Power user replacements for OS X default apps (opens in new tab)

Of course, going back to Windows after 3+ years on OSX is no option, so I looked into Ubuntu. I use Ubuntu on a machine at work and have been very impressed--we've certainly come a long ways since the dark days of Slackware `96! I am enough of a "power user" that I could weather the switch just fine; really the only thing I would miss is iTunes since I have two iPods.

Anyways, I started Googling around on the topic of "hp envy 14 +ubuntu". And that's when I was instantly transported back fifteen years to the days, weeks, months I spent tinkering with past laptops in order to get everything working on them under Linux. I had all but forgotten about 30-page hardware HOWTOs on getting Linux to work with your specific laptop; the 20% battery penalty you pay because pm never quite works; the inability of some things, usually network and sound cards, to wake from sleep; the lack of hibernate; buggy graphics drivers; etc. etc. etc.

I am aware that the situation has improved considerably since then, but problems still remain. I just don't have the time like I did in my teens and early 20s. Or rather, my time is worth considerably more now--I'm happy to pay the Apple tax if it means I don't have to deal with this shit.

That said, if some major HW manufacturer ever came out with a completely supported laptop with Ubuntu preloaded, working power management, graphics drivers that do what they are supposed to, etc., I would totally bite. (I am aware the some, e.g. Dell, have done so, but when I see warnings like http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/p/... it's evident that they half-assed it. What I'm after is a full-assing.)

They're not the only reasons, but the industrial design and battery life of Apple notebooks are quite compelling.

That said, more and more I'm moving to the cloud for doing things that aren't Emacs or a shell, and I'm thinking that Ubuntu and a tiling wm are all I'd really need to be productive. I've tried in the past but it just never seems to gel for me in terms of usability.

I'm currently looking for "my" tiling WM and am overwhelmed by the amount of available tiling WMs. Awesome-WM vs XMonad?

I've found digikam ( http://www.digikam.org/ ) to work pretty well. Never really cared for iPhoto though.

Keynote, again never really used it. I hear it's much nicer than the MS equivalent.

The wife likes GarageBand and it does seem to be a pretty sweet app. Not really sorta thing so I don't really know of any replacement for it. Audacity is the only thing that comes to mind and it's not exactly the same kinna thing.

Select file, hit return, rename, hit return. Go to next file. Are you going to say Windows's F2 dance is faster?

> OS X uses THREE keyboard modifiers? REALLY?

No, 4. Is that supposed to be news? Windows also uses 4 keyboard modifiers, and Gnome uses at least 3.

> And they aren't even named?

Shift, control, option (alt), command.

> and the context menus rarely have what I want (like, oh, renaming a file?).

Ever considered opening the Get Info dialog? No? Thought not.

> Multiple desktops is trivial on Ubuntu. In fact, it's preinstalled that way.

So is it on OSX. I'd even say it's more trivial, as you can switch to an application living on a different desktop, it will just switch to the right desktop. Not so in Ubuntu.

Regarding "not a very OS X solution", I would just note that a "power user" is going to be on the command line all day long in Mac OS X, like any UNIX. Terminal.app is very capable, iTerm is there if you prefer, and many more technical users on the Mac will be using more powerful Finder replacements like PathFinder (that have built-in slide-out terminal panes), or using the excellent D-Term, which pops up a HUD-style one-shot command line in the context of wherever you happen to be in the GUI.

There's at least one other way to do it - single-click on the file, press enter, then type the new name.

1) People who occasionally want to open/save plain text files: Gedit works just fine.

2) Programmers, who should know one of Emacs or Vim out of hand. I totally get that some folks like using TextMate all day, and that GEdit has some great programmers' features now, but if you know emacs/vim, you'll never be on a machine where you can't get an editor you know.

Go to Finder>Preferences>Advanced and you'll find it at the bottom of the window.

Because of this nuisance I never managed to get used to Spaces.

There are at least three applications where different windows are "morally" different applications: Terminal, Finder and web browser. I should be able to focus individual windows without bringing to foreground the whole application.

Envisage, if you will, this scenario. I have multiple terminal windows open in the background connected to various services and my current focus is on my fullscreen IDE of choice. Now my IDE has various pieces of information on it and, given that my short term memory isn't what it once was, I would like to always be able refer to it. So I switch to Terminal and ALL the Terminal windows are pulled above the IDE window, often obscuring the piece of information I wanted to reference.

It's not that the 98-esque model is necessarily superior, it's rather that it's surprising when windows you haven't requested to see are pulled into the foreground. Now this may be due to me having used `window-centric` switching for many years but after 3 years of owning a mac I still find this behaviour frustrating.

But a power user is probably using more than one app per task, and is multitasking (or whose task requires many separate subtasks), and of course some of the apps are used in multiple tasks.

It would increase productivity if I could easily bring up the windows I'm using for task a, and switch easily to the windows I'm using for task b, even if textmate and a terminal are in use in both tasks. Yeah yeah, we have spaces... the point is that, for me, while purely window-level switching is a poor solution, app level switching is both a poor and often actually anti-productive solution.

(I, also, am a longtime windows user now using os x. That's definitely a factor, here)

I don't keep 100% synchronisation between machines. I don't back everything up. I'm happy working at this level of granularity because it allows me to stay selective and not accumulate cruft due to relying on an automated backup of my entire drive. (In my case, backing everything up would result in a lot of useless noise.)

I'm not saying it's for everyone, but it works for me.

http://sbooth.org/Play/

It's website is bizarrely similar to Cog's one, they must have been a template. The apps are also very similar, but Play has a few extra features and consequently a busier interface. It does support replaygain however.

Also for anyone checking out cog, go to the preferences and set the auto-updater to get nightly builds, the stable builds dont really get updated. The nighties are just as stable, but the interface controls are more cleanly laid out.

Btw, how would you assume that using threads instead of processes leads to less crashing?

The point of OSX, to me, is that it's a Unix which generally just works and has an interface worth using.

Oh, and it has a thriving and high-quality indie community.

Now when I do the same thing on windows (transfer digital files), it's plug in device and drag and drop and your done.

Overall Im a MAC person now, but far as I know there is no easy way to drag and drop digital files onto any Apple device where it's as easy as Windows.