37 replies
I'm adding a Mac laptop (MBP, 15"/2.53/4G/250HD) to my collection. I can dig around and find the other software, but there are two things I'd like to get right, right from the start. The security software (AV/firewall/anti-keylogger/etc) and the text editor.

No clue for the former. For the latter, I'm looking at BBedit, which I recall as being a bit of overkill, and TextWrangler, which is the free version. One absolute requirement is the ability to work on multiple documents with a tabbed interface.

Any suggestions?

Comments on other software for using a Mac for business online are welcome. Consider me clueless, as the last Mac I had was a blueberry iMac. (Cute, for a fishbowl...)

Some other things I'd like to add, but that are secondary to the above (color me silly and tell me if these are built in.):

Tunnel to a VPS.
Secure shell.
Secure FTP.
Video screen capture. (I know about Skitch for stills.)

How about email apps other than Mail.app?

Other recommendations?

Please note: The OS Wars are not part of the desired response. I like my PCs, and will continue to use them. This is for a completely separate business (online), and I want to see the problems to avoid and the advantages to exploit.

Any and all comments and suggestions that relate to making the most of the Mac OS for online business are welcome. Peripherals, backup systems, tricks and traps, etc.

I got started on the Amiga, and have managed FreeBSD and Linux servers, so I'm not allergic to the command line. Whatever gets the job done most effectively is what I'm after. If this thing has native Windoze support, and that's relevant, take that into consideration. But it's not a requirement. Learning the OS is more of a priority.

Extending battery life is kind of big...

Mac users: Consider this your chance to show off your expertise.


Paul
#macs #marketing
  • Profile picture of the author iYingHang
    iAntiVirus - Free AntiVirus for Mac is the free antivirus which rocks for Mac.

    Cheers,
    iYingHang
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
      Thanks.

      I should point out that I'm not concerned about what's free and what's not. I'm looking for the best software for the purpose.

      I'd wager there are people who'll read this thread who're on a more limited budget, though, so the free stuff is welcome. Just please make sure you point out the negatives along with the positives.

      Give folks a chance to make a well-informed decision.


      Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author 32paul52
    Video screen capture - Jing | Add visuals to your online conversations - Brillant for fast screen capture- really easy to use (based on camtasia but less complex) has a limit of 5 mins but really good.
    Does stills as well..........
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  • Profile picture of the author I.M.Retired
    Paul: An excellent ftp program is Transmit by Panic Software. Panic - Transmit 3 - The next-generation Mac OS X FTP client! I couldn't image life online without it!

    For an html text editor I really like Taco. Taco HTML Edit - The premier HTML editor for Mac OS X

    It has some excellent features for creating and editing html documents. I'm not sure if it has the ability to work on multiple documents with a tabbed interface, as I have not attempted to use that feature on the documents that I usually create.

    I have used bbEdit, but like Taco better - bbEdit is a bit heavy duty for my purposes and doesn't have the some of the features that Taco offers, which are features I particularly like and use.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
      There is a free text edit app that comes with the mac. If you want to get fancy with things, Iwork will give you something for documents, pdfs, etc as well as "numbers" which can create spreadsheets and graphs, and keynote will create slideshows.

      Screencapture video is perfect with screenflow - although if you have used camtasia there is a camtasia for mac now.

      My favorite FTP app (only for it's sheer ease to understand for FTP idiots like myself) is Yummy FTP.

      I use the built in mail app.
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  • Profile picture of the author globalpro
    Paul,

    Our tech guy from our church uses MACs and runs Parallels to be able to accomodate Windows apps.

    Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac

    Just one solution, but I know this one works.

    Thanks,

    John
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    • Profile picture of the author butters
      Transmit is my favourite FTP client on my mac, check it out, hope it helps.
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      • Profile picture of the author Dan C. Rinnert
        Thunderbird for eMail.

        The included TextEdit is pretty capable, but doesn't offer tabbed windows. I use TextEdit and Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver has a tabbed interface, but is probably overkill if you're used to doing everything strictly in code.

        iShowU is a capable video screen capture program. Camtasia Studio has a Mac version. Which one of the two is better is often subject to debate around here. I haven't had any issues with iShowU, and I haven't used Camtasia Studio.

        For still screenshots, that's built-in, so you don't need anything special for that.
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        • Profile picture of the author Harlan
          Here's my Mac essentials list.

          This is the software I've added to my dock:

          Firefox with download addon.

          Yousendit.

          Cute FTP

          Sorenson Squeeze

          Iskysoft video suite (I look to put videos on my iPod and iPhone)

          Camtasia

          MindManager

          Microsoft Office

          And the Adobe Suite including Photoshop and DreamWeaver.

