How to Switch to the Mac

…and enjoy doing it.

Update: revisions for 2008. Previously: added note on NTFS support, lots of minor changes for Leopard, app updates, etc. You may also want to visit my Switch page, which tries to list suitable Mac OS X replacements for common Windows applications.

Introduction

Welcome! A lot of people have been moving to the Mac lately, so a while back I thought I’d jot down a few notes about my experience over the last five years or so, which, over time, grew to become a primer of sorts. This page is updated on a yearly basis (usually around the holiday season, which is when I get the most visits from new Mac owners or people pondering the switch).

The motives for anyone switching are pretty much irrelevant, and will not be discussed here – discussing relative merits of computer platforms is very much like discussing cars, and therefore largely unimportant if you are getting what you want.

Quasi-religious beliefs that any platform is better than another are not just irrelevant, but plain childish and stupid. Before maligning the Mac, Windows or Linux, make sure you know what you are talking about – most people in the IT business have “pet hatreds” towards one platform or another out of sheer ignorance, and more than a decade in the business has shown me that anyone who only has bad things to say about any given platform probably doesn’t know what (s)he’s talking about.

So if you know you want a Mac, you’ve come to the right place for a few basic hints that might just save you a lot of time.

The major “under-the-hood” issue for non- Mac users is the underlying UNIX foundation of Mac OS X – it’s quite different from what you might be used to, and if you used any sort of UNIX before, bookmark Amit Singh’s What Is Mac OS X? now and go read it after you finish this (it doesn’t currently cover 10.5 (the latest version of Mac OS X, code named Leopard, but it provides excellent info on its background and origins).

The second (and quite frequent) issue is the not-so-recent transition to Intel processors, and all that comes with it (including the ability to run other operating systems, like Windows).

The bottom line on that is: If it’s a Mac, it will work the same way regardless of what chip is inside, and let you access a never-ending variety of applications for whatever platform you wish. The Rosetta emulator ensures pretty much all the old Mac software runs on new Intel machines with acceptable performance, and most relevant applications are already available as Universal binaries for both PowerPC and Intel machines.

And yes, you can run Windows (or Linux) on Intel-based Macs. There are two ways to do it: The first should be familiar to computer enthusiasts and consists of doing dual boot using Boot Camp (for which Apple even supplies Windows drivers), and the other (which I recommend for those of you who only require doing so infrequently or alongside Mac applications) consists of using Virtualization packages to run the other operating system in a sandbox.

There are currently three options for doing that: The first to appear was Parallels, which has been around since roughly mid-2006, and the other VMware’s Fusion, which reached public beta on December 2006 and was soon after released commercially. Recently, a free (for home use) alternative called VirtualBox has also made significant progress, but I haven’t had enough hands-on experience with it.

Anyway, those will not be discussed here at length, since the main point of this document is to ensure you feel at home in Mac OS X as quickly as possible. But they are recommended if you need to ensure a smooth transition where it regards specific applications that may not be available on the Mac – you’ll be able to keep all your old applications running alongside the new ones.

As to the bulk of this guide, the target is non-technical folk. However, I do throw in a few hints for people who are coming to Mac OS X with some computing experience and expect some “best practices”, so don’t worry if some points are a bit too technical.

Buying

Buying a Mac is not a normal experience anywhere. It’s a local thing, best done with local people (pun intended). In Portugal, where I live, that has been the case for entirely the wrong reasons, like the lack of Apple stores, the recurring problems of the local retail chain (there were improvements in 2007 that included a “proper” online store, but we still don’t have AppleCare and other niceties) and the quasi-underground nature of most user groups.

However, picking which Mac to buy (and when) is pretty straightforward. It’s mostly a matter of visiting the Apple site, reading the Macrumors Buyers’ Guide to figure out how recent each model is relative to the full lineup (but taking the predictions there with a fairly large dollop of salt), and then finding a store that stocks it (some people order theirs online – others, like me, want to go out, get it, and come back again without all that waiting around nonsense).

If you happen to buy a second-hand machine (which is common given the flurry of upgrades brought upon by the change to Intel), you can assume that any PowerPC machine manufactured on 2005 (and even early 2006, as Apple cleared stock) will serve people well for a couple years more. Just make sure you plan for an upgrade to 1GB of RAM (or more), since the current version of Mac OS X (codenamed Leopard) is more demanding in terms of resources.

