Location and choose the appropriate location to pick up your network configuration.
Force Quit - YES, it is possible to have an application hang in OS X. I know, I know. You thought OS X was just all flowers and cotton candy. Well, it happens. When it does, just right click the icon on the task bar and choose "Force Quit" and this will kill that application with great prejudice.

So, this is a huge post. And, there's so much more. Assuming you guys like this content, I may follow-up with more. Particularly, I've been an avid Parallels user for awhile, and I'm switching to VMWare Fusion as we speak. I'll blog about that experience later.

But, hopefully this is helpful to someone!