Must Have Apps for the Mac
19 Nov '09 - 18:57 by benrLots of folks have switched to Mac, its the most commonly used laptop in the Bay Area now. Sometimes people give me flack for using it, but I'll tell you why I use a Mac laptop:
- It just works! When going to a client site, a conference, or just a cafe, there is nothing more embarrassing than spending 20 minutes trying to get your l337 *NIX laptop to connect to wireless or properly DHCP or work with a printer. This isn't as big a problem as it once was but it can still happen. This is especially the case if you ever do a presentation where your fiddling with things in front of 30+ people. Mac's just work, period.
- The Apps are high quality! Thanks to the Linux desktop invasion we have a lot of great apps for *NIX; however Mac apps have a very high standard for quality, all work more or less similarly, and there are lots of great apps. The problem I have on Windows these days is that there aren't as many great apps for Windows as there are for OS X.
- Its UNIX! This is the most important fact for me, its a real desktop OS with a real UNIX underneath. I was a Mac hater prior to OS X, but developed a love affair with NeXT... when the two converged in OS X I was a happy camper indeed.
- The Apple Laptops are the best on the market! I can not find a PC Laptop with the same build quality and durability of the Apple's. Most PC's use cheap plastics, are too thick, too flimsy, etc. The MacBook Pro 15" Aluminum is what I still use and love. The size is absolutely perfect, the thing is solid, and very comfortable to use. The power adapters are even better. Even if I wanted a machine just to run Solaris on metal, I'd want a MacBook Pro over any PC laptop available. In terms of hardware you really do seem to get what you pay for.
Now, please note that I do not have nor do I ever plan to have a Mac desktop! For my daily work I need a real UNIX Workstation. I prefer to work with Enlightenment, Eterm, and have a real Solaris system on which to work. Without my desktop I can't accomplish real work, but for the road I need my MacBook Pro.
So here are some of my "must have apps" for OS X:
- iTerm: It once was that OS X's terminal was pretty basic and pathetic, glTerm and iTerm filled the void. Since that time the default terminal application has improved significantly making iTerm unnecessary, but I continue to be faithful to it.
- Adium: Adium is the best multi-protocol IM client available for Mac. While iChat AV is fantastic for voice and video "chat", I want to keep my desktop tidy which means I want IRC style chat in multiple tabs, not windows. I just can't stand having a real discussion in those iChat balloons.
- NewsFire: Best RSS reader, imho. The primary advantage to Newsfire is that it doesn't make RSS look like email! Email feels like work, I just want to flip through RSS and see whats news. Newfire is free and really spiffy.
- TrueCrypt: I'm not a really big crypto freak, I wish I were, but I'm lazy. Never the less, at some point you'll go on the road and Sysadmins are bound to have text files containing sensitive information. TrueCrypt makes it easy to create a small encrypted drives on which to store that data. Plus, the virtual drives it creates are cross-platform, so your not locked into only retrieving the data on Mac like other encrypting archive apps.
- Things: I think its the best todo application available. Its light-weight and easy to use. OmniFocus is a much more structured application and I think is good for people who need rigorous structure to keep them honest, but Things can be made to do almost everything OmniFocus can do, if you choose to, or be used much more casually.
- RealVNC: The most popular VNC Viewer application for OS X is "Chicken of the VNC". I love the name, love the icon, but a lot of times it doesn't work for me. RealVNC isn't so sexxy but works every time without a problem.
- Colloquy: Great IRC application. Many *NIX folks will prefer a more traditional terminal based IRC client, but if your an Xchat users who's looking for a nicely integrated IRC client for OS X Colloquy is the best imho.
- VirtualBox: Very powerful and free to boot. I use both VirtualBox and VMware Fusion. Honestly, VMware is slightly faster, but VirtualBox is still fantastic and the additional portability is handy.
- Apache Directory Studio: If there is one nifty app the Windows boys have its Softerra LDAP Administrator. Apache Directory Studio is the best alternative I've seen, and I think will ultimately surpass Softerra's capabilities.
- iShowU: Best screen recording app period. Very easy to use, very flexable and lightweight. When creating screencasts I recommend using the Quicktime Animation CODEC; you'll be happy with it.