(The one after that, dubbed “Snow Leopard” and due to appear in 2009, will probably drop PowerPC support, but that doesn’t mean PowerPC machines will become useless overnight.)

In the Intel age, things have changed a bit, but not much, and if you’re looking to buy a new Mac and are unsure about which kind of machine is best for you this MacWorld piece provides good food for thought.

I will not go into warranties, support or suchlike – this is, again, a local affair, invariably dealt with by local people, and, again, AppleCare isn’t available everywhere. So far, I’ve been lucky – a problem one of my Macs had (an original 15” flat panel iMac, which I started out in and since gave to my parents) was fixed within three weeks. It had a power supply failure, and fixing it required shipping a replacement part to Portugal. A similar thing happened to my iBook a year ago, and the experience was mostly the same.

Three weeks is unacceptable in the rest of the civilized world (again, Apple really should consider improving their presence in Portugal, and not just by beefing up the retail channel), but a couple of issues in three years (and, incidentally, five Macs) is pretty good.

Unpacking & Testing

• While unpacking, look at the packaging. There are neat graphical hints of how to unpack every Mac printed on the box. Do leaf through the manual, but (here’s the important bit) don’t rush it. There are a few important things to know, even if you’ve had a Mac before.
• If you’re getting a laptop or flat-screen, boot the Hardware Test off the first install CD (insert the CD and hold down Alt – or Option, as it is called in older keyboards – while the machine boots). Amongst other things, it performs a display test – which is fundamental for picking up “dead” pixels before you start installing stuff (I used to use ScreenQuery, a simple app that filled the screen with solid colors, but it seems to have vanished). As usual, the smaller the screen, the less likely you are to have dead pixels (there is some controversy as to what amount of dead pixels warrants a replacement – search the Net for more info).

Setting up Mac OS X

• The default behavior these days is for the Mac to prompt you for an installation language the first time it boots from the hard disk and, after installing a few files (a few minutes’ worth) configure your locale settings. If your Mac boots straight to the Finder or to the login panel, then someone else has used it before (sadly, this is a common thing with Portuguese retailers, who like to play around with their customers’ gear). If so, I recommend using the restore DVDs included with every Mac to restore it to a factory-fresh configuration.
• After setting up your keyboard, language and whatnot, the installer creates the first user account. This is the important bit: it is an administration account – call it “Administrator” or something like that and create another for yourself afterwards (if you’re a UNIX head, this is not root, which is disabled).

Many people think this is unnecessary until they discover (the hard way) that they threw some important system file into the Trash. Yes, there are warnings, but using the machine as an administrator tends to make people oblivious to them, and years of using all my machines as a “regular” user bestowed upon me painless system updates, zero trouble with the core system and no software instability whatsoever. In the end, it’s your call.

You can create that “regular” user accounts in System Preferences after setup ends. This will not prevent you from making all the silly mistakes people do when using a Mac for the first few months, but it will significantly decrease the odds of you breaking something (you will be asked to authenticate as an administrator before any significant changes are made). Not to mention that it prevents unwanted changes to your system…

(Yes, you can break a Mac OS X install – or files that make subsequent upgrades fail – by mistake when you use the machine every day as an admin user. And yes, I will be repeating this advice several times).

• Network configuration is usually trivial. Macs use DHCP by default, and visible Wi-Fi access points will show up on the AirPort menu (to connect to a hidden or security-hardened Wi-Fi network, choose the “Other…” option in the AirPort menu). For those having to deal with older broadband connections, PPPoE support is built-in, and your card’s physical Ethernet address can be looked up in the Ethernet section of the Network preference pane in System Preferences.
• Firewalling is configured in the Security tab in System Preferences (in Tiger this was actually under the Sharing pane). The defaults are usually sensible for most cases (and Mac OS X is very secure), but it’s best to ensure it’s on if you’re directly connected to the Net.

Best Practices

What not to do:

