Mac Users

[Michel]

Who here uses a Mac?

I need recommendations of free programs I should be downloading from the net and using...

I need to burn my CD's onto my computer in good quality - what should I use? If I was using windows, I would have used CD-EX....

[Tancata]

Hi, I use Macs a lot of the time.

iTunes will certainly rip CDs in much better than "good" quality (just make sure to activate Error Correction in the preferences). On a damaged disc, it won't give EAC-quality results, though. I've found it to be about as good as CDex, but quality also depends on your CD drive. Just give the first few rips a critical listen.

If you are more OCD about it, you can try something like Max. It's got enough settings and modes to make most rip obsessives happy:

http://sbooth.org/Max/

Did you also want some advice on other programs to use? I'm not sure from your post, so I'll assume you do. Some of the better free software for Macs these days:

Web Browsers: Camino, Firefox (both Gecko-based browsers from Mozilla - Camino will be the better choice for a lot of Mac users), Shiira (WebKit-based, with a longer feature-list than Safari).

Chat (MSN, AOL, GTalk, etc) - Adium

Bittorrent client - Transmission, Azeureus
Edonkey client - aMule

Media player - VLC

DVD Ripper - Handbrake, Mac the Ripper

Text editor - Smultron

Notebook - Journler

PDF reader/annotator - Skim

Office software/word processor - NeoOffice, Abiword, Bean

FTP client - Cyberduck, Fugu

Laptop battery status - CoconutBattery

These are what I use...total cost €0

[Michel]

Thank you Tancata, so much.

I've decided on using the AAC on itunes - why not? Its good, as you say, and easy to use, in finding all the info, etc. So I am going with it. The CD drive in the Macbook isnt the best, so I am getting an external one soon to help in the process..


Thanks for all your other programs, too, very useful. I use open office, too, which is great.

I also use firefox which ive been using now for a few years...

[paul]

I prefer using Camino (www.caminobrowser.org/) made by Mozilla on my Macbook Pro over Firefox because it seems to run faster. It's very similar to Firefox so I would check it out.

[Tancata]

I prefer using Camino (www.caminobrowser.org/) made by Mozilla on my Macbook Pro over Firefox because it seems to run faster. It's very similar to Firefox so I would check it out.

Yes, I agree. I use Camino as my number 1 browser at home for these reasons. But, some people find Firefox extensions very useful.

Also Michel - have you thought about ripping losslessly? It just seems slightly odd to worry so much about rip quality that you would buy an external CD drive (Macbook drive is really quite fine) and then compress the resulting rips. Of course AAC can be very good, and if the bitrate is decent you almost certainly won't notice the difference. One (the only?) tangible benefit of lossless encoding is that the files are bit-perfect archives of your CDs, and can be transcoded into whatever convenient lossy formats come along in the future for use on portable players, etc. If you rip to lossless, you'll never need to rip again. But then you would need a lot of storage space to keep the rips, and presumably backups...

Just something to think about.

[George]

Another MAC user.

[Steve]

Browsing (Camino 1.5, or Safari 3)
Remote Desktop: RealVNC
Java Compiler (JBuilder/Netbeans)
NoteTaker: OmniOutliner Pro
Image Handling: GraphicConverter
CD Burning: Toast
Media: VLC or Itunes
ScreenShots: Snap and Drag
Recording: WireTapPro
Security: PeerGuardian
Performance: iFreeMem

Keep in mind that most of these applications aren't free, they're shareware. You can try them out for 30-60 days, and then by paying a very modest shareware fee, they are yours forever.