- globalSAN iSCSI initiator for OS X: Its sad that even in Snow Leopard we don't have an Apple supplied iSCSI Initiator, but thankfully globalSAN has us covered. Its free and works very well with COMSTAR.
- Cornerstone: I didn't think Subversion needed a GUI... but Zennaware Cornerstone changed my mind. Its expensive, but if you do a lot of SVN work you won't want to miss it.
I'll add some more to the honorable mention list...
- Textmate
- iWork '09
- iLife '09
- Skitch
- iStumbler
- Netbeans
- Navicat Lite
- OmniGraffle
- ...
On the hardware side, every UNIX Admin must be able to access an RS-232 serial console. This fact kept me away from Mac laptops for a long time. Which is why you need this:
The Keyspan Serial-USB Adapter. Buy one, download the Keyspan Assistant software and install Zterm. Good to go!
Finally let me point out 2 things which are already in Leopard that you may not be aware of:
First, with the OS on the Install disk is the Apple Xcode IDE. Along with Xcode is the koolest GUI for DTrace you'll ever see: Instruments Its really amazingly awesome and a must see.
Secondly, OS X includes native Kerberos support and a ticket management GUI which is sort of buried: /System/Library/CoreServices/Kerberos. If you use Kerberos at all drag that binary onto your doc for quick access. Several other hidden gems can be found in the same directory.
- - C O M M E N T S - -
I find Lenovo to have the most comfortable keyboard (at least for me). And I prefer open source OS when possible (OpenSolaris for example), so paying for Mac (hardware + OS + software) is kind of an overkill, unless one works with stuff like Adobe inDesign and other professional soft (like you mentioned above), which is hard to match with open source alternatives.shmerl (URL) - 20 November '09 - 01:49
Yay, after years of cribbing stuff from you I get to offer a tip back.
Zterm is history in that its not actively developed. Simply setup a profile for the terminal app that runs ‘screen /dev/tty’MrFV - 20 November '09 - 01:56
“trying to get your l337 *NIX laptop”
lol, thus while max os x is unix it is not leet, I’m not so sure that is what you meant to say.warll (Email) - 20 November '09 - 02:10
I found that JollysFastVNC is a better alternative to the other VNC clients. It’s super fast.Gary Gendel (Email) - 20 November '09 - 03:32
Adium has a beta release available that supports IRC.ordinaryexistence - 20 November '09 - 03:53
Meh.
Unless I was doing multimedia production on the go, I wouldn’t go for a Mac. Was a long-time Mac fan but that is fast fading. Too much lock in, company makes great products but is becoming arrogant in the extreme – and awesome industrial design aside I can’t really see the big buzz about them.
In all seriousness I would probably go for an OpenSolaris Toshiba Tecra over a MB/MB Pro. It’s already largely replaced Mac OS 10.4 on my desktop.Dave - 20 November '09 - 05:01
Actually, reading the responses, shmerl sums it up, pretty much.Dave - 20 November '09 - 05:02
+1 to MrFV on using screen for terminal emulation. I think it isn’t installed by default so you’ll need to use MacPorts to get it.
Also, the built in “Screen Sharing” (in /System/Library/CoreServices/) is a VNC client – if you click on a vnc:// url it will open by default. Handy.
I switched from using xterm in 10.4 to using Terminal in 10.5 and 10.6 (as x11 was broken in early 10.5 builds), and it is much improved.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned Quicksilver, which is a launcher/quick access utility – the main feature is that you hit a key combination the start typing the type the name of an application or folder and it opens.Zack (Email) (URL) - 20 November '09 - 06:14
@warll: When I say “l337 *NIX laptop” I mean being being l337 for the sole purpose of being l337. Sometimes we geeks do things the hard way simply to make a point. I ran Solaris8 X86 on a Compaq laptop not because it was functional but simply because I wanted to be l337.
Lets face it, OS X on a MacBook Pro is, in my mind, a NeXT Portable with better graphics; so, yes, its l337 in its own right but also pragmatic. And thats what makes OS X so great. No more debates between functional vs kool.benr - 20 November '09 - 06:51
@Zack: Quicksilver is all about how you think. Lots of people love it, most state that they can’t live without it. I feel the same way about Enlightenment, anything else feels foreign which is why I can’t be as productive on my Mac laptop as I can on my Solaris workstation.