• Don’t use the administration account for anything other than setting up the machine and applications or changing “permanent” settings (if you want to, say, change network settings as a normal user you’ll be prompted for the admin password, and since you’ll do configuration changes less and less often as time progresses, this isn’t a problem).
• Don’t install “toy” applications as the admin user until you’re sure you’re going to use them. Most applications will run just fine from an Applications folder under your user directory.
• Don’t open files or mail attachments that come from unknown sources. This is a basic security measure that is valid for any kind of machine, even for a Mac – no operating system can protect your machine from your mistakes… One way to improve your odds is to open Safari preferences and uncheck the Open “safe” files after downloading option. There is no such thing as a “safe” file – you have to be sure of what you download.
• Never, ever move Apple applications (such as Mail.app) to other folders. Mac OS X updates are not always very clever at updating built-in apps, so you’ll end up with either two copies of your apps or a single broken one.
• If you’re a Windows user: Don’t try moving a folder on top of another with the same name – Mac OS X will replace the entire folder, i.e., it will not merge both folder’s contents and will cause you to lose your data. This is a very significant difference between the Finder and Windows Explorer that catches most people at least once, and is simply a matter of different traditions (plus the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X, where things have worked like this from time immemorial). Drag the folder contents, not the folder itself.
• If you’re a UNIX user: Don’t fiddle with the system startup scripts unless you’re sure you know what you’re doing (which includes reading this and a bit more about launchd and the startup files themselves). Mac OS X doesn’t use runlevels in the same way as “classic” UNIX systems, and things like network configuration, system services, and whatnot are not (necessarily) stored under /etc. You’ll figure it out after a while, but don’t go in thinking this is “just like any other UNIX system”. It both is and isn’t like other UNIXes, and like other UNIXes, fiddling under the hood is not to be done lightly until you’ve read the documentation.
• Do not install stuff that messes with Apple’s defaults, including UI “skins”, funky plugins, low-level UNIX tools that overwrite (as opposed to coexist with) the supplied ones and other nonsense – that is half way to breaking the OS upon the next system update.

Things You should do:

• Did you read the bit above about setting up your own user account? Go back and read it then.
• Disable Safari’s Open Safe Files After Downloading preference. There is no such thing as a safe file anymore, and like e-mail attachments, you should only download and open files from trusted sources. Yes, I am repeating this again, just to make sure you get it.
• Tweak Safari preferences to enable tabs. You’ll never go back.
• Create your own Applications folder inside your home directory (Mac OS X will change the icon accordingly) and try out new stuff in there. If it breaks, you won’t break the machine for other people (and if a Mac OS X app breaks while running under an unprivileged account, it’s badly written for sure).
• Put things you want to share among users in the /Users/Shared folder. You may have to tweak file and folder permissions a bit, but it’s the easiest way (see my Address Book, iPhoto and iTunes pages for ways to share these applications’ data).
• Consider using a separate user account for playing around (yes, another one, besides your own and the administration one). Fast User Switching makes it very easy to try out new software like this.
• Set up separate accounts for kids using the Simple Finder or Some Limits option under the Limitations tab.
• Use Exposé and Spaces. Go on, press F9, then F8. Learn how to use F8 to invoke the Spaces overview, F9, F10 and F11 to switch windows and drag-and drop files onto apps – there is nothing quite like it, and it’s a real time-saver.
• If you mess around under the hood, be mentally prepared to reinstall your Mac from scratch after a month or so of heavy fiddling. This is mostly applicable to the UNIX heads who will ignore every other warning so far – “Normal” users can disregard this hint, especially if you follow my main recommendation and don’t use the administration account for everyday work.
• Get as much RAM as you can possibly afford – 512MB used to be OK for general Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) use, but these days 1GB is pretty much the baseline for Leopard, with 2GB for intensive use (I have felt little need to go beyond that so far, but folk into video editing will most certainly disagree with me).
• If your Mac didn’t come with a Mighty Mouse (as late 2005 models do), then get a proper mouse. I’ve said before that Mac OS X with a single button mouse is like rowing with a single oar, and I mean it: Mac OS X supports multiple-button mice, scroll wheels, etc. I used Microsoft wireless mice (the old kind, not the Bluetooth ones) for many years, which worked perfectly and used to be available in white (no sense getting a horrible blue and red mouse, now is there?).
• Although all new laptop models now have two-finger scrolling, people picking up a second-hand iBook or PowerBook should look at something like uControl or SideTrack to make better use of the trackpad.
• Drag Terminal.app to your dock as soon as possible (it’s in Applications/Utilities). UNIX won’t bite you, and some things are best done at a terminal.
• Use Microsoft ‘s great Remote Desktop Client to access your Windows XP and Vista boxes. VNC is good, but RDC is much faster and also allows you to transfer files across by mounting your Mac filesystem on Windows (it will appear as a network drive).
• Know your way around the Apple Knowledge Base. For instance, the Startup key combinations for Intel-based Macs is very useful when you need to troubleshoot the boot process, remove a stuck CD or DVD, etc., and things like Resetting the System Management Controller can come in very, very handy indeed.

