Mac 911: May 2006 Page 2 of 2

Solutions to your most vexing Mac problems

The desert island question

Those of us known for our devotion to the Mac are often asked the Desert Island question. You know what I mean: “If you were stranded on a desert island with your PowerBook (or, soon, MacBook Pro), which applications would you want with you?”

Seems to me that if you were truly marooned, you’d likely use your laptop to bash in the huskier variety of coconut. So I’d like to propose a more realistic scenario: Let’s say you’ve just wiped your PowerBook’s drive because you’re sick and tired of the way applications abruptly quit, your hard drive is stuffed with things you’ve accumulated over the past two years, and everything seems to be moving so slooooowly. After installing Mac OS, which applications would you install to make your laptop ready for prime time?

I was just in that position. Here are the applications and utilities I installed to return my PowerBook to productivity.

Apple’s iLife ’06 ($79): A Mac isn’t a Mac without a copy of iLife.

Microsoft Office 2004 ($399): Office is the standard for offices, and mine is no exception. Word is what my editors demand, and until Apple’s Mail offers a more robust set of rules, I’m sticking with Entourage.

Apple’s iWork ’06 ($79): In nearly every regard, iWork is no match for Microsoft Office. The major exception is Keynote, which makes PowerPoint look utterly primitive.

Bare Bones Software’s BBEdit ($199): Now that I’m doing lots of Web work, BBEdit is an essential tool for creating and formatting my stuff.

TLA Systems’ DragThing ($29): I can’t recall the last time I used Apple’s Dock. There are oodles of great Dock alternatives for the Mac, and this is the one I prefer.

Ambrosia Software’s SnapzProX (movie edition, $69; stills-only edition, $29): There’s no better tool for still and motion screen captures.

Mozilla’s Firefox (free): Safari is a perfectly fine browser, but I prefer Firefox with a few select extensions from the Mozilla development community site—specifically, Greasemonkey (free; macworld.com/1126) and Flashblock (free; macworld.com/1127).

Panic’s Transmit ($30): When I need to move files to and from my book publisher’s File Transfer Protocol (FTP) site, I do it with Panic’s Transmit. Only Apple makes a more Mac-like interface.

Tip of the month

Tricked-out ‘Tracker: When people visit VersionTracker.com or MacUpdate.com in search of software updates, they often wait for the home page to load, type the keyword, wait for the hits page to show, click on the desired hit, and then arrive at the update they want.

A much quicker approach is to do your search in Safari’s Google search field. Just type your keyword plus

versiontracker

macupdate

—for example,

handbrake versiontracker

. When you press return, Google shows you the hits. The first link is usually the one that you’re looking for. Click on it for the update.— Gabriel Dorado

If you’d like to narrow your results further, type

keyword site:www.sitename.com

(replacing
keyword
with the thing you’re looking for and
sitename
with the name of the specific site you want to search). With this formula, Google will return results from only that site.—Ed.

[ Macworld Senior Editor Christopher Breen is the author of Secrets of the iPod and iTunes, fifth edition, and The iPod and iTunes Pocket Guide (Peachpit Press, 2005). ]