MAC software

[Sane]

By chance I've become the owner of a 4 year old EMac and i was wondering if anyone can give me some tips on essential software to get for it? Anything fun/interesting/usefull will do, as long as it's free . It's running the latest version of OS-C Leopard, or so I'm told.

[CMcK]

Mmmm you might want to check on the operating system. Leopard isn't out yet. Click on the blue apple top left of the screen and select "About this Mac" to check. You'll also get the specification of the system in there.

What kind of stuff do you want to do with the Mac? Photos? Music? Web stuff?

To start you off have a look at http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/
and http://www.macupdate.com/

[Sane]

I dunno about the OS, I'll have a look later, I don't know much about macs so it could easily be something else. Thanks for the sites .

[Magnakai]

It's OS X - probably Tiger (10.4) or Panther (10.3)

As for what to do with it - well, if you've got a perfectly powerful PC, there's not a great deal to be honest. If you're not interested in programming or web design then you won't need it for development or testing purposes.

Still, it should be quite decent and able to cope with most tasks.

Umm... I can't really think of any Mac specific utilities. Pretty bad, as my main computer is a 5(?) year old Powerbook. I'm in a pretty similar boat.

The main programs I use on here are just Camino (Mac oriented web browser based on the Firefox framework. Safari's perfectly good, I'm just annoying.), Adium (Mac version of Gaim. Dead good.), iTunes and Ableton Live. Those last two are cross platform anyway.

[CMcK]

Some of the programs I use frequently on the Mac include:

FfmpegX (video conversion) - http://www.ffmpegx.com/

Transmission (Bittorrent client) - http://transmission.m0k.org/index.php

Disco (CD/DVD burning) - http://www.discoapp.com/blog/

NeoOffice (Office suite) - http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php

Delicious Library (Media catalouging) - http://www.delicious-monster.com/

Plasma Pong (Pong with awesome visuals) - http://www.plasmapong.com/

VLC (Media Player) - http://www.videolan.org/

Flip4Mac (Windows Media components for Quicktime) - http://www.flip4mac.com/

The iLife suite that comes with the Mac comprising of iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, iWeb and Garageband covers a lot of ground as well. The iApps are also very well integrated with resources available across the various apps.