Keyboard Tips

These started piling up a bit, so I decided to group them together in a single section.

• Spend some time getting used to the accelerator and “special” keys. They make sense after a while, but having the extra Command modifier key and a different meaning for Home and End plays havoc with some people’s reflexes. (See below for a way to change this if you really want to, but I recommend opening a text editor and playing around for a while to get used to the way things work on a Mac).
• Windows users will like to know that Alt-Command-Esc will display the “Force Quit Applications” dialog. You can also force quit an application by clicking on its dock icon while holding down Ctrl+Alt.
• The Command-Tab bezel doesn’t just let you switch between applications – you can also select an application and quit it immediately by keeping the Command key down and doing Command-Q.
• Remember that Command-H will “hide” applications (i.e., there’s more to life than minimizing windows)
• The screenshot key combos are mostly well-known, but here’s a brief summary:
  • Command-Shift-3 to snapshot the whole screen (doesn’t work in DVD Player, though). A PNG file will be saved to the desktop (you can change the file format by manipulating a preferences file, but PNG is good enough for most purposes).
  • Command-Shift-4 to get a selection cursor. In this mode:* Hit Space to snapshot a specific window. In Leopard, this will include the drop shadow – you can use the “Grab” utility to take screenshots without it.
  • Hold down Control when clicking to save the snapshot to the clipboard (instead of the desktop), ready to paste into any application.
• There is a set of startup key combinations here that you might find useful.
• People using a Mac mini with standard PC keyboards are likely to have trouble with the way keys are mapped (especially non-US layouts, which swap accent and symbol keys), so I strongly recommend getting an Apple keyboard.
• If you’re using a desktop Mac with a non-US keyboard, the screen brightness control is often unmarked – try the function keys above the help key.
• PowerBook and MacBook users will also want to know about Command-F1 to toggle between mirrored and extended desktop modes (a lifesaver when you have a bum LCD screen) and Ctrl-Alt-Command-8 to toggle ‘white on black’ display in low-light situations. (Command-Alt-8 will also toggle zooming). But those who really want to get to know their laptop keyboards will want to look at this 15-inch PowerBook G4 Developer Note, which is still mostly applicable to MacBooks.
• If you use Remote Desktop with a Portuguese keyboard layout at both ends, the Alt Gr key can be emulated by using Ctrl+Alt (so the ”” symbol is on @Ctrl+Alt+2, etc.)
• If you use VNC and non-US keyboards, I’ve found JollysFastVNC to have excellent international keyboard support when connecting to other Macs. If you’re connecting to Linux or Windows boxes, VNCThing also has fairly accurate keyboard mappings. Its main website seems to have vanished from the Internet, but it can be found via Google.
• If you’re keyboard-oriented, go into System Preferences | Keyboard and Mouse | Keyboard Preferences and Turn on full keyboard access. Now you can deal with dialog boxes the way you’re used to, as well as accessing menus and toolbars with the keyboard.
• If you hate digging through Applications to find what you want, get Quicksilver. Think of it as a keyboard-based application launcher. It’s much, much more, but it takes a while for its power to sink in.
• Can’t stand the apparently useless extra enter key that Apple put where Alt Gr ought to be on laptops? Try using fKeys to remap it to something more sensible.
  Finally, if you’re a Windows user and the Mac ‘s way of dealing with Home and End really bugs you, here’s a tip from Aaron Adams:

To change the Mac's home and end keys to behave like Windows in all applications, create a text file named /Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict (if the folder doesn't exist, go ahead and create it) and add these lines:

/* Home/End keys like Windows */
{
"\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:"; /*home*/
"\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:"; /*end*/
"$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /*shift + home*/
"$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /*shift + end*/
}

Logout and login, and the home and end keys will work like Windows.

Alternatively, you can use something like DoubleCommand to change global key bindings.

But if the Terminal is the only place where the default behavior annoys you, Leopard’s terminal allows you to customize key bindings and the relevant escape codes.

Finally, there are plenty of resources out there regarding using external PC keyboards on the Mac and re-mapping keys in a straightforward fashion. The Windows-to-Mac Key Switching at Ars Technica is one such example.

Windows-centric tips:

As mentioned above, these won’t cover Boot Camp, Parallels or Fusion. Think of this as a list of things that are different in Mac OS X and that you will need to get accustomed to.

