One of the big differences with Macs is that there isn't as much free (as in beer) software as on Windows or UNIX. It's like Windows about five to ten years ago when everything was shareware. I have to admit that it's taking some getting used to. Don't get me wrong; I don't expect everything for free. On Windows, I own several applications, including Microsoft Office, UltraEdit, mIRC, and Agent. However, I also run many free applications, such as Winamp, Opera (which I actually bought long before it was free), and AVG, not to mention Drupal and Gallery on my web site.
Now that I've switched to a Mac, not only do I have to find a bunch of software to replace the programs I used to use every day, I also have to pay for them. Most shareware is fairly inexpensive, but when you get into things like TextMate (39 Euros), it can get expensive. That's why I'm happy I ran across macZOT! With macZOT!, I get introduced to new applications every day and I get a great deal on them.
If you're not familiar with it, macZOT! is for Mac users only (obviously). Every day, they feature a discounted piece of software, sometimes at ridiculous savings. I've just been following their site for a couple of days, but I went ahead and made by first purchase today. I wouldn't normally do something like this, but the deal is too good to pass up.
Today's macZOT! is called a MyzteryZOT! Instead of just offering one discounted application, they're offering 7 mystery applications, which normally retail for a total of 131.85USD, for just 15USD! Seriously, how can you pass up something like that? Even if I don't get anything I want, I figure it's worth it. See, part of macZOT!s purpose is to help application developers make a wad of cash and get a ton of exposure. Working for Opera Software has given me a lot of empathy for those trying to get the word out about superior products. If only Opera weren't free, I'd ask 'em to make a deal with macZOT!
So, if you're a Mac user, check out macZOT! You're bound to find something you want. Already a macZOT! fan? Let 'em know what application you're dying for them to discount by leaving a comment here. As mentioned above, my killer macZOT! would be TextMate, the best text editor I've found on the Mac. What's yours?
Note: Comments with a light blue background were made by the site owner.
http://maczot.com/discuss/?ca
http://maczot.com/discuss/?cat=12
Hm... focusing on content? Focusing on advertisements!
What do you get by clicking these "..&refid=3240" links?
Nothing, as far as I know.
Nothing, as far as I know. If you make an account at macZOT!, they give you a referral link but they only say it helps you promote the site, not that it gets you anything. So, I used it.
Tim, what convinced you to
Tim, what convinced you to switch to Mac ?
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prestiti
Looking for free applications?
FreeBSD, on which OS X is based (as you know), has something like 14,000 free apps available, including some entire classes of applications (e.g., mail servers - good for testing Opera Mail!) for which Win and OS X almost entirely lack free equivalents. Among Linuxen, Debian and related OSs such as Ubuntu also have more than 10K free apps available.
There have been tools for bringing out the underlying Unix environment in OS X so you can play with it and install many of these free apps directly. (This leaves behind the OS X GUI, though you can run a *nix-style graphical environment.) The two most popular have been provided by Apple itself and by a group called Fink, which uses Debian-style installation packages.
Now with Mactel, I don't know what the status is of Apple's own tools, and Fink is in developmental phase. The best available course at this point is probably to use the free Parallels Workstation Beta (URL: http://www.parallels.com/) to install FreeBSD or Ubuntu (the latter install's less geeky at this point) as a "guest OS" in OS X, and try out any apps you're interested in. I'm guessing/hoping that reasonably soon Apple will make it possible to install these directly on Mactel-Unix (unless they have already and I'm just not aware of it.)
I have Fink, but a lot of
I have Fink (odd this comment coming from Jud... ;)), but a lot of the packages aren't available for Intel Macs yet. If I'm going to install something like Parallels, I may as well run Windows rather than learning another new OS. ;) I'm definitely looking into something like that, rather than running Boot Camp, which allows you to dual-boot an Intel Macs.
Have you tried building them
Have you tried building them from sources? (no shell magic needed, just click second icon in fink commander)
Yes, that's what I've been
Yes, that's what I've been doing. Still, I'm pretty sure there are fewer Intel Mac apps. According to a February posting on the Fink site, "At last check, there were about 1750 packages in the "stable" tree, but about 150 of those did not build. When things are truly stable, another annoucement will be made here."
Useful addons for Mac OSX
As a new Mac OSX user you may appreciate these links:
Clix from Rixstep: http://www.rixstep.com/4/0/clix/
Clix exchange/forum: http://www.dotatdot.co.uk/clix/index.php
ACP Webservices: http://www.rixstep.com/4/0/aws.shtml
Rgds-Anoni
Thanks, I'll have a look.
Thanks, I'll have a look.
Beg to Differ (Thoughtfully)
"If I'm going to install something like Parallels, I may as well run Windows rather than learning another new OS. ;-) "
I suppose the fact that it has taken so much fuss to run multiple OSs, and the quasi-religious nature of the competition between Win/Lin/Mac may be in part responsible for most people feeling that running OSs is somehow different from running applications. But OSs and applications are both just software. OSs are, granted, far more complicated than just about any application I can think of. OTOH, I believe we're still in the "crystal radio" days of personal computing, and look forward to the time when the OS is stuck in a firmware chip and one needn't pay any attention to it. After all, the only reasons it exists are so each app doesn't have to work directly with the hardware, and to provide an overall GUI environment.
Political screed over with, the basic idea I'm trying to get at is that running a couple of Windows or Unix apps in Parallels, while doing most stuff in OS X, is probably not a big deal - just do it if it makes sense to you, all things considered. (For example, I was having some trouble at one point finding a free Windows IRC program that I liked, so I would fire up the VMWare Player - free virtualization software for Win, analogous to Parallels - and run XChat in FreeBSD while continuing to work with other apps in Windows. Nothing difficult or momentous, just another window open on the desktop.)
If the rumors I hear are
If the rumors I hear are true, Apple may be implementing the Windows API in OS X 10.5, which makes things even more interesting. And Parallels continues to make advances with its products, with new feature announcements seeming to come every week.
I'll have to scrounge up a Windows license and give Parallels a try. It definitely does sound like it would solve some of my problems. Oh, and FWIW, there are no programs on UNIX/Linux that I need to run that I don't have access to already with OS X. That's just part of its beauty.