Wednesday, July 05, 2006 4:17 PM
by
andy
Neccesary Apps for my MacBook Pro
I recently purchased a MacBook Pro. I won't give any first impressions because there are plently of those out there and they all make two points:
- The hardware specs are great
- The Core Duo makes this one toasty little machine
Now to the point of this article...with new hardware features (namely SMS, the x86 architecture and backlit keyboard) I've been downloading a lot of software and will list it here:
- MacSaber - turns your MBP into a Jedi weapon via the SMS and keyboard backlights
- Shaking a laptop around vigorously is always a bad idea...but if it makes light saber noises...
- Fink - install all of your favorite *NIX apps on your mac using apt (make sure to use the Intel installer)
- Azureus Java BitTorrent Client - Universal Binary version
- iSpazz - virtualization plugin for iTunes that uses your keyboard and screen backlights
- A fun way to show off those pretty backlights but probably not a good idea to use often
- Mac Guides: Universal Binary Games - collection of games with Universal Binaries
- It's dissapointing how many games don't run well but if you're a gamer you've probably already installed Boot Camp, haven't you?
- Parallels Desktop for Mac - virtual machine software for Mac
- I'm not running Visual Studio...but everything else seems to run great (Outlook, IE, Trillian, etc.)
- AntiRSI - reminds you to take breaks in order to ward off RSI
- iStatPro - if you're running apps like Parallels you'll want this to monitor system performance from your Dashboard
- k-notes Widget - stickies for your Dashboard
That's all for now.