          Good luck Paul.

          Peace.
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      • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
        Paul, if you want a really powerful text editor (may be more than what you
        need though) I recommend UltraEdit. It's designed basically for programmers
        as it supports HTML, PHP, C and all that other stuff.

        It is supposedly multi platform but for the life of me, I can't figure out for
        certain if it runs on a MAC. So far, I can only determine that it runs on
        the following platforms.

        Windows
        Linux

        And these:

        • Ubuntu 8.04, 9.04, and 9.10
        • Fedora 11 and 12
        • OpenSUSE 11.1 and 11.2
        • CentOS/RedHat Enterprise 4.8 and 5.4

        So you may have to contact their support to find out if it runs on a
        MAC. No clue. But it is an amazing editor with literally everything you
        could possibly want and probably a ton of stuff you don't need.

        For $79 I'd say it's more than worth it.
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        • Profile picture of the author Dan C. Rinnert
          Off-topic, but I can't restrain myself any further...

          "PC" is an acronym for "Personal Computer".

          "MAC" is an acronym for "Media Access Control" and not any type of personal computer.

          "Mac" is short for Macintosh, i.e., an Apple Macintosh computer.
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          • Profile picture of the author dwatrous
            Hey Paul,

            Mac does almost all of that right out of the box since the OS is based on BSD Unix, which stands for Berkley Standard Distribution (that's the university that originally created it). SSH, SFTP are both available from a terminal window. VIM is an absolutely amazing editor, but takes a little getting used to.

            As far as screen recording, it does that out of the box too:
            Apple - Mac OS X Snow Leopard - Enhancements and Refinements

            I think that most email clients are a waste of time. I'm a big fan of web based email clients, especially gmail (although some of my attitudes about gmail are changing). I have used thunderbird, but it was a while ago and it was a bit buggy. They've probably come a long way.

            By the way, I still use a PC
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          • Profile picture of the author seasoned
            Originally Posted by Dan C. Rinnert View Post

            Off-topic, but I can't restrain myself any further...

            "PC" is an acronym for "Personal Computer".

            "MAC" is an acronym for "Media Access Control" and not any type of personal computer.

            "Mac" is short for Macintosh, i.e., an Apple Macintosh computer.
            And the APPLE PC came out before IBMs! Beat it by about 6 years! Go figure!

            BTW I ALMOST bought an Amiga. It looked like a nice system. It is sad that people just didn't sell it right.

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga

            Steve
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            • Profile picture of the author condra
              My favourite Mac apps.

              Screen Video Capture:
              Snapz Pro X
              Why? - Because its easy to use.

              Browser:
              Opera
              Why? - Because of my favourite power feature - Searching shortcuts.
              In the Opera URL field I can type in "g stuff", and when I press return, it has searched google for "stuff".
              I can type in "eb car", and when I press return, it has searhed Ebay for "car".
              Any search field on the web can be incorporated into this system, simply by right-clicking on it. Amazingly simple and powerful.

              One more app which I love is called SHADES. It simply allows me to bring the brightness on my iMac to a much lower level then OSX usually allows, which is great for those 12 hour eye-burning computer sessions!
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  • Profile picture of the author BrianMcLeod
    Paul,

    DO get iWork. Pages and Keynote are arguably the single best tools I've ever used for creating beautifully designed and highly polished content with minimal fuss.

    Apple - iWork - Documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. The Mac way.

    Also... Plop down the $29 and upgrade Quicktime to Quicktime Pro to unlock all of the codecs and hidden functionality.

    For business software, FileMaker Pro is quite possibly the most powerful and overlooked application in the world. I built an entire business with it as the core.

    Database Software | FileMaker

    Barebones Software is a great developer and BBedit or Textwrangler are to my mind the best text editors available. I use Textwrangler daily.

    They recently acquired and improved a little "collection" app I LOVE called Yojimbo

    Bare Bones Software | Yojimbo

    Totally eliminates clutter and lets you tag text, pdfs, images, whatever... keeps them in their own database and easily accessible. Harder to explain than to use.

    The alternative to Yojimbo that I also own but took a backseat to Yojimbo is "Together"

    Reinvented Software - Together for Mac OS X - Keep Your Stuff Together, Find It Again Instantly

    A fantastic writing tool you might enjoy: "Scrivener"

    Literature and Latte - Scrivener

    OmniGroup publishes the seminally awesome OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner

    The Omni Group

    For security and keeping an eye on where your packets are going:

    Little Snitch

    For screencapture, you have a few excellent choices:

    Skitch, Jing and Little Snapper are all excellent image capture apps

    For video capture, it's Screenflow or Camtasia for Mac.

