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Help Me With My New MacBook Pro

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In the past month, I’ve had two situations where I came within three seconds of grabbing my Lenovo x60 (running Vista) and smashing it on the ground, stomping up and down on it, and then lighting it on fire.  The only thing that kept me from doing this was that I didn’t have a video camera handy and didn’t want to waste a Youtube content creation moment (e.g. "VC accidentally burns down office building after being driven crazy by laptop – full story at 6 o’clock.")

Last week, after my Lenovo x60 rebooted three times (and ate 30 minutes of my life) in the middle of my day, I decided that it was time to try something different.  So – I’ve ordered a MacBook Pro which arrived on Friday.

2.4GHz 7200rpm Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 4GB RAM, 160GB Hard Drive,  SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW), 10/100/1000 Ethernet, WiFi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, 15" Widescreen

I’m looking for software help.  What should I get?  I’m loading it up will all the obvious stuff (Office, VMWare, Parallels, EVDO) but looking for friendly hints and tips, especially for a guy who has spent the last 10 years living in Windows.

Please comment freely.

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November 18th, 2007     Categories: Technology    
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  • Artem

    Oh I hate these thinkpads too. Battery life is ridiculous and several time my laptop went into 5 second freeze / 5 second work mode.

    Once you have chance to play a little bit with a Mac, please write about your experience. I am getting Mac too before the end of the year hopefully.

    As an offtopic: I visited Boulder for a couple of days on a business trip. It is wonderful town and Pearl street shops are amazing!

  • Aaron

    Transmission (bittorrent client), Handbrake (DVD encoding), Adium (IM) and CyberDuck (ftp). Oh, and Delicious Library is the most gorgeous application ever written.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/gards2257 gards2257

    Just got a macbook pro too – a few useful apps:

    - iWork '08 (for keynote alone and fast launching of Office docs)
    - Think from http://www.freeverse – to avoid distractions
    - Adium for IM
    - Twitterific
    - Airport radar widget from http://www.macwireless.com/
    - Mindmanager for Mac 7
    - Fusion of Parallels with XP (not Vista)
    - Thunderbird for email (Mail has great search, but is unreliable IMO)
    - Pocketmac to sync your blackberry (if you don't have an iPhone)
    - Anti-Virus (if you feel you need it) – Sophos Small Business Edition is reliable and lightweight

    You also may want to see this post on Chris Pirillo's top 100 mac apps: http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/11/06/top-100-mac-a…

  • rab

    You probably won't regret the move. I'd add my praise for Quicksilver — much better for launching apps with your keys rather that the mouse. iWork'08 is great, but you'll probably want Office if you deal with lots of Word documents as there are things Pages (the word processor in iWork) just doesn't handle and by default it opens .doc files as a "copy" so you can't just make a change and save it.

    Adium is good for an IM client particularly since it has built-in support for "Off The Record" an encrypted connection. I use Adium for GoogleTalk/Jabber and iChat for AIM (mainly to video chat with my daughter at BC).

    Since you'll have Leopard, you might not need a separate VNC client, but I've heard that VMware Fusion is much better than Parallels.

    The wake/sleep function is great — like someone already said, you almost never have to shut the thing down. In a bit over 18 months, I've probably rebooted only a dozen times or so — you'll never get that on Windows.

  • Joe Moreno

    iWork '08 is the key app suite that you may want. I've used Keynote (PowerPoint equivalent)
    for all sorts of minor editing (i.e. business cards, etc). It's very light weight yet effective.
    Looking at my dock (task bar) I don't have anything of significance other than Parallels.
    But, I might be a little biased since, until recently, I worked for Apple for the past
    eight years.
    Oh yea, don't forget Firefox, but that's free.

  • James Byers

    Try Quicksilver for application launching (and more). Takes a little getting used to, but it will change how you use your Mac: http://blacktree.com/

    Adium for IM: http://adiumx.com/

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/druce2260 druce2260

    Agree with Thunderbird over Mail.app. One downside is Spotlight does not index Thunderbird emails. So then you want Google Desktop search. (Spotlight is better integrated into OS than Google Desktop, but the indexer sometimes stupidly bogs down the machine, and lacks plugins for non-Apple apps)

    Parallels is magic, but performance somewhat disappointing, it bogs down the machine for a minute when starting/resuming. Wonder if VMware Fusion is better.

    Chicken of the VNC might help integrate your remaining PCs.

    Cool utilities – Disk Inventory X, Mac Pilot, OnyX, Fink Commander, Google Earth, KisMac Wifi locator,

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/geoffrey2274 geoffrey2274

    Personally, I prefer using the Camino broswer rather than Firefox (big CPU hog) or Safari 3 (fast but doesn't do everything I want it to.)

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/dgcohen dgcohen

    NetNewsWire (of course), iWork 08, Adium, and OmniFocus or GhostAction (if your'e a GTD fan). Then use built in stuff (like mail via IMAP, awesome). don't fight it and try to use Microsoft stuff. Just don't.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/rob_biedenh2273 rob_biedenh2273

    OK, I'm replying to myself only to associate my real name since OpenID grabbed my nickname instead.

