Recommended Mac software for ARC users
Below are a series of links to various useful packages which you may wish to install on your ARC issued laptop. In several cases these are not free packages and you will need to obtain a license to use them - contact Robert for information.
Astronomy software
We have local copies of the SolarSoft SSWIDL packages and databases which can be mirrored to your laptop.
'Productivity' software
- TextWranger - excellent free text editor
- VirtualBox - free virtual machine software
- Acrobat - can be useful for some PDFs which Preview.app can't handle
- Firefox - web browser. Makre sure to install the noScript and AdBlock Pro extensions
- iWork - 'Office suite' - mostly superior to the Microsoft offering. Not free, but we supply a copy with each new Mac.
- Microsoft Office - available under the QUB campus license if you need it
- MacPorts - makes installing 'unix' software easy under OS X. You probably want to install most, tightvnc, gv, mrxvt, ncftp, wget, xxdiff
- MacTex - CrApTeX installation. Local copy
- Developer Tools - compiler suite for OS X. Needed for MacPorts, etc. A copy will come on the installation DVDs with your Mac, but it's best to register for a free online developer account so you can update easily. Local copy.
- JollysFastVNC - VNC viewer with SSH tunnelling support. Needed to access a KDE session on the shared Linux workstations
- Papers - apparently 'iTunes for research papers'. Shareware.
- Mail Unread menu - provides notification of unread email in the menu bar. Useful if you like to hide the dock.
Utility software
- SuperDuper - drive cloning software. See Robert for a license. Use this as well as Time Machine.
- MacFUSE/MacFusion - provides easy SSH access to shared filesystems on the Linux machines
- iStat Menus - provides lots of information on CPU, RAM, drive space, network use
- TinkerTool - lets you easily manipulate many hidden OS X settings
- The Unarchiver - handles a lot more archive file formats than the default OS X archive program
- PEMDAS - an excellent calculator widget for the dashboard
- SmartSleep - gives more control over the OS X hibernate settings
- Launchbar - wonderful application launcher. Shareware.
- Growl - notification system for OS X, can be scripted to work with command line scripts too.
- DejaMenu - lets you pop up the menubar contents under the mouse. Very useful with multi-monitor setups.
Other useful software
- VLC - multiformat open-source video player
- Perian - Quicktime plugin which handles many video formats which are not Mac native
- Xscreensaver - collection of beautiful screen savers
- Windows Media plugin - allows you to play WMV files, etc.
- Handbrake - media encoder, for ripping DVDs to MP4 files, etc.
- GraphicConverter - image manipulation and processing package. Shareware.
- Pixelmator - a powerful image editor. Shareware.
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