Ultimately I just couldn’t remember all the keybinds for QS and had no real desire to learn; similar to Dvorak keyboards, interested, tried it, but didn’t have a true desire to put in the effort to switch.benr - 20 November '09 - 06:53
I used to use iTerm. I can’t get good performance out of it.
Terminal is friggin’ fast, on par with urxvt/xterm and far faster than gnome-terminal or Eterm when I benchmarked last year. But I desperately miss 256 colours.
What’s your procedure when sleeping the laptop, or taking it on the road, with regards to GlobalSAN? I find that half the time I get its prefs pane hangs.David Turnbull (Email) - 20 November '09 - 07:49
I find Thinkpads to have really great build quality, and a far greater keyboard. But I’m also considering getting a mac as my next work laptop.
On a side note, How do you manage to build e17 on solaris/opensolaris? It tends to fail for me lately :( Have you considered contributing the builds to sourcejcr?Andreas (Email) - 20 November '09 - 08:27
What about OpenSolaris on a Mac Book Pro? I would buy it immediately :-)Willi Schiegel - 20 November '09 - 09:26
I couldn’t live without my Tripp-Lite/Keyspan USB to serial adapter. So nice to walk into the data center, plug it into my laptop (1st generation MacBook Pro), and just have it work.
There are a lot of really crummy ones out there, and these are one of the few I’ve found to work for everything I can throw at it.Kameron (Email) (URL) - 20 November '09 - 11:11
If you really have to work with serial consoles all the time, I have to recommend getting a bluetooth-rs232 adapter. It’s really liberating to not have to stand within the cable’s reach.Ari - 20 November '09 - 13:18
“Its UNIX! This is the most important fact for me, its a real desktop OS with a real UNIX underneath. I was a Mac hater prior to OS X, but developed a love affair with NeXT… when the two converged in OS X I was a happy camper indeed. ”
That’s funny. I was so excited about OS X being UNIX, that we bought an iBook when it was time to get a new laptop.
Then I needed to integrate the thing into my Solaris network at home, and started digging under the hood… and discovered, in horror, that Apple Computer completely bastardized what was left of FreeBSD underneath.
It was so horrible, that I’ve done my best to stay away from OS X since.
The interface frustrates me as well: everything feels so kludgy. And OS X can barely cope with 1GB or RAM; it’s as slow as Windows now.
Conclusion: shiny, but impractical for doing any streamlined work. Kludgy interface with counterintuitive behavior choices (inconsistent maximize behavior of windows, applications do not close when you click on (X), and so on, and so forth).UX-admin (Email) - 20 November '09 - 14:50
OS X is third rate in the real world (Corp/Enterp/Unv). Need to get on the domain good luck, need to print just purchase Extreme-Z-IP, need email do not bother with Mail/Entourage they lack a lot of the most common Outlook features and break if you sneeze on them. No package manager. Cross your fingers that nothing you hacked gets broken when they push updates. Apple tells people 0 about anything period. You need to wait for a song and dance expo.
Having used the latest and greatest Apple machines for the past 4 years. The honeymoon is over. What I thought was the best of both worlds. Is far from it. I found myself using OSX so I could run VMware Fusion in order to run Windows and Linux/OSOL. Besides Itunes and some boutique software that was just a copy of something I ran on a different platform anyway. Running OSX was pointless. Ill just run Linux or OSOL with VirtualBox on top for Windows needs. Absolutely nothing original in OS X to spend that kind of coin on.
I find it ironic that Apple is the cool to have item. They’re as soulless and cookie cutter as it gets. All flash no substance.dmichaelf (Email) - 20 November '09 - 15:39
What you get from Apple laptops (whether you like them or hate them) more than from any other laptop is probably the best battery-life/weight/performance quotient.
There may be lighter laptops on the market – but their battery life is disappointing. Or they are seriously underpowered.
Laptops with more battery-life are usually heavier than the MB/MBP models.
What else would you want from a mobile platform anyway, other than mobility?
I still like FreeBSD or SuSE on my laptop – it’s great for tinkering or getting stuff compiled/installed without totally hosing your system. And I do actually prefer “real” xterms.
But battery life is notably reduced and overall usability seems to decrease with every release of KDE/GNOME (as more and more features get packed in while basic stuff doesn’t work OOB).Rainer (Email) - 20 November '09 - 16:15
Yes, I agree that Mac gives the best hardware for the price but hate the OS for making me adapt to it. I would rather prefer OS that can adapt to my style instead.
