Tips and software for Mac users

Time is a valuable commodity, and a Mac saves a lot of time wasted in ordinary computing on things like installing printers or getting a wireless network to work. At the same time, expert users can still access OS X's Unix internals to do high-quality research and software development. This is why I recommend to my graduate students that they switch to Apple. This page compiles my recommendations for new Mac users, though veterans may still find some useful tips here.

Jump to:

Switching to Apple from Unix/Linux.
Switching to Apple from Windows.
Useful items.

Switching to Apple from Unix/Linux

Making the leap to Apple from Unix/Linux isn't much of a leap at all. OS X is, after all, a BSD Unix. Anything you had under your previous flavor of Unix/Linux is almost certainly available for OS X as well.

Head to Applications > Utilities > Terminal to get your shell back.
Grab your OS X Install CD and install Xcode. Xcode includes all of Apple's development tools, but more importantly, it includes the GNU compiler toolchain (GCC).
If X11 isn't already installed, it's also available on the OS X install CD.
There are several Unix package managers for OS X, but I highly recommend MacPorts. All the Unix software you can eat is now just a sudo port install away.
To install LaTeX on OS X using MacPorts:
```
 sudo port install texlive
```
A console version of emacs is already installed, but if you're an emacs user, I recommend the Aquamacs Emacs port of emacs with native Aqua interface support.

Switching to Apple from Windows

Making a seamless transition from Windows is easy, thanks to virtualization technology that lets you run Windows inside Mac OS X. Parallels can do this for either Windows XP or Vista. (I've also used it to run Linux inside OS X.)

There are a handful of applications that don't run on Mac OS X, and for those few that don't, Parallels is your ticket to remaining functional without the hassle of rebooting via BootCamp.

While doing web development work, it was critical to be able to view sites in both IE 6 and IE 7; Parallels made this painless. I had Parallels auto-install Windows XP from an installation CD, and then I duplicated that VM and installed IE 7 on it. As a result, I could run IE 6 and IE 7 simultaneously in Mac OS X.

I don't do any gaming, but Parallels provides native support for popular graphics APIs like OpenGL and DirectX, so most games should work under Parallels.
I don't recommend Microsoft Office for Mac. (Check out its reviews on amazon.) If you need to inter-operate with other MS Office users, Open Office and Google docs are up to the task of opening Word documents and viewing Excel spreadsheets, and they're both free.

For giving presentations, Keynote (part of the iWork suite) blows away PowerPoint. iWork also does a good job of reading and producing files compatible with MS Office.

[Also see my notes on interoperating with MS office users without MS office.]

Useful items

I recommend installing all of the printer drivers on the OS X install CD. You never know what kind of a printer you'll plug your computer into.
One of your first priorities should be to get the built-in Time Machine system up and running, because it stays out of your way and does its job--backing up your machine every hour. You never know when you're going to lose your laptop on a business trip, drop it in the bathtub or have a pet knock it off the counter, but once you have Time Machine running, you'll only be out the cost of hardware repair instead of the cost of replacing all your data. Even without catastrophic data loss, Time Machine can help: you can browse and search any folder on your computer backward in time once Time Machine is enabled, so it can handle even minor issues like accidentally deleting a file.

At first, I used to use a cheap 500 GB, external hard drive for Time Machine. This worked fine, but it was cumbersome, since I had to remember to plug the hard drive in every time I brought my laptop home. (Time Machine only reminds you to plug it in if you haven't backed up in 10 days.) I bought a Time Capsule so that all of the computers in the house would back themselves up over the wireless network every hour.

As a bonus, Time Capsule is also a highly configurable Internet router, firewall, printer-sharing device and shared hard drive.

If you decide to buy one, for some reason, a brand new Time Capsule costs less on amazon.com than on apple.com. And, for your first backup, I recommend plugging an ethernet cable directly into the Time Capsule to speed things up. Successive backups only send the changes and usually complete on the order of seconds.
Apple is a great platform for the security-conscious. I highly recommend enabling Secure Virtual Memory under System Preferences > Security. I noticed no difference in performance.
You can enable FileVault (AES 256 bit security) for individual home folders, but this might be overkill. (Time Machine and Time Capsule work with FileVault-protected home folders, but only to do a complete restore; they cannot browse the data backward in time.) I highly recommend using Disk Utility (under Applications > Utilities) to create a sparse image encrypted with AES 256 in which to store just sensitive financial and personal records. Of course, choose a strong password. I would not opt to have Apple's KeyChain password manager remember the password. Apple's password manager uses Triple DES to guard your passwords, which is reasonably secure, but it's one more link in the chain.
As part of my personal security and privacy overhaul, I started using the freely available KeyPass password manager. I dumped my universal password in favor of a strong unique password for every site, and this program makes doing that feasible.
If you do a lot of typing, System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys will let you remap CAPS LOCK to act like CTRL. This will save you a lot of pinky strain if you're an avid gamer or an emacs user. [If RSI is of concern for you, I maintain another page with information on preventing, managing and healing repetitive strain injury (RSI).]
To avoid having your display power down while watching a long media file on YouTube or hulu, install the freely available Caffeine.
Growl is a free, highly configurable notification manager supported by many OS X applications. It's great for sorting email, IM and download notifications into a common, attention-preserving system. And, it's free.

More resources

My page on tools for Unix/Linux.