Mac Programs
Just switched to a Mac? I had a hard time finding free alternatives to the programs that I used on my Windows machine, so I’ve decided to create a list of programs that will help ease your suffering.
Photoshop - There is a Macintosh version of Photoshop, but if you don’t feel like buying it for Mac, I recommend you use GIMP. GIMP is an open source, free image manipulation program. I suggest you take a look at it if you’re not a serious graphics maker, since Photoshop may be a little overkill for just editing personal photos.
Microsoft Office - Yes, there is also a Macintosh version of MS Office, but it is currently not a Universal Binary and must run under Rosetta which slows down the whole application by a few seconds. I suggest you use Neo Office. Neo Office includes a word processing program with most of the same features as Word, and a program much like Microsoft Excel. The Word alternative can read Microsoft Word files, and the Excel alternative can read Microsoft Excel files, so you won’t have to worry about being out of the loop at school. NeoOffice also has an alternative to Powerpoint called Impress, but I doesn’t really ‘impress’ me as much as the other two alternatives. If you need a Powerpoint alternative, and have cash to spare, I would suggest you buy Keynote. In my opinion, Keynote surpasses Powerpoint due to it’s easy to use interface.
FTP- I had a hard time finding a good FTP program for the Mac. I settled on Filezilla and Cyberduck. Both programs are good alternatives to the FTP programs that you can find on Windows.
Trillian - Trillian is a multi-protocol jabber client developed by Cerulean Studios. Multi-protocol means that you are able to connect to your MSN, YIM, AIM and other IM clients through one program. Trillian is currently not available on the Mac OS, so I found Adium. If you don’t want to download anything, you could always just use Meebo which is an online chat service where you can connect to all your IM accounts wherever you are. All you need is a web browser!
Notepad - The text editing program that was released with the Mac OS doesn’t really fit my needs for code editing, so I decided to find an alternative. Taco HTML Edit was the first program that I found, so I decided to download it. It goes up and beyond what Notepad provides for Windows users and is fairly easy to use. I would also recommend Smultron for HTML-editing as well.
Hopefully, now that people see that there are alternatives to their favorite softwares, more people will get away from Windows and join the Mac bandwagon!