14 DAY TRIAL // The winter holidays are almost over and you need to go back to work. Santa has brought you the long-awaited present: a new Mac. Whether this is a laptop or a desktop computer, there are some apps that you need to have installed in order to make your life easier and be more productive.
Some of you may be on your first MacBook Pro, others may switch from a MacBook Air to the gorgeous new retina-display iMac. Either way, your computer comes with OS X Yosemite installed. Or later, if you read this guide in a couple of years.
Get to know OS X
OS X is not a complicated operating system, and as much as some of you may hate reading, try to get more familiar with your new computer by browsing its User Guide. Oh, you didn't find a Manual in the box? That's fine. Everything you need is just a tap away.
Go to Finder and then click on the Help Menu on top and select Get to know your Mac. You will be taken to a mini-website on apple.com that explains the basics in 12 pages. You will only see one or two relevant pictures and info about the main features of OS X. Having this online rather than reading a paper User Guide has obvious reasons: it's always up to date and the Apple engineers will make sure to include the latest features after each major update.
You will learn about the Dock, Finder, Spotlight, Window Controls, Gestures, Safari, Notifications, Mail, Messages, App Store and iCloud. If you already know all of that, you can just go to the mini-website that has the info about "What's new in OS X Yosemite." You can also check the advanced documentation found in the Mac Help Section.
If you are a hands-on person, you can learn about your new computer and the big apps it comes with by listening to podcasts or watching training courses. Lynda.com and Screencastsonline.com are some of the Web's greatest resources. You can get a free trial and then you will have to pay to get unlimited access.
The Apple-related section of Softpedia also has a good number of app reviews and tutorials. Make sure to search for what you need to know. And, as expected, the Apple Support forums will get you an answer to any question or issues you may run into.
Make the most of the pre-installed OS X apps
The good news is that the OS has got you covered on most of the basic tasks you may need for your computer to perform. Besides that, the Mac App Store brings a plethora of apps ready to be installed and most of them are free. The big challenge is to know what to get first.
If you are switching from a Windows machine, you need to know that your Mac does not need an Antivirus software. Yes, you will be able to find some of that in the Mac App Store or on the developers' websites, but you can skip that step. Also, you can get by without buying the Microsoft Office Suite. Writing apps are all over in the App Store, and you can find cheaper or free alternatives to Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Apple's own iLife Suite has some free and awesome tools – Pages, Numbers and Keynote – that will meet your needs.
First piece of advice is to make sure that you connect to the Internet, set-up your iCloud account and enable iCloud Drive, Contacts, Calendars, Safari, Keychain, Back to My Mac and Find my Mac. There are other options too, but you don't need those right now. These will be of great help if you already own an iOS device, because all of your iCloud data will get to your computer right away.
There's no need to tell you how to customize the Desktop picture, Finder's sidebar, and leave as few icons and documents on the desktop as possible to have your computer run smoothly.
Mail.app will work fine with Gmail and other IMAP, POP3 or Exchange accounts. Set it up once and forget about it. Safari works great, but you may like Chrome even more, so give them both a try and then choose your favorite.
You will love the Messages.app. You can set up your Google Chat and Yahoo Messenger accounts into that, and if you have an iPhone you can send and receive all your text messages on your computer. You will eventually learn to love iTunes to manage your music and apps, but make sure to have VLC or MPlayerX installed as your default video players.
Calendar, Contacts, iBooks or Maps are apps that you can use right away. There's no need to pay for alternatives from the Mac App Store as long as you have all the necessary features built-in.
Will this work?
Being a new Mac user, the first question that comes to mind is: Will XYZ app that I cannot live without on my Windows PC work on the Mac? And 99% of the time the answer is YES. Generic apps like Skype, TeamViewer or Adobe Photoshop have a Mac version. And if they are free on Windows, they will be free on the Mac as well.
The Mac community is built a little bit different from the Windows one. Just because there's no malware and the apps do not come with hidden viruses, you can trust and download them from any website. The two main sources remain the Mac App Store and the developer's website. It's usually the first result that comes up in a Google search that will be the most secure one.
However, you may be a professional who needs that 1% of the apps that are only available for Windows. Well, guess what? Your Mac is the best Windows machine out there. You can install virtually any version of Windows, from XP to 8.1. You can do this as a separate partition via BootCamp or virtualized with the help of Parallels or VMWare Fusion. The latter will help you run Windows apps alongside OS X ones.
Passwords and personal files
The most appropriate way to make the first Mac uniquely yours is to install 1Password and Dropbox. If you already are a 1Password user, you know how helpful this app is to your workflow. Make sure to store the 1Password keychain in the Dropbox folder or sync it via iCloud. Then, get the version on the developer's website, not the Mac App Store one. You will not get iCloud syncing, but the app is updated more often.
Dropbox is another gem you need to have on your new Mac right away. It's free and you get extra space for cheap. Having an everything-pocket always available on all your devices makes a world of difference. You can make Dropbox your default folder for saving files and you will not lose them.
The shortcuts
A productive Mac user needs to have a few apps under their belt. The first and most important one is Alfred. Yes, we know that OS X Yosemite comes with a new and improved Spotlight, and for the beginners, that may be more than enough. However, the power of Alfred comes from 3rd-party Workflows. You can download them from various websites and get to do everything with just a few keystrokes.
Imagine that you can search the App Store, Flush DNS, Check the Internet connection speed, get your IP and copy that to a clipboard, get IMDB info on any movie or check your local weather right away, without even taking your hands off the keyboard. Alfred can do that for you.
Another app that will make you more productive is BetterTouchTool. This free utility stays hidden, but it can unlock the true powers of your Multi-touch trackpad.
Another app that a true Mac user has installed from scratch is Hazel. It will watch any folder and perform actions on any file, based on your setup. Imagine that you could be asking Hazel to watch the Desktop and see when the Electricity Bill is downloaded. It can rename the file based on the month of the year and then sort it within a folder in your Archive.
If you write more than a few emails per day or if you are a journalist who spends their life in front of a computer, you need to get TextExpander. This is the mother of all Productivity apps. Set it up and then type a few letters into any text box and see that being expanded into a full page of text. It can be used for writing long, generic email replies or for simple things like typing your signature faster.
Other helpful utilities are Bartender (it hides the Menubar icons for all those new apps) and DoublePane (works like the Windows Snap to edges tool).
Choosing a good task manager or a Twitter app is a matter of choice, so we're not going to dive there. However, make sure to check out apps like nvALT, Wunderlist, Reeder or Byword. All of them are great apps that should be on anyone's Mac.
The big picture
The final chapter in our small guide is not related to managing pictures, as one might imagine, but to the way we make sure that everything is backed-up on our new Mac. OS X has a great built-in tool called Time Machine. As soon as you connect an external drive to the computer, it will ask you to format it and use it as a way to back up your files.
If you want to make sure that you do not miss any file from your machine, give SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner a try. Take a look at our Mac Back-up guide for your Mac from July of 2014.