Hello Sam, Welcome to the club. As a Mac user you will shortly find that 1.)other Mac users go way out of their way to help you if you have problems. 2.)Find your self over come with feelings of smugness. and 3.) find yourself staring at you Mac in amazement after you try something that you think probably will not work... and it works. Like dragging a file into a text box, to have the full path to the file resolve.

Anyway, a few sites of interest:
http://osx.iusethis.com/ -a nice web 2.0 ish OSX only version of download.com. You can find all kinds of Apps.

http://www.opensourcemac.org/ open source OSX apps

http://www.osxfaq.com/ OSX support and news

http://www.macrumors.com/ rumor site

Posted by Mark W. Breneman on Aug 28, 2007 at 05:52 PM UTC - 6 hrs

I got the 15" a couple of months ago simply to use as a portable computer and somehow I've ended up using it for everything.

Congratz and Enjoy!

Posted by Joe Zack on Aug 28, 2007 at 05:54 PM UTC - 6 hrs

http://www.macosxhints.com/

Here's what I can't live without on my Mac:

Active Timer.app - free (useful to keep track of time keeping for projects)

Adium.app - free (Adium X)

CocoaMySQL.app - free MySQL tool (I *think* it's free - I've had it so long I can't remember)

Colloquy.app - free IRC client

Mac_OS_X_Freemind-0_8_0 - free mind mapping software

NeoOffice.app - free

OmniGraffle.app - the best drawing app for the Mac for UML / architecture - about $70 I think

On The Job.app - simple invoicing / time tracking app - $25

Quicksilver.app - free - killer app if you like keyboard shortcuts

Skype.app - free

TextWrangler.app - free text editor - awesome

Transmit.app - FTP package - worth $$

nemo.app - shareware news (usenet) reader $21

VMware Fusion - the best way to run Windows or Linux on your Mac!

Plus:

ColdFusion 8
MySQL 5
PostgreSQL
Eclipse / CFEclipse
- XML Buddy
- dbEdit
- Subclipse

MenuMeters - free - performance indicators for your menu bar

Posted by Sean Corfield on Aug 28, 2007 at 08:37 PM UTC - 6 hrs

I would suggest Matt Woodward's Blog of course, especially the Mac Development Environment Guide at http://mattwoodward.com/articles/setup_mac_dev_env...

Posted by Larry Boucher on Aug 28, 2007 at 10:04 PM UTC - 6 hrs

Hey buddy,

Wow! What a beautiful machine! Congratulations!

My biggest suggestion is to get Aquamacs (www.aquamacs.org), a really wonderful GNU emacs port that blends in nicely with OS X. Nearly everything I do on my machine is done through emacs. All of my coding, email, theorem proving, text editing, appointments/diary, contacts, LaTeX'ing, news, irc, iTunes, etc.

I configure my .emacs file to open a *shell* buffer directly, and all of my shell interaction is done through it from the beginning.

It is very tough to imagine my life without it!

miss you buddy,
grant

Posted by grant on Aug 29, 2007 at 01:23 AM UTC - 6 hrs

I just wanted to quickly thank everyone for the great list of resources and tools. I'll be sure to let you know how I get along when the thing gets here!

Posted by Sam on Aug 30, 2007 at 11:36 AM UTC - 6 hrs

I don't have much to add to what you and others have already mentioned, but your link to the PragMactic OS-Xer is new to me. It's been added to my blogroll, so thanks for that. For what it's worth, I have a list of my own preferred OS X apps and utilities at http://musetracks.instantspot.com/index.cfm/show/S...

One change that hasn't yet been included, though, is an upcoming change from Parallels to VMWare Fusion. I'm trying it out now (no purchase has been made), but so far I like it better.

Posted by Rob Wilkerson on Aug 30, 2007 at 03:49 PM UTC - 6 hrs

I just noticed VMWare has an open source version of Fusion available for download (you have to build it from the source, as far as I can tell).

I forgot to install the developer tools from disk and don't have them with me, but I am downloading them now and should be able to compile soon. I'll let you know how it goes.

Posted by Sam on Sep 15, 2007 at 07:37 AM UTC - 6 hrs

So everything seemed to work when following their instructions on the build process. But I can't figure out how to run the thing. Anyone have any ideas?

Posted by Sam on Sep 15, 2007 at 09:29 AM UTC - 6 hrs

hi everyone. is it perfectly normal for a person to go and browse through a mac website eventhough he hasn't bought one?

i'm currently waiting for the right price before i jump over to apple. i'm thinking of getting a macbook just to know how it feels to have a mac.

anyone can point me to an alternative site to get cheap macbook (i mean really cheap)? i don't mind if its used or refurbished.

thanks

Posted by nicholas joseph on Mar 09, 2010 at 03:56 AM UTC - 6 hrs