I'm not sure why exactly but I kind of like building a fresh Apple computer. The installations tend to be elegant and you can stack several software installations so they install one after another. I also like that the OS is hardware agnostic and I can copy the image after I build it and either run it or lay it on top of another Mac and it works just like it was built for it. Some people bemoan the fact that Apple doesn't license its OS for other vendors but on the positive side it dramatically reduces maintenance because you can build a single image for use on any like-processor laptop or desktop.
So, with that said, here's what I put on that computer...
After doing the initial complete install with all options but the multiple languages, I add anti-virus in the form of ClamAV for Mac OS X. It's free, lightweight, and quick. It's not as full featured as others but it does the job for me. Since the Macs thus far have a low rate of being a malicious target I'm a little more relaxed on the anti-virus. I know, I know, I probably shouldn't be but considering that I'm religious about keeping the computers patched daily and well firewalled, there isn't any empirical data that suggests that I need to do more.
Just because I am a Linux guy at heart, I install Apple's excellent Developer Tools. It's a whole kit of compilers, SDKs, WebObjects, and more. If you have an Apple Developer account, it's a free download. After that goes on I add a few command line *NX applications like wget, lynx, etc. which are handy for troubleshooting. While I'm in the terminal I usually activate PHP and SSL for Apache (the built-in web server).
For productivity, I installed Apple's very good iWork '08. I bought a Family Pack when I purchased it for just a few bucks extra and it lets you legally install it on 5 computers and I still have a couple to spare. It includes Pages, Numbers, and Keynote (word processing/layout, spreadsheet, and presentation software). For me it's still not quite a complete replacement for MS Office but the value is hard to ignore if you're on a budget. Of course you can also get Open Office or Star Office or use Google Apps but I prefer iWork over those alternatives.
Of course no Mac would be complete without the famous iLife suite. Like iWork there is a Family Pack option as well for only a few bucks more so on it went. iLife includes iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, and iWeb. iPhoto is the strongest in the suite in my opinion but I also don't do a lot of video editing. iWeb is still a little light for me and tries to do too much automatically and I personally use DreamWeaver for web pages but for your average user iWeb makes sense. With this suite you can manage and edit photos quite a bit (still not like you can with Photoshop but that's overkill for most people), create template based web pages, edit movies, and create DVDs for playing in a home DVD player.
While Safari is my preferred Mac browser, I still install Firefox and Internet Explorer (v. 5.x, although it's no longer available for download from MS). I used Camino for a while but the lack of support for it is disappointing. I usually install Opera although I don't know that I've ever used it....
I put Skype on it because it's great VoIP software. I'd be hesitant to use it for business purposes because I wouldn't want to eat up my own bandwidth being a super node for other people but for home use behind a firewall, I'm comfortable with it. In my own case, I also signed up for Skype Out service and I use that for making calls to land lines in lieu of my cell phone when it's still peak times (that runs $30 year for unlimited US and Canada calls to landlines).
Lastly, I install the Google Software for Mac, which includes Google Earth and a plugin for iPhoto to upload pictures to PicasaWeb. It's not as much stuff as they have for Windows but most of the other stuff already exists in iLife or native to the OS.
I didn't mention IM because I usually just use the native iChat--it's hard to beat for video and audio chats. It doesn't work with all the services out there yet but it does work with AIM, ICQ, and Google Talk and those three services represent 80% of my friends on IM.
If I'm building my own computer, I include
- Parallels for virtualization
- Toast Titanium for disk burning and image creation
- MacTheRipper for importing the DVDs I own
- HandBrake for converting the DVDs I own to MPEG4 so I can put them on the network; incidentally it's also available for Windows now!
- EyeTV 2 by Elgato which, when using a hardware TV tuner, allows you to watch and record television shows
- Microsoft Messenger, just because I do have a few friends with Hotmail and MSN IM accounts.
- Microsoft's new Remote Desktop client, it is actually a really good client if you need to connect to a Windows computer
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