Apple: From Windows to Mac...

This is not a switcher guide to Mac OS X but it should serve as nice reading for anyone who is looking for Windows like apps on Mac OS X. Lets face it, we are so used to Windows that no matter what we always want an app similar to the one in Windows. We don't like change. As it turns out there is a world that is beyond windows and there are apps that do much more than their counterparts in Windows. Lets now look at the apps that make you get started with the wonderful world of Mac OS X..

Lets begin with TextEdit, it is a text editor for Mac but unlike Notepad in Windows TextEdit can handle rich text. This is a very handy tool if you need to write down some text. You word processing need are taken care of by Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, although I must admit that Office for Mac doesn't look as comfortable to work with as it is on XP or Vista. If you are used to MS Office just remember that you got one for Mac as well. My personal favorite is iWork'08. iWork'08 is a wonderful and equally powerful replacement for MS Office. Working with iWork is a wonderful experience, be it creating or editing documents or creating Keynote Presentation, iWork has got it all. Most importantly iWork has support for .doc files created with MS Office, so everything is seamless and works zippy.

Once you are done with your basic text editing and word processing you face the never ending browser war. Mac OS X has got the best browsers you can think of, from Opera to Firefox or Camino to Safari. I personally recommend Safari for three simple reasons:

• Web page rendering in Safari is fastest when compared with other browsers.

• Safari is very light on system resources.

• Private browsing in safari allows you to browse without leaving any tracks what so ever.

Image Editing is where the Macs excel. There are zillions of Image Editing apps available in mac and naming a few is extremely difficult. However the ones I use more often are Pixelmator, Picturesque, Xee and ofcourse the very best Preview. And then there is the mother of all : Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Mac. Photoshop on Mac runs much faster than on Windows. There is practically nothing that you can think of and couldn't do to an image on Mac.

Now comes my favorite part, p2p client on Mac. There is only one app that i'd recommend in this category and trust me when I say this, nothing works better than Transmission on Mac. This is my favorite app in all the categories. Transmission works so smoothly on Mac that no amount of description will justify it but let me try this description : Transmission on Mac is like Knife on Butter.

Heyy what about Multimedia ?? Well, you got iTunes, the best music management software on the Earth, QuickTime Player, the best media player cum video converter and VLC, the everyone's favorite media player that needs no codecs to play any files that you throw at it. What else does anyone need ?

There are several categories of app that I've deliberately left behind with a hope to cover them in my future articles. Macs are beautiful machines but the apps they've got make them equally productive. When you get a Mac, think of change, adapt to it and then you will know that once you go Mac you never come back!!