• Remember that moving files replaces the whole folder (see above).
• No, there isn’t a Start button. You can drag applications to the Dock for quick access, or even drag the entire Applications folder to the right-hand side of the Dock, forming what Apple calls a “stack”. Click on it, and you’ll get a graphical menu of the contents (a right-click used to show a text menu, but that behavior was changed in Leopard).
• If you really miss Alt-Tab like application switching (on a window basis, like Windows), get Witch. You can bind that to Alt-Tab and leave the standard Mac Command-Tab switching in place.
• Check the Keyboard Tips section above for ways to force-quit applications. You won’t use them much, but you’ll feel better knowing they’re there.
• Applications can be started upon login by going to Accounts in System Preferences, clicking Startup Items and adding them to the list.
• File shares can be browsed via the Network icon in the Finder. Mac OS X works a little differently than the standard Windows network browser, but it’s all there.
• File shares are mounted directly by pressing Cmd-K in the Finder and entering a Samba URL like so: smb://server/share (do not even think about using the Windows backslash (”\”), that is not the UNIX way to do things).
• Mac OS X will mount network file shares automatically on most circumstances, although there might be some issues with username and password caching (i.e., some file servers will always ask your Mac for your password, even if you check the “save this password” option).
• Windows DFS shares (the \\domain\path type) are not directly accessible to Mac OS X. You need to either figure out the real pathname to the share (smb://server/share) or spend a good while figuring out how to integrate your Mac with Active Directory.
• Installers don’t work the same way – most applications can be installed by just dragging and dropping them into your Applications folder (applications can ultimately reside anywhere on your hard disk, but it pays to be tidy). Installers are mostly used when it’s necessary to set up large volumes of files or application resources (fonts, libraries, etc.).
• Properly written installers will run from a non-administrative account, ask you for the administrative password, and go about their business. If an installer fails in a non-administrative account, contact the developer and have them fix it – their installer is broken and not performing up to specs (Adobe is a notorious offender in this regard).

UNIX-centric Tips:

• All disks (file shares, external hard disks, etc.) are mounted under the /Volumes directory (which is hidden, but accessible via the Terminal).
• Disks with identical names (such as file shares) will be mounted as /Volumes/name, /Volumes/name_1, etc.
• If you’re not using Leopard, get SSHKeychain now. It will manage your Mac OS X and SSH keychains, let you define tunnels, etc. It has a small bug (it gets confused with lots of forwarded ports), but you can edit the tunnel configurations directly in ~/Library/Preferences/SSHKeyChain.plist (just double click on it and add your tunnels under the Tunnels array).
• If you are using Leopard, SSH integration is built in. Check the output of ssh-add—help for more info, notably the -k option.
• Mail.app does not use the SOCKS proxy settings in System Preferences properly – it does name resolution wrong, and SMTP over SOCKS doesn’t work. It’s actually improved a bit, earlier versions would not work at all. If you need to access remote mailboxes via a SOCKS or SSH tunnel, get Thunderbird.
• Safari, however, does honor SOCKS settings, and seems to be fully SOCKS 5 compliant – which means it will perform hostname lookups remotely through the SOCKS proxy.
• X11 on the Mac might have some issues with your keyboard layout (check my HOWTO section for more hints on that) and X display permissions, but will work perfectly via ssh -X or -Y. And yes, Apple made X11 a pain to install on Tiger for some obscure reason.
• Although I personally recommend MacPorts, check out Fink if you’re a Debian convert. It’s not really Debian, but your apt-get addiction will get a quick fix. Fink is especially nice since it does not, ever, mess around with your Mac OS X system directories (it hangs off /sw, /sw/bin, etc.), and has the most packages available in binary format. Be prepared, however, for some packages not being the same versions you’re used to in Linux – some Fink packages lag behind quite a bit, even easily ported stuff like ImageMagick.
• Make sure to install X11 (it’s usually in the second or third OS restore/install disk) and get Fink, in this order. Set up the placeholder packages to let Fink use Apple ‘s X11 stuff, and then install whatever packages you need to feel at home.
• If you’re a BSD guy, MacPorts is your thing. It hangs off /opt by default, and seems to work a bit better on Intel -based Macs The available packages also seem to be better maintained.
• Need PHP and mySQL? Here’s a HOWTO/Enable PHP on Mac OS X, which needs updating for some Leopard details but should be enough to get you started. mySQL now publishes an excellent set of native installers and management tools, so head on over to their site.

