Christmas is a time when gifts have a great role, a family time but that is even more popular for all those little gifts that we can find under the tree. This means that companies make their 'August' (rather, their December) with large sales, and it is an opportunity to create new users of their products.
Apple could not be less and you may have been lucky to find a new Mac under your Christmas tree (more luck you will have had if you have dropped a Mac Pro of those that are already being shipped). We know that many of you will make the leap to the apple operating system from Windows and we want to help you look for those applications that are used in our day to day. After the jump we tell you which are the essential applications for your new Mac.
Forget the antivirus ...
If you come to Mac from Windows, you may forget the message 'The virus database has been updated', which by the way I don't understand why people don't disable that annoying sound message. No antivirus is necessary on Mac, it seems that it is a legend but I can confirm that you will be protected from 'any' malware.
Something that may be due to the fact that as there are fewer Mac users, nobody is interested in building this type of virus for this platform, in addition to the system Mac is quite reliable and safe so Apple is the most interested in that nobody corrupts their system with garbage.
Libreoffice, the free office suite
You have the famous Microsoft Office for Mac (Microsoft's are not stupid either to leave out potential Mac users) but we are going to look for much cheaper options, or even free. Apple also has its office automation programs, called Pages (text processor), Numbers (spreadsheets), and Keynote (presentations), the latter is my favorite for the quality of its effects for presentations, each one sold separately for € 17,99.
But the best option, and free, is called LibreOffice. A complete office suite totally free, with LibreOffice You will have all the programs that Microsoft Office includes for free. Word processor, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, graphic editor, and a formulation program, all under the LibreOffice suite. The best option to enjoy all these programs, so necessary, for free.
Internet: Safari or Chrome?
One of the applications that you will use the most is the internet browser. On Windows you've probably been using Google Chrome, on Mac you can also use it and it is still freeIt will also be synchronized with your Google account and you will have your bookmarks and extensions synchronized with your new Mac (if you have previously synchronized it on your PC).
I have been a Chrome user until the last update of OSX and iOS, now it is very easy to synchronize all your Apple devices and it makes me much more comfortable to use Safari, Apple's browser. Have the same functions as Chrome and it is also very stable and fast. Yes, I recommend that for both Chrome and Safari install the AdBlock extensionWith this, you will be able to avoid much of the annoying Internet advertising and you will save yourself the annoying ads.
Apps for everything ...
Let's review other essential applications for your new Mac:
- VLC: surely you have used this great player, a player that is capable of reading any video format, is a 'must have' for your Mac, and you will save yourself having to put any new codec to Quicktime. And as always, VLC is price quotation.
- Pixelmator: This is inexpensive Photoshop, you can find most of the options offered by the quintessential photo editor but much cheaper, and obviously without certain professional features that you probably don't need to use. Its price is 26,99€.
- The Unarchiver: Mac operating system, Mavericks, can unzip certain files, but if you want a compressor (and decompressor) for any file, Unarchiver can with any file, and is totally price quotation.
- CleanMyMac 2: it is one of the best programs to have your Mac very clean, will help you free up space on your disk by deleting unnecessary files. It will also help you eliminate applications by erasing all their traces. The CleanMyMac 2 license is priced at 39,95€.
One more thing ...
A problem between Mac and PC is the file format of hard drives and any other memory, the native Windows format is NTFS and on Mac it is not possible to write to this type of disk or memory. I mean that if you connect a hard drive formatted in NTFS to your new Mac, you will be able to see the content but you will not be able to delete or add anything new.
This has a solution, and for free, you will only have to install the program NTFS-3G, with this software you can work without problems with any disc, something that we highly recommend.
With all this, you can get a lot out of your Mac, at least for your day to day.
More information - The first Mac Pro begin to arrive
I'm not new, but I was missing some of these must-have apps and thanks for the NTFS-3G input, which had already had problems with hard drives.
And to uninstall applications, appzapper. Without a doubt, a must in your mac
AppZapper is a great application but if you get CleanMyMac 2 you will also have the option to safely uninstall applications in addition to many more applications, it is a somewhat more expensive option but you will have many more functions 😉
Better zip is also missing, the winrar counterpart in MAC
The Unarchiver is also a replacement for Winrar for Mac, and it's also free 😉
I recommend installing an antivirus, it is true that Macs are less vulnerable to viruses or attacks but this does not mean that they do not require an antivirus ... Greetings!
The comment that Macs do not need antivirus is not true and gives users a false sense of security. I remember a year ago a virus took advantage of a java flaw to infect 500.000 Macs with the police virus.
Good article. You still need to recommend a program to delete applications in a cleaner way, such as AppCleaner, since when you delete an application, configuration files tend to be lost. On the other hand, NTFS-3G in certain situations can give problems, I personally do not recommend using it.
Other, more specific recommendations:
* Editra: Powerful text editor for developers.
* Dia: Creating diagrams (Microsoft Visio style)
* Scribus: Layout program.
* Videomonkey: Video converter for Apple devices.
* Transmission: Bittorrent client.
* Limechat: IRC client.
All free 🙂
Huuuuuuaaas! That that no viruses enter Mac. no malware..and that..you just have to see the shellsock vulnerability that appeared just a few months ago. That it is safer because it has a Linux kernel does not mean that we can get into the Russian deepweb to download software and not worry about everything. A bit of common sense please..that even if this website is an authentic proapple fanboy platform it does not mean that you deceive readers and visitors ..
man, go to mac and use Libreoffice…. uses Pages or MS Office, Apple offers it at a lower price than Windows. Libreoffice is for Linux users who cannot access these applications and have the illusion of having a mac.
Mac doesn't have a Linux kernel !!! In any case it will be a Unix.