Must have Apple OSX software

Apple OSX like Leopard is quite boring in Windows-user perspective: newly bought Macs are ready-to-use out-of-the box. There's nothing big to adjust, install or fix.

There are still some software that you must have. I personally have found these nice and working, so go ahead and try them:

  • Textfile editor Smultron. There are others as well, but Smultron just works and looks good. (Open source)
  • Office-suite OpenOffice. It's just as good as Microsoft Office, it might still need some learning. Once you've got it, there's practically no need for Microsoft's products. NOW as native OSX-Aqua app, so it's goodbye to NeoOffice and running OpenOffice trough X.
  • Video player VLC overrides codec-issues and you don't need to install Microsoft's Media Player to watch WMV-videos
  • Photo-editor Pixen. It's originally targetted to pixel artists but you can do quite much of the things that you could do with Photohsop. It's also open source, which is venice.
  • iStat menus - a great menubar tool showing all necessary system information in one small places without disturbing. Shows network traffic, CPU usage, memory usage etc. A must have!
  • Photo-editor Pixen. It's originally targetted to pixel artists but you can do quite much of the things that you could do with Photohsop. It's also open source, which is venice.
That's practically it. However you might need the following:
  • Terminal iTerm. Open source. While Leopards own terminal is "ok" I found it very hard to get emulations working correctly to take SSH-terminal to our server. . BTW: If you're experiencing problems with your backspace/delete in nano/pico-editor, try writing "export TERM=xterm".
  • File-tranfer program FileZilla. Need a graphical SFTP/SCP-program? Use this. GUI could be better but can't blaim because it's packed with good features.
  • Music production software Logic Express. I switched from Cubase to Logic Express when switching from Windows to Mac. I think Cubase is better in usability than Logic, but I'm in middle of transormation process. For example resizing track parts (audio or midi) seems to be more easier in Cubase. What was really annoying was the snapping. In Cubase snapping works like a charm, it does just what you want it. However in Logic there's some strange "smart snap" which I would intepret "if you want spend loads of extra time adjusting your track timings, use this".

    I found an fix for this: use "snap to absolute value" from snap-dropdown. Then change also a value from time signature bottom thing that probably says /16 to /4 and the playhead will also snap like "it should".

    Logic developers, please increase the dialog sizes also and use standard button placement in the dialog "do you wnt to save" and "do you want to close". Thank you.