After a few-year hiatus from Mac ownership, I picked up a cheap 2013 11" MacBook Air so I can better provide tech support for my Mom & Dad’s respective Macs.
Apparently it comes with OS 10.9 Mavericks installed, so I’ll that to 10.11 El Capitan.
What other great/fun Mac apps & utilities should I check out? I own Scrivener from my previous Mac ownership. Don’t need Windows support or cross-platform games as I have a Surface Book as my main notebook.
Thanks!
Nice thread, we used Macs at work, so I’d love some apps as well.
1Password / Lastpass
Cocktail
Bartender 2
Teamviewer / NoMachine
BetterTouchTool
inSSIDer
Pushbullet / Pasteasy / Command-C
Notability
SuperDuper / Carbon Copy Cloner (now commercial)
TheUnarchiver
Xee
FantastiCal 2
AirReceiver
Moom
TextWrangler
AirVideo HD / Plex Media Server
PixelMator
Default Folder X
Alfred/Butler/Launchbar
Witch
AirFoil
TweetBot
DaisyDisk
iPhone Backup Extractor (Home or Pro)
NameMangler
CrashPlan
Transmission
Handbrake
VLC
Hazel
TextExpander
iStat Menus
DoubleCommand (doesn’t seem to be updated past 10.9)
f.lux
Nice list; thanks, Rei! Any of those absolute must-haves? (IE: Hit them first?)
Wow, I forgot about Launchbar. I had that before and it was super-handy. I’ll have to check about upgrading to a modern version.
Clean My Mac 3 is an absolute must have for me.
Soulver is a great calculator to me. Calcbot is not too bad but I’m liking Soulver for an excel like quick entry and calculation.
Things for Mac is a great tool for getting things done, especially now that’s it’s on sale. And if you have an iPhone, it’s a must have app.
Hazel, Chrome, Firefox, Plex, VLC, Witch, Moom, Fantastical, Teamviewer, NoMachine, Moom, BetterTouchTool, uBlock Origin, Cocktail and SuperDuper are my first installs on a new Mac.
SuperDuper, Soulver, Tweetbot, and 1Password are my essentials.
$40US/$60CAD seems a bit much for CleanMyMac, which appears to be equivalent to CCleaner Pro.
Looks like Cocktail does the maintenance I need. I’m using the same license for 11 years now–same for SuperDuper. I love the little devs.
Onyx is a free alternative: http://www.titanium.free.fr/
yeah i recall having launchbar back in os8/9
I guess Dropbox, Skitch (only the Mac app will be developed going forward), Evernote are also prompt installs. Need to find a good native Google Keep client for Mac. OneDrive and Microsoft Office as well.
You guys rock!
Got it today, and it had already been updated to El Capitan. I wasn’t super-happy with the “refurbishment,” which basically seems to have meant “Erase all files and carelessly wipe off the MacBook but leave a thick, disgusting level of dust and gunk on the AC adapter.” But it works fine and the MBA itself is in good shape, so I’ll deal.
Apparently the original owner had restored some Time Machine backups on this because (1) the system is referred to as “White MacBook” (it’s an 11" 2013 MBA) and (2) there’s a functional iWork 09 folder in the Applications folder. And initially I couldn’t log in to my Apple ID during initial setup, nor could I log into the stor or iTunes, until I created a /Users/Shared folder using the Terminal commands found in this article. That was insane and frustrating.
So, everything’s working swimmingly now. But I’m wondering if I should just flatten this thing and restart from scratch, or if Apple’s reset functionality really does do a good job of clearing out the crap but it left iWork since that’s an Apple app? (And Software Update is currently moving those from the '09 versions to the latest 2015 releases.) Flattening it wouldn’t be hard as little as I’ve installed, but it’s still a big download (slow DSL here) and time spent if I don’t need to bother.
Hmm… Can’t figure out how to rename it from “White Macbook,” iCloud Drive won’t let me log in, and a look around the Applications folder also finds non-functional stuff like iPhoto. Screw it, I’m gonna flatten this sucker. I assume these instructions are okay? http://mashable.com/2015/10/01/clean-install-os-x-el-capitan/#ye191Mp4WEqS
if you’re OCD like me:
download el capitan from the app store and get lion disk maker to make a bootable usb disk with it. power off mac. power on and press option (or command? i forget) during bootup to pick boot drive (your new usb drive)
run disk utility, partition +erase your hd, naming it whatever you want. then, without quitting/rebooting, start the install process of el capitan onto a new clean hd.
Yep, that’s what I’m going to do. Thanks, REI! Just gonna take a few hours to download El Capitan on my el crapitan DSL.
Ah nice, thanks for this thread! I need to get more familiar with mine while I’m off for a couple of weeks.
Wait for sales. They do that a lot. Clean My Mac has a very attractive UI and is very intuitive for Mac noob like me. Besides, the only reason we go with Mac is because its beautiful, right?
Flattened it and reinstalled. Good call. Nice to start the system fresh without quirks from previous OS installs. Now to start checking out some of this fun stuff!
Enjoying it so far. Going to use it as my writing notebook as I’ve not installed all of the fun distractions I have on my Surface Book.
But man, I’ve tried to scroll or press onscreen buttons by touching the screen about a dozen times so far. Wish Apple would embrace touchscreens for computers already. I haven’t had a Windows notebook without a touchscreen for nearly four years.
It’s funny, I do this with my work MBP all the time too. Steve Jobs is dead, there is no such thing as “gorilla arm,” so it’s time for Macs to embrace the touchscreen laptop because it really is handy sometimes.
Couldn’t disagree more. Had a Surface and never used the touch screen in laptop mode because I found it awkward to use that way. Most things were easier to accomplish with a mouse/touchpad. I really don’t think touch adds anything to a laptop (and it would be horrible on an iMac). I feel OS X would suffer trying to add touch controls. I would rather see iOS get a file system to make it a better laptop replacement myself.