Simple things are not available out of the box – like don’t go to sleep when I close the lid etc.
Now, I Love Fedora 12 on my Mac. Just works.. both suspend to RAM as well as suspend to disk works as well. It adapts to my style .. Also, OSOL runs great on my virtual box for my DTrace needs..Sriram (URL) - 20 November '09 - 18:45
You went out of your way to say (twice) that you can’t do “real” work on a mac and for that you need a UNIX workstation. Could you provide some examples of what “real” work is and why you can’t do it on a Mac? I’ve had a mac laptop (powerbook now mac book pro) as my only work machine for 5 years and I’ve yet to encounter a situation where I couldn’t do whatever work I needed on them.Sean (Email) - 20 November '09 - 19:09
Solaris unforunately is useless on laptop as it can’t do WPA2-Enterprise, lacks disk encryption (although this is being integrated into ZFS) and HSDPA modem support. fixing these 3 issues will make it way better. See: Toshiba is offering some latops with OpenSolaris 2009 preloaded (capable of running real Solaris applications).
Right now I’m using ASUS laptop with Linux, and I see many UNIX engineers with Linux/Windows laptops, or even Linux/Windows on Apple hardware (why the hell have Sun abandoned mobile workstations with just one unsuccessful Ultra 3???)maciek (Email) (URL) - 22 November '09 - 17:02
I use a MacBook as my work laptop. I’m a sysadmin so 90% of the time my laptop serves as a glorified X terminal, and OS X handles that well.
I’ve always wanted to like *nix on a laptop, but I think suspend/resume is critical for laptop use, and getting it to work and stay working in *nix variants is scattershot at best. Apple can consistently get it right because they control both the OS and the hardware. Laptops really benefit from that kind of tight integration.
I have my frustrations with MacOS (some of which have been articulated above by others), but I have frustrations with any OS, and I generally find MacOS the most tolerable for laptop use.David (Email) - 25 November '09 - 23:23
as far as terminals go, we gave up on zterm. We bought the generic serial->usb adapters with long cables at Frys because they are less bulky than the keyspans and the driver is on apple’s download site.
we use terminal and the screen command to hook into the server console ports-
screen /dev/tty.PL2303-0000201A 9600dean ross-smith (Email) (URL) - 02 December '09 - 06:42
When it comes to laptops there are three major requirements that are a must for me.
1. Wireless
2. Suspend on lid close
3. general power consumption.
OSX does an excellent job out of the box at all 3. You may be able to get another form of *NIX to do this as well but def not out of the box. I installed debian on my old powerbook g4. I was able to get suspend and wireless working (as well as the Mac keybindings) but it was NOT out of the box for sure.
As another good example is trying to hook a second monitor up to the laptop. With the macbook (osx) I instantly had the monitor up and running. I tried the same thing with the powerbook (debian) and was forced to manually edit my xorg.conf file.
I think this is exactly what Ben is trying to avoid. Nothing like bringing your laptop to a business meeting with potential customers and not being able to get your laptop to work with their projector.
Yes it might not be the greatest *NIX OS on the planet but its a give and take situation.ripratm - 11 December '09 - 03:38
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I’ve been wasting my money on other USB-serial adapters, including PL2303 ones with the opensource driver for mac. Couldn’t rely on them for work use. Flaky at best, so I had to pack my thinkpad when going to the datacenter. Not anymore. Just ordered a Keyspan. Thanks.Dennis (Email) - 21 December '09 - 03:36
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Nodoby’s using OpenOffice.org ?
I do, and I think it’s great to use an app which runs on Windows, Linux, (Open)Solaris and Macs, you can easily switch working between platforms.
And changing the original topic: I would love to see this multi-platform approach in some of the other apps rather than having to use 4 different apps on 4 different platforms for the same purpose. Java apps seemed to be a p romise 10 years ago but they haven’t really defined the landscape, have they?Andreas (Email) - 22 January '10 - 08:31
I’m long time user of ThinkPads, currently I have R61 15.4” and I have to admit, IBM/Lenovo old chassi and keyboards are just best ones.
And, I have to admit, that I do plan my switch to MBP unibody soon as well :-)lust - 22 January '10 - 15:56
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