Migrating to Mac: Part 5: Mac Apps

Well I have now been using the Mac for a while, and the great thing is that I keep learning new things and finding new and interesting apps. Today I was looking at how to stop Expose trapping the F8 - F12 keys in Parallels, and I came across this blog on Mac apps for people switching from Windows. Its a really good read and I have installed many of the apps that are mentioned. I have also found the following apps quite useful when switching to the Mac.

(Clinton provided the answer for solving my Expose problem... hold down the Apple key when pressing the F key.)

Firefox

While Safari is nice, I just cant get by without my Firefox plugins. Firefox runs well unders MacOS... so there are no problems here.

Muvo Helper

The MuVo Helper is a small utility that performs background tasks for Creative MP3 Players like my Zen Neeon. While not essential, it is a nice addon. Basically it sits in the background removing the extra files that MacOs copies onto the device as you add music to it.

Menu Meters

Clinton brought this one to my attention. This little app installs menu bar icons to show computer activity such as disk, cpu, memory, and network usage. A real must have for anyone wanting to know what is currently happening in their Mac.

xCHM

Another gem from Clinton's blog. This utility allows you to read the Microsoft help files on the Mac. Great for when you are writing code in Parallels. The code is shown on one screen in Parallels, and the documentation can be open on the Mac on another screen.

Aquamacs

Aquamacs is emacs for the Mac. It includes both emacs shortcuts as well as standard MacOs shortcuts. This works well for me...

Booxter

This is a funky little library application, allowing you to keep track of your personal library. It has features to track who has borrowed your books, and can import details from various web sites such as Amazon. The ability to scan books using the Mac's built in camera is also neat... though I have found it doesn't pick up the details that easily.

Poseidon for UML

I needed a tool for drawing UML diagrams, and this did the trick. It is a little clunky to use, though I haven't spent much time with it at the moment. This is a full UML tools keeping track of the model, so with some reverse engineering support it should be good. There is a free community edition.

iTerm

An alternative terminal program that allows terminals in tabs... Quite a nice alternative to the standard terminal.