January 12, 2007

Switch Journal: Software

January 12, 2007, 12:40 AM | 1 Comment

In some cases, one of the biggest differences between the Mac and PC is the software applications created for each environment. Although more and more programs are being developed to be cross platform, the majority of really good niche apps (such as text editors, instant messaging software, FTP clients, etc.) are only available for a specific platform.

My switch to Mac has been made easier by the fact that a lot of the major applications I use on a day-to-day basis are available for the Mac platform. Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, and Mozilla Firefox are all great examples of major applications that are available on both. With that said, there are still a lot of programs that I used every day on my PC that aren’t available for the Mac, so I had to go out and find alternatives.

I do have to admit though that I had a bit of an advantage of knowing which applications to use going into the switch. I had been using a Mac on and off at work for the better part of a year and got to know which applications worked for me, and which didn’t. Also, I was able to get a lot of suggestions from co-workers because the majority of them are Mac users.

Here’s a list of the applications that I now use on a day-to-day basis… on my Mac! Keep in mind that I am a web developer, so this list will obviously be a little skewed towards those types of applications, but do feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.

• Web Browser: Mozilla Firefox. The best browser for the PC is available on a wide variety of platforms, including the Mac. Firefox is arguably the best browser for any platform, Mac included, but a case could be made for Safari on the Mac. Having said that, if you’re not into web development, Safari is probably your best bet. The only reason I use Firefox on the Mac instead of using Safari (which is a tad faster) is that Safari doesn’t have the extensions that Firefox does, namely, the Firebug extension. Note: there are a growing number of extensions for Safari that you can check out at Pimp My Safari.
• Email: Mail. Mail (often referred to as “Mail.app”) is a full-featured email client that comes with OS X. As with every other Apple application, it’s simple and easy to use, but also has all the advanced features that you’d expect a good email client to have these days. The version of Mail that will come with OS X Leopard will also raise the bar for mail by adding many additional features (check out the Mail preview for Leopard). My only qualm so far with Mail is the lack of full IMAP compatibility. I’m not sure exactly what doesn’t work with it, but I know for a fact that I’ve been able to connect to an account using IMAP in Mozilla Thunderbird, but I cannot connect to that same account using IMAP in Mail. If anyone can shed any light on this, please do! On the PC I was using Outlook for all my email, contacts, and calendars. Moving that data from Outlook to a Mac isn’t the easiest process, but I’ll go through that in a separate post.
• Contacts: Address Book. As part of the default suite of applications that come with OS X, Address Book is a simple application that lets you manage your contacts, groups, etc. Mail and Address Book work together seamlessly as well, so if you’re composing a new email message in Mail and you type out the name or email address of the person you want to send a message to, Mail will look for that person in Address Book.
• Calendar: iCal. This is another application that I was really excited to get to use on a regular basis once I knew my “switch” was coming up. Over the past several years I’ve tried to find a great calendar application for Windows that supports the open iCalendar standard. Unfortunately there aren’t any applications that work as nicely and look as good as iCal does. Eventually I just broke down and used Outlook’s built in calendar on my PC because it was the most convenient application at my disposal and was the easiest to use. iCal also works seamlessly with Mail to allow you to send meeting invitations to contacts, much the same way you can in Outlook.
• RSS Reader: NetNewsWire Lite. Back in November I posted my thoughts on Flock, a great newish browser that has great built in RSS support. At the time of posting that article, I preferred having my RSS feeds and my browser as the same application, so Flock was perfect for me. Since that time though, I gave NetNewsWire Lite a try and I really like the way it works. It’s fast, simple, and has a great interface. Flock is available for the Mac, but it really eats away at your memory, so I decided that having a separate program for RSS works perfectly fine for me. NetNewsWire Lite is the free version of NetNewsWire, which costs $29.95 US. I haven’t tried the full version yet, but I’ve liked what I’ve seen so far from NetNewsWire Lite and at only 30 bucks I could definitely see myself upgrading in the future.
• FTP Client: Transmit. For Windows users there are a lot of FTP clients available, the best of which I always thought was CuteFTP Professional. CuteFTP is actually available for the Mac (something I just found out while writing this), but I haven’t given it a try yet. I’ve been using Transmit, which is considered by many to be the industry standard FTP client for Mac users. It’s definitely a powerful little application and it feels right at home in OS X, like another little Finder window. One of the most important features of an FTP client for me is that you can edit files in external applications and this is one of the areas that Transmit shines. You can open all the files you want, directly from the FTP server. Edit them and hit save and Transmit will automatically upload them back to the FTP server. CuteFTP does offer this feature, but I always found it a little bit finicky. Transmit will run you a reasonable $29.95 US, which is well worth it in my opinion. If you’re looking for a free alternative though, I’ve heard good things about Cyberduck.
• Instant Messaging: Adium. In most Mac circles, Adium is known as the best IM software there is, perhaps on ANY platform. Adium is a multi-protocol IM client that supports the big 4 (AIM, MSN, ICQ and Yahoo!) and many more (such as GoogleTalk, Jabber, and Bonjour to name a few). PC users will probably be familiar with a program called Trillian that allows multi-protocol instant messaging on Windows, but rest assured, Adium is miles better. I never liked Trillian for a lot of reasons, but Adium is not only simple to use, but it’s simply beautiful. The main reason I use Adium is to talk to all of my MSN contacts. Most of my friends are on MSN and MSN Messenger for the Mac is not only bloated, but it just doesn’t offer any additional features that you can’t get from Adium. Also, if you like tabbed browsing then you’ll love Adium’s tabbed IM windows, they’re awesome.
