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[Loren Schmidt]

• ...you probably know how to animate in GIMP by now or whatever.
  

Oh, hey-
If you haven't already got a Photoshop equivalent you're attached to, I'd definitely recommend the GIMP.

I used the GIMP exclusively for years, and it's pretty awesome. It seems clunky at first, but it's really pretty streamlined and very capable.

[Ivan]

DO NOT LIE TO US BRANDON HAVE YOU COMPLETED YOUR INITIATION?

[krabbo]

We recently moved to Unity. Tho still use our own and previous stuff with.

[xerus]

INSTALL WINDOWS XP.  STICK IT TO THE MAN.

[increpare]

Stay the CURSEWORD away from pixen.  It'll cause you nothing but grief.  Some variation on the gimp is more advisable.

[Gravious]

Ok, good, you've gotten yourself some artistic cred now, so do something useful and subversive with it like installing the new windows 7 beta, or even just xp and make your mac all it can be

[siiseli]

No you.

[Corpus]

You just got 10% cooler, BMcC.

Don't use Pixen. It's the dog's bollocks, but in the bad way.

Even Acorn is better than Pixen.

[godsavant]

Oh, and in case I forget, you have just earned a notch of my respect.

That is all.

[neon]

use boot camp, make an xp partition, and use cosmigo promotion to pixel.

that's my solution..

[Laremere]

My suggested software list:
Instant messenger that was everything from msn to facebook: http://www.adiumx.com/
Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
A launcher application that is nice and improves speed: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14831

Also get growl like Adium suggests, and turn it on for other programs that allow it (such as firefox telling you when you have finished downloads)

Widgets:
Quick and easy file uploader: http://h4xr.org/
Easy screen capture (I often use export to preview, then open up the drawer and drag it into h3xr so you upload a screen easy): http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/business/screenshotplus.html


I may have more, but this is what I can think of right now.

[Bennett]

Congrats! The more of us there are, the more indie games will be OSX compatible (and thus playable by me on my laptop)

I recommend Transmit (ftp client) and also Transmission (bittorrent client)

[Arne]

I'm using FTP and IRC add-ons for firefox to keep things simple.

Not sure what Quicksilver is for. Spotlight is already pretty effective I think. Setting icon size to 128 helps when sorting a lot of image files like I do. Gotta be careful with spotlight with a backup connected cuz it'll search that too (although not Time Machine backups?). When I was migrating my stuff I started editing the backup files on the external instead because I was using spotlight to locate files and didn't pay attention.

You may want to use the F1 to F12 keys as standard keys, it's under Keyboard and Mouse settings.

Xcode is on the install DVDs... you might need it when doing dev stuff. I had to install it to build the BlitzMax modules.

I'm keeping my system as vanilla as possible, trying not to bloat it with a zillion performing increasing apps of shady nature. Tried out SMCfancontrol something though, cuz I get pixel burn if I keep things running hot behind the lcd on my iMac. Turning down the brightness seems to help too., and activating hot corners for a screen saver. There's an app called Shades or something which lets you control brightness better.

[Corpus]

I can second the Transmit and Transmission recommendations. Transmit is made by a company called Panic, and really all of their stuff is worth checking out. Best software on the Mac.

Quicksilver is totally required and is much, much more than just a "launcher application." You can use it for searching, moving, copying, deleting, renaming, uploading, tweeting, controlling iTunes, navigating your filesystem and pretty much anything else you can think of.

I also use Adium as my IM client.

For IRC clients, the best choices are Linkinus (shareware but very reasonably-priced) and Colloquy (less lovely, but freeware).

Screenshot applications are frankly totally unnecessary. You can take a whole-screen screenshot by pressing cmd+shift+3, drag out an area to capture by pressing cmd+shift+4 and, well, dragging, or take a screenshot just of one window by pressing cmd+shift+4 followed by the space key and clicking on the window. Those functions are built-in and save the image as a PNG to the desktop, which is very convenient.

Firefox is not worth getting on the Mac. It might be fast on Windows, but it isn't here. You either want to use the standard Safari, or Camino, which is built on Mozilla specifically for the Mac and seems to be the best option, speed- and standard-wise.

Like Arne says, it might be a good idea to use the function keys as standard keys, giving you easy access to the Spaces (F8) and Exposé (F9-11) shortcuts, as well as F12 for the dashboard. You then access the brightness, volume etc. controls by pressing the key + fn.

I also use smcFanControl and can vouch for its usefulness and general goodness.


EDIT: Got the screenshot shortcuts wrong -_-. I only use them on a daily basis...

[krabbo]

Transmit, MICE iRC, AdiumX, Amadeus Pro, Firefox, Thunderbird, SubEthaEdit, Adobe Suite, LightWave 3D, Unity 3D, 

... my main tools