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iBook Update

I thought I would post a follow-up to my post about my new iBook. It has now become my main com­pu­ter at home — usur­ping my aging Dell lap­top — and I use it for everything from just brow­sing the web to deve­lo­ping my web site and Fire­fox extensions.

I was the vic­tim of Apple upgra­ding the specs on the iBook, although not the only one, with both Duns­tan Orchard and Richard Rut­ter get­ting caught out this time and Dan Cederholm men­tio­ning this pre­viously. Des­pite this I’m still extre­mely happy with my purchase.

And so I thought I would list the soft­ware that I have ins­ta­lled and recom­mend if you have Mac OS X:

  • Fire­fox is the first thing I ins­tall on any new machine and my iBook was no exception
  • Quick­sil­ver is a fan­tas­tic appli­ca­tion launcher that is not only slick, but free as well
  • Fire is an open source multi-protocol ins­tant mes­sen­ger client. I am kee­ping my eye on the Pro­teus beta, but for now Fire is my favorite
  • Synergy is a sim­ple con­tro­ller for iTu­nes that is well worth the 5€ (Euros) price
  • Cyber­duck is an open source FTP client. I have yet to find an FTP client that I really like, but Cyber­duck seems to be the best free option
  • SubEthaE­dit is a very cool colla­bo­ra­tive edi­tor. I have not used the colla­bo­ra­tive fea­tu­res yet, but it works well just as a stan­dard edi­tor as well
  • Menu Calen­dar is a small appli­ca­tion that pro­vi­des ins­tant access to a calendar
  • Cron­niX is a graphi­cal front-end to the UNIX tool ‘cron’

Update: I have just ins­ta­lled Kon­fa­bu­la­tor which allows you to add various wid­gets to your desk­top. My favo­rite wid­get? The iTu­nes remote that announ­ces a song change using the Mac OS X speech technology.

Chris Pederick

6 years ago on April 26, 2004 3 comments

3 comments

  1. Pete Prodoehl says:
    April 27, 2004 at 09:34

    For a free SFTP client, try Fugu — http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/

    For a com­mer­cial FTP app, I really like Inte­rarchy — http://www.interarchy.com/

    For text edi­ting I use jEdit which is actually writ­ten in Java and runs on many plat­forms — http://jedit.org/

  2. Tom Becker says:
    May 27, 2004 at 08:52

    I’m also using my Power­book as my main com­pu­ter but I highly recom­mend Adium for your mes­sa­ging. I pre­fer it over fire.

  3. Chris Pederick says:
    May 27, 2004 at 09:06

    I actually did not like Adium as much as Fire — I can­not remem­ber why. But I have now switched to Pro­teus which, while not free, I pre­fer over everything else I have tried.

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