I'm finally a mac user :)

Hello,

After years and years of being a PC user from DOS to windows, I finally made the switch to Mac. I just bought a macbook pro with leopard.

Was wondering if theres any freeware or widgets I should know about to get my feet wet and make the most out of my new mac?

I'm a web developer and I deal alot with php coding, graphics, and shell prompts for linux servers. So any tools that can assist me in that area would be great. Although I do have Adobe CS3.

Also i'm trying to find mac replacements for two very crucial windows programs I used which were:

1. www.SmartFTP.com - Mainly used for it's upload/download queue which allowed me to upload/download multiple files at the same time and also allowed me to view which files didn't transfer correctly so i can manually upload them myself. It also allowed me to pause the queues.

2.http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ - it's a secure SSH program that I used to log into my linux box so i can administer it.


-----

If anyone can help me find free replacements for the above programs, and direct me to any other widgets or programs that might be beneficial to me then that would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much in advance for your replies.

Welcome to Mac-Forums, damainman.

I'm not Windoze-savvy at all so cannot really suggest any apps. I use Cyberduck for an FTP client. I haven't checked if it has all the features you want. The top of the line FTP client for the Mac is Transmit but it isn't free.

I think SSH is built in Mac OS X. I found this article but it dates a bit so dunno if it is still accurate or not...

And also found these suggestions. Well lookee here, Cyberduck is in that list as well!

SSH is available from the Terminal.

Install the XCode developer kit. It comes with an IDE and all the compiler stuff you'll want like gcc. Then you'll be able to bring down Darwin ports making your Mac pretty much a full blown UNIX (which it is) with all the GNU stuff you're familiar with on Linux. All my scripts I wrote on Linux that do useful things work on my Mac now.

Linux? You have a real UNIX, with an awesome interface. ssh is indeed built into MacOS and in terminal it works just like it does on Linux. Oh, and install X11 if you want to. You might find that if you use xterms rather than Terminal.app it might play nicer with curses on Linux when you're administering. Or you can do gnome-terminals displaying on your Mac's X server.

Both XCode and X11 are on one of the CDs that came with it.

Thanks for the welcome and the programs. I'll be looking at the ftp ones to see which i like best.

I wasn't aware of the terminal before, but its like it will work just fine. Need to test it out though but thanks for the reference.

Are there any other widgets or free programs you suggest that would allow me to enjoy my mac and have some fun on it, or assist me in the web development field?

kool man welcome to the world of mac, i am new but this is the first computer ive owned so i never went to the dark side i look forward to answering some of your questions

Thanks for all the replies .

On windows i use to run monthly virus/spyware/rootkit scans, registry cleaner, scandisks to make sure all the sectors of the disk were marked bad or good, and disk defragmentor as well as the disk cleanup utility to delete temp files, browser cache and etc.

What programs do i need, or what should i do on a regular basis to make sure my mac is always running smoothly and at top performance?

Thank you in advance for all your replies

um to be honest im a fairly switcher but you really don't need to run virus scans hardly ever, once in a while. But maybe you should get an answer with a bit more experience?

damainman said:

Thanks for all the replies .

What programs do i need, or what should i do on a regular basis to make sure my mac is always running smoothly and at top performance?

Thank you in advance for all your replies

Click to expand...

Leave it on overnight. A Mac uses cron(1) to do all that stuff for you. Optimizes disk, cleans up log files, performs all proper maintenance for you, in the background unobtrusively like any proper UNIX machine does.

It doesn't when it's sleeping, so periodically keep it up overnight so it can do it's little 3am daemon stuff.

Viruses? On a Mac? Nope. Don't need no anti-virus.

Mac_OS is a signature mocking the death of Steve Irwin really appropriate? The guy was really a great man in the world of endangered animal and habitat awareness.

I agree. That's not very classy.

If you want a good FTP client : Transmit 3
And a very good Terminal : iTerm
You'll find details about Cool Apps for OSX on our website ;-)
cheers.

walkerj said:

Leave it on overnight. A Mac uses cron(1) to do all that stuff for you. Optimizes disk, cleans up log files, performs all proper maintenance for you, in the background unobtrusively like any proper UNIX machine does.

It doesn't when it's sleeping, so periodically keep it up overnight so it can do it's little 3am daemon stuff.

Viruses? On a Mac? Nope. Don't need no anti-virus.

Click to expand...

Thank you all for your replies .

How can i tell if the above cron is active, or whether or not it has ran? Also sometimes I'm working at 3-9am so how would this affect me as work using cpu intensive applications?

Can i temporarily disable them?

damainman said:

sometimes I'm working at 3-9am so how would this affect me as work using cpu intensive applications?

Can i temporarily disable them?

Click to expand...

This action is not set to happen at a certain time, your mac detects when it is idle for long enough to where it thinks it can handle its business. That is why you may here clinks and clanks from your machine in the middle of the night when you havent touched it for a while. If you were to come back to your machine, it would stop the process, and start where it left off when you leave it idle again.

hope that answered your question

You can also use MainMenu to run all those cron jobs manually if you don't leave your Mac on at night.