Posted by Aaron Nelsen on Sep 14, 2007 in
Aaron Nelsen,
Linux,
Technology,
Video Walt Mossberg lays the smack down on Ubuntu.
I agree that Linux isn’t right for a lot of people, but some of his points are a bit off base. For instance his complaint about having to download codecs just to play an MP3 or a video, he states that these codecs are included in Windows and OS X, however, there are quite a few codecs for both operating systems that you have to manually download and install in order to play content encoded in that format. DivX and Xvid come to mind right off the bat, neither of those formats is supported natively in either Windows or OS X. Sure MP3 support is something you’d expect out of the box, but it’s not the end of the world.
Posted by Aaron Nelsen on Sep 14, 2007 in
Aaron Nelsen,
Apple,
Software Seeing as my fellow blogger Fred just made the switch to OS X, I thought I’d help him and other switchers out by posting a quick list of must have applications for OS X.
[ Internet ]
Firefox - Need I say anything else? My browser of choice no matter what OS you’re running.
Aduim - A feature rich Instant Messaging client, with a broad range of supported clients makes this a must have.
Tomato - A simple, easy to use BitTorrent client. I’m using it until the OS X version of uTorrent comes out
Cyberduck - A departure from the normal two paned view you might be used to in FTP programs, but still a robust program with support for FTP (File Transfer Protocol), FTP/TLS (FTP secured over SSL/TLS) and SFTP
[ Multimedia ]
VLC Player - Fast, stable and wide ranging codec support makes VLC a fantastic all around media player
Flip4Mac - Adds support for playing WMV files in QuickTime
LiquidCD - Excellent alternative to the native disc burning in OS X
Handbrake - It may not offer the widest range of options when ripping a DVD, but it’s straight forward and produces high quality rips with no hassle.
[ Misc ]
smcFanControl 2.1 - A must have for managing the fan speeds on your Macbook / Macbook Pro
Cashbox - Simple and easy to use software to keep track of your finances
Growl - Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X: it allows applications that support Growl to send you notifications.