NTFS Disks

One of the things people ask about the most is how to access external hard disks formatted in NTFS (the filesystem Microsoft introduced in Windows NT, and which has become the default in XP). Mac OS X has built-in read-only support for NTFS, so you can access your data just fine in most cases (the only exception is if you use NTFS encryption, which is not supported by anything other than Windows right now).

If you really need to write to NTFS volumes, there are currently two main options:

• A commercial driver from Paragon, which is said to have full support for compressed files and folders and excellent performance.
• The Open Source NTFS-3G driver, which is slower and has a few more limitations, but which is free and relatively easy to install (and also available in MacPorts if you prefer).

I haven’t tried either, but a few Web searches should help you make up your mind.

Other Stuff

• Read John Gruber’s piece on Software Update, and his more recent one on why “Repair Permissions” (one of the most common – and stupid – troubleshooting suggestions in Mac forums) is voodoo. Either have a number of good tips, and, more importantly, banish some of the most common misconceptions about either process.
• Resetting a Mac OS X password can be done by rebooting from the install CD and using the “Reset Password” option in the installer (but do note that this will not change your keychain password and you’ll need to change the password again after you login)
• Resetting an Open Firmware password requires zapping the PRAM three times (restart holding Cmd-Alt-P-R three times) – some folk say you should change the Mac’s configuration as well (removing or adding RAM), but I fail to see the logic in that.

Essential Applications

I now have an entire page devoted to apps that switchers may be interested in, but the following summarizes my own experience and may be of general interest:

I originally went out and bought a copy of Microsoft Office 2004, since there really isn’t a working native alternative right now (OpenOffice sort of works and keeps improving over the years, but it still doesn’t act or look fully native). I now use the 2008 edition, but most people will probably be OK with iWork for home use.

Since the move to Intel the only other “essential” was some form of virtualization to let me use some odd Windows application or tool every couple of months or so, and I bought Parallels and then moved to Fusion (which I recommend).

Besides those and some of the utilities I mentioned above, my current list of “essentials” is:

• Quicksilver – this is the way to use a Mac via the keyboard, and you’ll wonder why Apple hasn’t integrated it into the OS yet. You can watch a very good screencast here.
• Remote Desktop, available here.
• The Citrix client (10.x or above) which I use to work remotely.
• A VNC client. Leopard users merely need to type vnc:// on the Safari address bar to invoke the built-in Screen Sharing client, but I prefer JollysFastVNC to connect to other machines, since Apple’s client does not work properly with international keyboards.
• Adium for instant messaging (MSN, Jabber and Yahoo, plus a lot more). It integrates seamlessly with Address Book, so you’ll never lose your buddies’ contacts.
• Colloquy (if you happen to hate IRC as much as I do, this makes it bearable).
• Skype for the occasional conference call and file transfer (Adium works too, but not across all firewalls).
• Growl for desktop notifications of all sorts (new mail, IM, you name it). It’s now bundled with Adium, and it installs itself if you configure Adium’s “new message” notification to use it.
• Camino as an alternate browser. I use Safari for everything (and it is my default browser) and Firefox’s XUL Extensions make it more useful for debugging web applications, but if you want a fast Mozilla-based browser, Camino works better and faster than Firefox.
• Pixelmator for image editing. There are plenty of similarly-priced alternatives out there, but I happen to like its feature set.
• Thunderbird for reading my e-mail when traveling (Mail.app doesn’t support SOCKS properly, so I need a mail application that does).
• MenuMeters to keep track of network traffic and CPU usage – they’re simple, unobtrusive and very, very effective.
• NetNewsWire Lite for a few RSS feeds – I use Safari bookmarks and Google Reader for most of my news, but CVS commits, link blogs and machine-related stuff (like logfiles that I convert into RSS) need something with a dock icon.
• Tofu for reading long documents and web pages. Makes for much easier reading when you’re tired, since the column display lessens eye movement.
• VoodooPad Lite for drafting text and making notes (or as your very own XML -based personal Wiki and script archive).
• TextMate as an all-singing, all-dancing text editor with a built-in mini- IDE and Subversion support.
• Flip4Mac to open Windows Media files in QuickTime and Safari (check out Perian as well if you want working DivX support).
• VideoLAN for opening any sort of media.
• Witch for Windows-style Alt-Tab switching.
• CyberDuck for FTP and SSH file transfers.

And that’s it, really. I hope that this guide proves useful to get you started. Feel free to drop me an e-mail if you have any suggestions for improvements, and consider donating to the site.

But, most importantly, enjoy your new Mac.