• Instant Messaging: iChat AV. While I do use Adium, I also run Apple’s iChat AV program simultaneously for use with the AIM network. Yes, Adium does work with the AIM network, but it doesn’t offer the audio and video conferencing features that iChat does (yet). Even though I don’t use the AV features hardly at all, it’s still nice to know that if I ever wanted to I don’t have to launch another application to do it. iChat is also a great program in its own right and is only bound to get better with the upcoming release of OS X 10.5 Leopard in the spring. Now, one thing that needs a mention is that it is actually possible to use iChat to talk to your MSN/ICQ/Yahoo contacts (through a service called Jabber), but it doesn’t offer you any more functionality than Adium does and I think Adium is just better for it. Setting up the Jabber stuff for iChat isn’t the easiest task either because iChat is not a fully functional Jabber client, so Adium just seems more practical for most people. I’ve done the Jabber thing with iChat though, so if you have questions, feel free to ask. At some point I’ll probably post a quick tutorial on how to do it, but for now, just use Adium for your MSN/ICQ/Yahoo needs. ;)
• Text Editor: BBEdit. Every web developer needs a great text editor and on the Mac BBEdit from Bare Bones Software is as good as it gets. In case you’re wondering, I used to use EditPlus on my Windows machine in spite of its ugly interface. BBEdit is probably the most powerful editor I’ve set my keyboard upon and it has a pretty good interface to boot (for a text editor anyways).  BBEdit is another on of those “industry standard” type programs but the price for BBEdit is a little steep at $125.00 US. It’s hard for me to accurately say if it’s worth it or not because I don’t use BBEdit to its full potential on a regular basis. What I will attest to though it that it’s a really nice editor if you can justify the price. If you’re not in the market for BBEdit, Bare Bones Software offers a free program called TextWrangler, which is a great editor in its own right. It doesn’t have all of the advanced features of BBEdit, but it’s still pretty good and it definitely won’t break the bank. For those curious, there is a list of features that are only available in BBEdit.
• Music: iTunes. Everyone who owns an iPod knows how great iTunes is for managing your music library and your iPod, but PC users making the switch to a Mac will be happy to know that it’s even better on a Mac. There aren’t any additional features that I’m aware of, so you won’t have any surprises, but it just runs a little smoother and feels better on a Mac. Transferring your files from your iTunes Library on your PC is relatively easy, but that will have to wait for another post in my switch journal (coming soon, I promise).
• Photo Management: iPhoto. One of the things I was most excited about when I knew for a fact that a Mac was in my future was photo management. On the PC there aren’t many REALLY good options for managing your photo library. The best one I found for the PC was Google’s Picasa program. iPhoto (in my opinion) blows it out of the water. iPhoto is part of Apple’s iLife software suite (free with the purchase of a new Mac) and is just as easy to use as the rest of the iLife software. iPhoto has some pretty powerful editing tools that allow you to tweak your pictures so they’re just the way you want them. Again, transferring photos from your PC into iPhoto is dead simple, but that will be covered in another post.
• Virtualization: Parallels Desktop for Mac. When developers first found out about Apple’s switch to the Intel Processor, the wheels started turning towards the ability to run Windows applications on a Mac. Although Apple has a software program called Boot Camp that will allow you to install Windows on the Intel Macs on a separate partition, that’s not really ideal because you’d have to run one OS or the other, not both at once. That’s where Parallels comes in. Parallels allows you to create a virtual computer and install an operating system on that “computer” or it allows you to run your Boot Camp installations and OS X simultaneously. Basically it will let people run all their old Windows applications (if they so choose) right inside OS X. Not only will this ease the switch for new Mac users who don’t want to replace all of their software right away, but for web professionals this is an invaluable feature that allows us to test our sites using Internet Explorer (multiple versions even) without ever having to turn on a PC. It’s for that reason that the Intel Macs have often been referred to as a “web developer’s best friend.” In the future I’ll be posting an article on how I’ve been using Parallels, so stay tuned for that. The cost for Parallels Desktop for Mac is $79.99 US.
• Miscellaneous: Growl. Growl is a great third party notification system that runs in the background on OS X. It’s becoming more and more popular these days and many programs now come with Growl support built right in (Adium and Transmit are a couple of examples). For PC users, Growl allows your applications to notify you of certain events in much the same way a lot of Windows applications do these days, like the alerts you get every time a contact signs on in MSN. Growl allows those same types of actions to be performed for Mac applications. Transmit, for example, will notify you when your files have finished transferring. Growl is extremely customizable and if a program doesn’t already have Growl support, there is usually a plug-in you can get to enable Growl support for it. Mail and iChat are examples of a programs that don’t have built in Growl support but there are plug-ins available to enable it.
• Miscellaneous: Chax. Chax is an excellent plug-in for iChat that really enhances the experience. My favourite feature of Chax is that it adds tabbed windows to iChat and allows you to keep all your conversations organized in 1 window, just like Adium does. It also has loads of other nice features that I don’t really use, but it does have built in Growl notifications, which is nice. Lately I’ve heard a few people complaining about Chax causing instability on their computer. Weird crashes, slow-downs, etc. I haven’t experienced any of these myself, so at this point I’ll still endorse Chax because I haven’t had any issues with it at all. Again, if you have any light to shed on this, please do.

Well, there you have it, that’s the list of software I’m using regularly at this point. As I get more and more programs that I find extremely useful though, I know I’ll be adding them to this list so check back for updates. Also, if you have any suggestions or thoughts about this list, feel free to comment and let me, and everyone else know.

Posted in: Apple, Switch Journal, Technology, Web Development