    Screencasting Software - ScreenFlow Overview - Telestream

    Camtasia for Mac
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  • Profile picture of the author I.M.Retired
    Dan: And here I though MAC was also an acronym for Make-up Art Cosmetics. Whenever I do a search for MAC on Google, the makeup guys pop up at the very top of the list - right above Apple!
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  • Profile picture of the author digigo
    about keylogger.. I am concerned too.. if someone installs a keylogger on my machine.. all bets are off... i do have some ideas preventing this.. catalog installed software and running processes periodically and if I find something new, but unauthorized installation.. then I can nail it down the rogue software.. but what if some software is modified by virus? maybe I need to keep records of checksums too...
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
      When I say 'text editor,' I mean plain text. Not HTML. I have UltraEdit, which Steven mentioned, but it's sort of overkill. Also, not available for the Mac. I use it for processor-intensive stuff, like largish search and replace operations, but I use NoteTab for regular editing.

      A good tabbed text editor is important enough to me that I'd do what I needed to get one on the machine, even if it means installing Windoze to run a $30 piece of software. Parallels looks good for that. Kind of defeats the purpose, though.

      I didn't know that BSD was the underlying *nix. That's handy, as I have some experience with the OS.

      Dreamweaver is, like BB Edit, a bit of overkill for what I do. Might be a good time to learn it, though.

      As far as email, I'm not thrilled with Thunderbird, but most of my geek friends swear by it or Mail.app. My preferred option would be Pegasus, but that's also a Windoze app.

      No other security software recommendations? I may just go with Norton Internet Security 2010, then. It's been fantastic on the PC.

      Lots of stuff to look at here. Thank you, to one and all. (So far...)


      Paul
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      • Profile picture of the author Tom B
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Paul Myers View Post


        Lots of stuff to look at here. Thank you, to one and all. (So far...)


        Paul
        Well if you do the windows installation, I have something better than Filemaker. I will hook you up my dog.

        Shoot me a pm if interested and I will get you a download link this week. A sort of thanks for not banning me as of yet. lol
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      • Profile picture of the author BrianMcLeod
        Originally Posted by Paul Myers View Post

        When I say 'text editor,' I mean plain text. Not HTML. I have UltraEdit, which Steven mentioned, but it's sort of overkill. Also, not available for the Mac. I use it for processor-intensive stuff, like largish search and replace operations, but I use NoteTab for regular editing.

        A good tabbed text editor is important enough to me that I'd do what I needed to get one on the machine, even if it means installing Windoze to run a $30 piece of software. Parallels looks good for that. Kind of defeats the purpose, though.
        This is probably your speed:

        TextMate ? The Missing Editor for Mac OS X

        I didn't know that BSD was the underlying *nix. That's handy, as I have some experience with the OS.
        Indeed, open up "Terminal"... blammo. Command line unix.

        No other security software recommendations? I may just go with Norton Internet Security 2010, then. It's been fantastic on the PC.
        Security software? What's THAT? You have a Mac now, dude...

        Get with the blissful ignorance of malware, viruses, etc.

        LOL

        Lots of stuff to look at here. Thank you, to one and all. (So far...)
        If you need any help acclimating or figuring out a good solution, don't hesitate to call, amigo.

        Brian
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        • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
          Thomas,
          Well if you do the windows installation, I have something better than Filemaker. I will hook you up my dog.
          I'll PM you. Thanks.

          "My dog?" Ummm... The only critter I ever refer to as "my dog" is, well, my dog. Yellow Lab, golden retriever mix. I usually just call him "Bo."
          A sort of thanks for not banning me as of yet. lol
          [ahem] Yet, indeed.

          Brian,
          Security software? What's THAT? You have a Mac now, dude...

          Get with the blissful ignorance of malware, viruses, etc. LOL
          Viruses aren't at all common for them, granted. Trojans and worms are another story. Given that even routers are frequently rooted any more, I assume nothing is safe that's connected to the network.

          Browser exploits aren't an uncommon vector for attacks on *nix systems.


          Paul
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          • Profile picture of the author Tom B
            Banned
            Originally Posted by Paul Myers View Post


            "My dog?" Ummm... The only critter I ever refer to as "my dog" is, well, my dog. Yellow Lab, golden retriever mix. I usually just call him "Bo."[ahem] Yet, indeed.

            Paul
            Dang, I lost my street creds. Instead of dawg I wrote dog. Now you will know I am a middle class white guy.
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            • Profile picture of the author dwatrous
              I always use putty on windows. It does absolutely everything I need.

              On a Mac I open up terminal and $ ssh into.my.host

              Can't really see much benefit from another app that the underlying unix OS doesn't already provide as far as ssh, sftp, and overall connectivity.
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  • Profile picture of the author Gary_The_Ace
    Hey Paul,

    The only SSH client I'm using on my Mac is Zoc6 ... it's the closest thing you're going to find to SecureSSH if you're coming from PC land.

