Advice on Mac utilities

[mark@markscoleman.com]

Hi,

Sorry in advance for this Newbie question. I'm a brand new "swticher" to the
Mac world, having just bought a PowerBook. I was curious about what
"essential" utilities I should have on my Mac. In the Windows world, I would
always load Norton Utilities, Norton Anti-Virus, and at least a software
firewall (I had been using ZoneAlarm) on a machine before I ever put any of
my content on it. I'm presuming the same should hold for a Mac. I know there
are Norton programs available fo OS X, but I was wondering about
alternatives. I'd be grateful to anyone willig to share their personal
experience. Thanks.

Best regards,

Mark

[Thomas Reed]

In article <o1ATa.58011$k85.1982685@twister.tampabay.rr.com >, Enough
<enough@idontcare.com> wrote:

> In article <CgyTa.128781$H17.41462@sccrnsc02>, [email]mark@markscoleman.com[/email]
> wrote:
>

> > I'm presuming the same should hold for a Mac.

>
> Wrong!

Please ignore Enough -- he's our resident troll, and not representative
of Mac users. I'd hate you to get a bad impression of the community
you've just joined due to someone like him!

In any case, Norton publishes all the stuff you mentioned for Macs as
well, but IMHO Norton is not the strongest contender on the Mac.
DiskWarrior is good, though only at one particular thing. TechTool Pro
(which comes free with an AppleCare warranty right now) is a better
all-around disk utility.

Virus software isn't really necessary unless you need protection
against stuff like Microsoft Word macro viruses. (I've seen ONE virus
in all my nearly 20 years of using a Mac, and it didn't infect me and
was easy to eliminate.) If you do decide you want one anyway, Norton
Anti-Virus and Virex are two choices. (Virex comes free with a .Mac
account -- at $100/year for the .Mac service, it's a pretty big
bargain, especially with the other free stuff you end up getting, but
it's not right for everyone.)

There are myriad programs others have mentioned that are not
particularly important, just interface gizmos. You might be interested
in them, but that's a very personal decision. They're hardly
indispensible items that you should feel a need to look into before
you're ready, so don't let the volume overwhelm you. In particular, I
noticed a number of the ones on one list were utilities designed to
give Mac OS X some interface elements familiar to OS 9 users -- being a
new Mac convert, I doubt you'll be that concerned about making your Mac
work like an older version of the OS! (Sorry if this offends those
providing the recommendations, but let's not drown the poor guy on his
first day in the pool!) When you feel a particular need, or just want
to play with some cool new software, then you can look into some of
those programs.

--
-Thomas

e-mail me at thomasareed at philadelphia.net minus phil

[Sander Tekelenburg]

In article <CgyTa.128781$H17.41462@sccrnsc02>, [email]mark@markscoleman.com[/email]
wrote:

> [...] I'm a brand new "swticher" to the
> Mac world

Welcome.

> , having just bought a PowerBook. I was curious about what
> "essential" utilities I should have on my Mac. In the Windows world, I would
> always load Norton Utilities

In the Mac world Norton isn't held in as high regard as it used to. Disk
Warrior and TechTool are more interesting options IMO.

> , Norton Anti-Virus

I've never encountered a virus in some 10 years. AFAIK there are no
viruses for Mac OS X.

> , and at least a software
> firewall

It's built-in. But by default all ports are closed, so as long long as
you don't start any services a firewall doesn't seem that necessary.

The built-in firewall can be accessed by GUI through System
Preferences->Sharing (where you can also start some services and the
router). For more detailed configuration you'll need the terminal. See
"man ipfw". There are some third-party utilities that provide extended
GUI access to ipfw, if you want that. I think "Sunshield" and
"LittleSnitch" are some of them.
(<http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/> is one of the popular places to
search for software.)

--
Free and shareware at <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/software/>

[forge]

On 24 Jul 2003 01:52:04 -0400, [email]shamino@techie.com[/email] (David C.) wrote:

>Another good package is Micromat's Tech Tool Pro
>([url]http://www.micromat.com/[/url]). Version 3 only runs on MacOS 9, so isn't
>too useful with new Macs. Version 4 is coming real soon now.

It's out! My copy arrives next Friday.

[David C.]

forge writes:

> David C. wrote:

>>
>> Another good package is Micromat's Tech Tool Pro
>> ([url]http://www.micromat.com/[/url]). Version 3 only runs on MacOS 9, so
>> isn't too useful with new Macs. Version 4 is coming real soon now.

>
> It's out! My copy arrives next Friday.

Cool. Thanks for the news. The Micromat web site still lists it as
"coming soon".

I'll check more frequently and place my order when they list it as
shipping (I don't like pre-orders.)

BTW, for those who may not realize it, there's a $50 price for those
upgrading from Tech Tool Deluxe. TTD comes bundled with AppleCare
Protection Plan contracts - use it for a discounted update if you
have it.

(If not, buy a copy of Drive10 right now $70 and get a free upgrade
to TTP4 before that offer disappears from Micromat's web site :-)

-- David

[EG]

> >
> > Furthermore I've seen several credentialed Mac-heads telling people to
> > run, do not walk, run away from Norton.
> >

> no, run FAST!
>
> Drive 10 saved my system when Norton would just mumble. A long time
> ago, Norton actually worked fine for me - but not since os-9.

