Table of Contents
What I have installed
The machine I'm currently running is a MacBook Pro. I honestly never thought I'd be using a Mac again after I switched to a PC back in 2000 (from an old Mac 8500.) But here we are.
The reason for this list is that as both a media author, programmer, and whatnot, I find myself reinstalling the Operating systems on both sides of the machine at least once a year (or whenever there's a major OS upgrade) for the sole purposes of starting fresh. Occasionally this is due to a complete clusterf*ck of applications that don't uninstall properly (I'm looking at you, XCode, Visual Studio, and the like.)
However, whatever the reason is, I like to reinstall, start fresh, and have the applications, drivers, and extensions I really use on, and the ones I won't use off.
So here's the list… I figure keeping it online is no big deal as there's nothing out of the ordinary here.
Future Purchases?
Things I haven't quite decided on yet…
- Adobe CS4 Master Collection - I think I'll get alot out of this, it's a heavy purchase though.
- Snapz Pro - Whenever I get around to using this, I suppose.
Common to both sides...
Here's what I keep installed on both sides because of the usefulness…
OS Extensions
| What | How I got it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Canon MP460 Printer/Scanner drivers | Free download | Needed for the printer/scanner. |
Personal Utility
| What | How I got it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 7-zip (via Darwine on OSX) | Free download | Best compression file manager I've found. |
| Abiword (via Darwine on OSX) | Free download | Quicker to use than OpenOffice or Word. |
| Adobe Reader | Free download | Much better than “Preview” for PDFs and cross-platform. |
| Filezilla | Free download | Can't say this is the best FTP client, but it's the only one I can stand that's cross platform and yet also free. |
| Firefox | Free download | Keepin it current! |
| Google Talk(PC) / Google Notifier(Mac) | Free download | Really used as a new email notifier. |
| Microsoft's Silverlight | Free download | I have a gut feeling they'll do something good with this… |
| wxMaxima (via Darwine on OSX) | Free download | Best math app when you're in a jam. |
Firefox
Add-ons I'm using:
- DownloadHelper, great for grabbing Flash video off of YouTube.
- Downthemall, still a good download manager.
- HttpFox, for looking at headers, web dev related
- LinkedIn Companion, haven't really gotten to use it yet.
- Web Developer, good for debugging CSS/HTML problems.
Mac Side
Interoperability
| What | How I got it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Boot camp | Comes with OS X 10.5 | Need for the PC Side. |
| Darwine | Free download | A life saver in certain situations where even VMWare Fusion would be too much. |
| VMWare Fusion 2 beta | Bought it | For use with the boot camp partition. Might use it for more than that eventually. |
| XQuartz | Free download | Required for Darwine. (Install before Darwine.) |
OS Extensions
| What | How I got it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Fan Control | Free download | Sigh. Florida, summer, overheating laptop. |
| Growl | Free download | Apparently alot of apps need this to do pop-up notifications. This seems to be becoming a big thing now. |
| iLife/iWork Bundle | 10.4 Panther Bundle | Whatever the bundle is that came with 10.4. |
| OS X 10.5 | Bought it | Keep the OS up-to-date. |
| SwitchResX | Trialware | Use it when I hook the mac to a TV, so I get the progressive scan. |
Personal Utility
| What | How I got it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Google Sketchup | Free download | Haven't gotten into this much, but it appears to have a lot of potential as a free-ish 3d modeling app. |
| Microsoft Office Mac 2008 | Came pre-installed | Less clumsy than OpenOffice, bought it recently. |
| Skype | Free download | Family uses this to call occasionally. |
| Stuffit Expander | Free download | Needed for most file compression formats on mac. |
| VLC | Free download | Best video player I've found to date. |
Programming
| What | How I got it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Apache 2.2 | Free Download | Comes preinstalled with 10.5. |
| CSS Edit | Trialware | For CSS editing… I'm not totally convinced I'll use this though. |
| Hexedit | Free download | Haven't really used this yet, but I miss being able to hex edit easy like we used to do with ResEdit. |
| MySQL 5 | Free Download | Needed for sql development. |
| MYSQL Gui Tools | Free Download | Gui access to mysql environment. |
| PHP 5 | Free Download | Comes preinstalled with 10.5. |
| SCPlugin | Free download | Almost the equivalent of TortoiseSVN on the PC. Needs a visual diff, but almost there. |
| Smultron | Free download | Looks like a good IDE for web development, and free too! |
| Subversion server | Free download | Good for a local repository. |
| XCode 3 | Free download | Required for Apple development. |
Video/Stills
| What | How I got it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| AJA Driver | From a friend | Haven't installed this recently, want to check for an updated driver, may not need it if I don't interface with an AJA drive that much. |
| Final Cut Studio 2 | Bought it | Video editing. |
| GraphicConverter | Trialware | I used to use this alot back in the System 7 days, not so much now. Good to have as a standby though. |
| P2 Card Driver | From a friend | Same reason as AJA Driver |
| Perian | Free download | FLV video support. Seems to work well, but not 100% correct for audio… |
| Snapz Pro | Trialware | Haven't actually installed it yet, I hear it's great though. |
| MPEGStreamClip | Free download | Apparently has “Save as AVI” for quicktime? Need to investigate this one… |
| Windows Media Installer | Free download | WMV, AVI file format support. |
| WM Components | Free download | Apparently this is also called “Flip4Mac”? Needed for newer WMV specs like AC-1 |
| Redcode Raw Enabled | Free download | Just in case… |
| Avid Codecs LE | Free download | For use with Avid exported media |
PC Side
Interoperability
| What | How I got it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Apple Software Update | Part of OSX 10.5 | Needed for PC based drivers, also installs quicktime, itunes, safari. |
| Excel Viewer | Free download | To open XLS files for free. |
| Powerpoint Viewer | Free download | To open PPT files for free. |
| Snapshot Viewer | Free download | Another free viewer from Microsoft, for Access files? |
| Visio Viewer | Free download | To open Visio files for free. |
| VMWare Tools | Part of VMWare Fusion | Needed to get the most of VMWare features. |
| Word Viewer | Free download | To open .doc, .rtf files for free. |
OS Extensions
| What | How I got it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| DirectX Runtime | Free download | Needed to run DirectX apps. |
| Kensington Slimblade Driver | Free download | Needed for Slimblade keyboard/mouse set. |
| GeForce Driver v 175.16 | Free download | Pain in the ass to install, but brings the MacBook graphics card drivers up-to-date. |
| InputRemapper | Free download | Used to set fan speeds under vista for Macbook Pro (to avoid overheating.) |
| Java Runtime Environment | Free download | Needed to get Java running under Windows |
| PDF995 | Trialware | PDF printer driver - Best free way to save documents to PDF on the PC. |
| Windows Vista Business Edition | Discount from UCF | I would have preferred Ultimate edition, but this works as a current Windows version. |
| ZoneAlarm Free | Free download | I keep it in case I need a real firewall on a public network, but I keep it disabled otherwise. |
Programming
| What | How I got it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Expression Studio | Free via Dreamspark | Not sure of it's usefulness. |
| Padus DiscJuggler | Free download | I used to use this to burn homebrew stuff for Dreamcast. I need to locate the guide for that again though. |
| TortoiseSVN | Free download | Used to manage my SVN projects. |
| Visual Studio 2008 | Free via Dreamspark | Latest and greatest Visual Studio. |
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