    Text Editor, BBedit ( it's overkill, and there are few quirks if coming from something like EditPlus, but I dig it)

    SnagIt is now available for Mac too ...

    G
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  • Profile picture of the author TheRichJerksNet
    Daniel is right, Mac OSX already provides all your connectivity under a terminal. What is the huge difference between SSH and FTP ? Well if I login through SSH I can copy a 100MB site over to another location in 5 seconds while FTP would require much longer, even on high speed.

    With that said Paul ...

    I use SimpleText to code and build all my sites which is built in but since you need a multi-Tab solution TextWrangler is very good.

    I would get the following if it is something that interest you ...

    - iWork - Get the packaged bundle
    - MacSpeechDictate - Similar to Dragon for Windows only a great deal more powerful
    - Fetch - Fetch Softworks - If you really want FTP software, they have been in business since 1989 and I have used this same FTP client since 1996
    - Parallels 5 - To run windows on your Mac

    James
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  • Profile picture of the author SuiteJ
    You now have most my recommendations listed already.

    I will add Things By Cultured Code though.
    (awesome task management)

    I will also co-sign on Transmit for FTP, Parallels (if you want Windows), and Taco HTML.

    A couple cool little free apps I use often:

    AppCleaner (drag and drop to delete apps)

    Paparazzi! - I have to create screenshots regularly of full websites (not just what you see on the screen). This app is awesome for that.

    FYI, I switched to Mac over 3 years ago, and work on them 24/7. I've never used security software and never had a problem.
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  • Profile picture of the author Billy Rey
    well i think you can use

    The Hit List
    iWork
    Evernote
    Dropbox
    Fluid
    Adium x
    Text Wrangler
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  • Profile picture of the author pearsonbrown
    Some people have already mentioned the Keynote presentation software but I just want to emphasize how extraordinarily good it is.

    Also Garageband turns making podcasts into an easy and fun activity.

    It's worth signing up to Ed Dale's http://www.thirtydaychallengeplus.com/ for a month or so to see his tutorials on using these programs for marketing purposes.

    Pearson
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    • Profile picture of the author drmani
      Mac Software I use for business:

      Email: Eudora
      Email Merge from SigSoftware.com
      FTP: Transmit
      Text Editor: Text Wrangler
      Screen capture snapshot: CaptureMe
      Word Processor: OpenOffice
      Video: iMovie
      Zip: ZipIt
      Simple image editor: HeliosPaint
      Multi-clipboard: Jumpcut

      All success
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      • Profile picture of the author bassian
        Follow mac users.

        How grateful are we not to be using pc!

        Snap N Drag is a great free screen capture tool.

        I use camtasia for mac which has to date worked just fine.

        Kompozer for basic website design works cool and so does filezilla for ftp.
        (all free to download)

        Dreamweaver on mac is excellent as well for web design. Photoshop CS4 is also excellent.

        I have started using firefox over safari as a browser.

        I great program I use is 1password so storing all your keychains, logins and passwords. Excellent.

        Regards,

        Ian
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  • Profile picture of the author Marian Berghes
    ScreenFlow for screen capture, nothing better in my opinon
    iWork for all your "office" needs
    Filezilla for FTP

    I'm not using any security software so I don't know whats best. (Should I ? )

    Some other useful stuff:

    The Hit List for GTD/Task Management
    Fluid to make certain websites as standalone apps (think gmail, g.reader, basecamp)

    ill edit if I can think of others...I use so many apps so frequently that I can't remember all of them

    Also check out this website, it has alot of Best X apps for OSX, Best apps for freelancers etc... which many fall in the same needs as ours.
    http://mac.appstorm.net/
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Peters Benn
    Ah Paul! The Amiga! I spent far too much time with SCALA and a genlock.

    In all seriousness, I recommend iShow HD for screen capture stuff.
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  • Profile picture of the author BeanCounter
    If you use TextWrangler, you have to check out YummyFTP. It's linked directly to TextWrangler, and makes editing a breeze.

    I also use ScreenFlow for my video editing. It was $99 and works great!
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
      Beanie,
      If you use TextWrangler, you have to check out YummyFTP. It's linked directly to TextWrangler, and makes editing a breeze.
      Please tell me you're saying it properly handles editing text files on a remote server?

      That is such a PITA on Windoze machines. I can do it with UltraEdit, but that one occasionally screws the pooch, and the file goes away. Gotta watch yer backups with that...


      Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author kswr123
    It's ALL 'BOUT screenflow for mac,.

    Great software
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