Stay away from Norton Disk Doctor.......the latest Speed Disk (comes
with Norton Utilities) for optimizing works fine though in my
experience. OSX disks get really fragmented...

eg

[James Chokey]

In article <m2brvkbhff.fsf@qqqq.invalid>, David C. <shamino@techie.com>
wrote:

> Other essential utilities (IMO) are:
>
> - Roxio's Toast Titanium. This is one of the best programs for
> burning CDs and DVDs. Much more powerful and flexible than the
> disc burning programs that comes with MacOS.

Agreed. Really essential.

> - Dantz's Retrospect. This is one of the most popular backup
> programs around. The Express version is a basic package that can
> back up to magnetic or optical disc media. The more expensive
> Desktop version offers some more powerful features and supports
> tape drives. I regularly use Retrospect to make backups to a tape
> drive.

I've heard good things about this, but I've not bothered. I just use
Carbon copy Cloner on a regular basis to make sure I have a complete
'backup drive'.

> - Better internet apps - web, mail and news. MacOS comes with basic
> apps for these (Internet Explorer, Mail.app, etc.) Some people
> like them. I don't. Do some web searches, download a bunch of
> titles and keep the one(s) you like.
>
> I currently use Safari ([url]http://www.apple.com/safari/[/url]) and Mozilla
> ([url]http://www.mozilla.org/[/url]) for web browsing, Mozilla for e-mail, and
> Gnus (part of Gnu Emacs) for news.

All fine choices, although my personal preference is for Camino
(formerly known as Chimera) for browsing and Thoth for news.
And, with a couple of weird quirks aside, I actually *like* the Mail.app
application.

>
> - A text editor. The system-provided Text Edit utility is OK, but I
> prefer something more powerful. Many people like BBEdit
> ([url]http://www.barebones.com/[/url]). There is a free "BBEdit Lite" that
> you can download from them ([url]ftp://ftp.barebones.com/pub/freeware/[/url] -
> note that it's not linked from their web pages.)

BBEdit Lite is, in my book, one of the essential mac applications,
especially if you do any web page designing and you actually like to
go in and work with the code, rather than just using graphical
development tools like Dreamweaver or GoLive.

Jim C.

[David C.]

EG <acer151@hotmail.com> writes:

>
> Agreed, OSX does seem to handle fragmented files well but sometimes
> you need that space freed up for dv or whatever and Speed disk seems
> to be able to handle it...eg

Sure. For occasional use (say, once a year or something), defragging
isn't a bad idea.

But I wouldn't trust a Symantec product with my drive. I currently
do my defragging with Alsoft's Plus Optimizer (it came free with my
Disk Warrior 2.1 CD). For those who can't boot OS 9, I've heard a
lot of good things about Micromat's Drive10, although I don't have
personal experience with that product.

-- David

[Charles Martin]

In article <CgyTa.128781$H17.41462@sccrnsc02>, [email]mark@markscoleman.com[/email]
wrote:

> Sorry in advance for this Newbie question. I'm a brand new "swticher" to the
> Mac world, having just bought a PowerBook.

Welcome! Congratulations!

> I was curious about what
> "essential" utilities I should have on my Mac.

I would recommend the following:

1. DiskWarrior 3 - approx. $90 from [url]http://www.alsoft.com[/url] or your local
Apple store.

2. Cocktail - free (check macupdate.com for a copy)

3. Carbon Copy Cloner - $5 from [url]www.bombitch.com[/url]

4. Dot-Mac (aka .Mac) - $99/year from Apple Computer.


DiskWarrior is an essential Disk Directory Repair utility that seems to
find problems long before they BECOME problems. It used to come with
PlusOptimizer (a defragger in PC terms), but no longer does (a new
version of PO should be out before long, however).

Cocktail is more of a "weekly maintenance" type app. I use the "Pilot"
feature and it's hassle-free and wonderful. Again, really helps stop
problems before they become problems.

Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) is for making full or incremental backups to
another hard drive. If you prefer to make your backups to burnable CDs,
you can investigate Retrospect *or* read on.

My .Mac recommendation is not a universal one -- many old-time Mac users
feel it's not worth the money, and I'll admit it's a little bit
overpriced. However, for a Switcher such as yourself, I sincerely
believe it offers a very good value.

In addition to the email, web page, iPhoto page, free games, backup
software and many other benefits it provides, you also get McAfee's
Virex for Mac (not really needed at present, but you never know) which
works great, and the aforementioned Backup software, which allows you to
easily backup material not just to a CD burner, but vital data can be
backed up to your iDisk (a remote "virtual disk" on Apple's server).

You might be wondering why I'm not suggesting Norton for Mac. Well,
believe me I used to be a big fan and staunch defender of Norton for
Macintosh, and I still maintain that *when run from the CD* the
SystemWorks or Norton Utilities package works perfectly. However, after
no end of problems with clients who have installed it on their hard
drives (either Utilities or Anti-Virus), I can no longer recommend the
company's software.

As for a Firewall: you are really best off using a hardware firewall (a
router), but Mac OS X has a built-in one that works great, so no need to
spend money on one.

Hope that helps.



In the Windows world, I would

> always load Norton Utilities, Norton Anti-Virus, and at least a software
> firewall (I had been using ZoneAlarm) on a machine before I ever put any of
> my content on it. I'm presuming the same should hold for a Mac. I know there
> are Norton programs available fo OS X, but I was wondering about
> alternatives. I'd be grateful to anyone willig to share their personal
> experience. Thanks.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Mark

--
Cheers,
_Chas_
[url]http://www.apple.com/switch[/url]
non-spammers can write to chasm at mac (dot com)