  • Jed Christiansen

    Marc Andreessen probably has the most comprehensive list around for a new convert. He wrote it all up here:

    http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the_ideal_os_x_.ht…

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/arinewman120 arinewman120

    Wow, what a great list of Mac resources and supportive comments from converts. Bookmarking this one…

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld bfeld
  • http://intensedebate.com/people/deb_miller2299 deb_miller2299

    I'm in almost the same situation — 2 times in the last 3 weeks I almost threw my Thinkpad out the window. So, despite working for IBM for the first 17 years of my career and having had at least 5 Thinkpads, my new Macbook arrives on Wednesday. Thanks, Brad, for posting this. The comments will be a big help to me as I "leave the dark side of the force".

  • Calvin

    I just switched too (also to a 15inch macbook pro). 10.5 was a big motivator. The surprising thing is how little software I've needed to install so far. The packed in apps are quite functional. The most important thing was Flip4Mac and Divx, these allow you to watch divx, wmv, etc video formats.
    Other apps:
    Firefox for webapps
    Coda by Panic (really nice HTML/Site editor, evolution of Transmit)
    TextWrangler (Freeware text editor)
    Activate IMAP on GMail, and setup accounts on Mail.app
    Setup iChat to work with GoogleTalk
    The Gimp (cuz I didn't want to pay for Photoshop)
    World of Warcraft (just about the only MMO available on Mac)

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/greg_reinac2315 greg_reinac2315

    Funny, I did this same thing a couple of weeks ago…although I didn't destroy my Windows laptop. :-) Here's the stuff I'm using, as a recent Windows convert:

    Safari 3 (built into Leopard) – I used to hate Safari, but IMHO they totally nailed it in this version. Totally rocks, so I don't need no steeenking Firefox.

    NetNewsWire – of course. :-)

    iWork 08 – I've been fighting hard trying not to use Office 2004, and the iwork apps have made this pretty seamless.

    Mail and iCal – we're an Exchange shop, so all my stuff was there. Since I didn't love Entourage 2004, I've been using Mail (connected to Exchange), and iCal and Address Book. Never really got address book working the way it should with Exchange, but I just synced it from my iPhone and use it as a master now. And iCal is a bit of a hassle using with a whole office that's using Outlook/Exchange, but I've got it down to the minimum pain possible now I think. I like it – for example, searching in Mail is super-fast.

    VMWare Fusion – I hardly ever use it, but it totally works.

    Verizon EVDO – didn't even have to install the Verizon software, the Expresscard support is built in. Super cool.

    Photoshop and Lightroom – for my photography stuff.

    Adium – I like iChat better, but adium talks to MSN.

    Twitterific.

    I think that's most of what I use on a daily basis…but I've gotten some good ideas from this post!

  • Ryan

    My Lenovo X61 Tablet has been great until Vista. While the problems were minor annoyances at first, in the past few weeks my X61 freezes and blue screens MUCH more frequently, and seems to suffer from almost constant indigestion. (Perhaps it was one of those clandestine Tuesday night Windows updates that's sent the thing haywire).

    I'm eager to hear how you find the migration, particularly after your earlier post "Why I'm Installing Vista On All My Computers." If all goes well, perhaps I'll do the same at the end of the year.

  • Greg

    Let's see, most often I use:

    Adium for instant messaging
    Mail.app for mail
    Camino for browsing (Firefox is a crashtastic memory hog)
    TextMate, not free but a great text editor, love it
    Cyberduck for FTP
    iTerm as a replacement for Terminal.app
    Chicken of the VNC to control my other computers from my laptop
    Vine Server as the VNC server on my other computers
    Omnigraffle for wireframing
    Transmission for BitTorrent
    Twitterific for Twittering
    VLC for video playing
    WriteRoom when I just want to concentrate on a single file
    Little Snitch to watch outgoing connections
    Flickr Uploader for, well, it's obvious

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/fewquid2278 fewquid2278

    I'm running a MacBook with Parallels and XP — too much $$ invested in XP softwareto ditch it all.

    My votes are:

    #1: Skitch from Plasq.com — it's the best simple picture editing/markup tool ever. I can grab a screen shot of our latest UI, mark it up and drag it into an email in minutes. ComicLife from Plasq (free version on your Mac somewhere) is also mighty fun — Fred Wilson was playing with it a few months back…

    #2: iLife 07 (not 08) — nothing better for quick and easy video editing and DVD creation

    #3: VLC (free) — best way to view non-NTSC/region 1 DVD's

    Parallels has some quirks but is generally pretty solid. Applescript/Automator is worth playing with… And the Unix underbelly is there too, and you can do all kinds of fun stuff with that…

  • Will

    All of these are good lists. The ones I could not live without:

    Adium
    Quicksilver
    Firefox (can't use google docs in safari)

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/ryan2608 ryan2608

    In an earlier comment, I described my similar frustrations with Vista and a ThinkPad. Since that comment I've tinkered and tinkered, and found uninstalling Google Browser Sync pretty much solves my system stability 100 fold. I miss browser sync, but if the only other option is moving to a Mac without Outlook 2007, I'd rather go browser sync-less.

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Brad Feld

Hi, I'm Brad Feld, a managing director at Foundry Group who lives in Boulder, Colorado. I invest in software and Internet companies around the US, run marathons and read a lot.

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