Apple

OP for the love all man kind, don't listen to a single person here telling you to install these silly utility tools that make a Mac run more like Windows. Don't get Alfred, or Bartender or apps that give you the "Windows" experience of split screens. It's all nonsense. Your Mac does everything those apps do. You really should take the time and discover what it does instead of instantly installing a lot of BS. Then you'll see why Apple puts so much time into the Mac and MacOS. You'd be surprised everything it's capable of.

The Mac comes with a very good office suite but if you need MS Office then get that. It also has a very good photo editing suit but if you need something more get Pixelmator or PS. If you need to do video editing it does include iMovie but if you need more then install Apple's Final Cut Pro X or Adobe Premiere.

If you want the best adblocker then get WIPR. It's ~$2 USD and it's absolutely the most powerful. It can't get everything but it's better than the other free ones.

I recommend not installing anything unless you need it, especially window management and customization tools. I like MacOS because it's simple and clean. Use it for a few weeks, get the hang of it and only then, if you need it, install utilities.

Plus how can we recommend anything if we don't know what you need and what you like? What a weird request.

Daisy disk, parallels, fermatta, Alfred, istats, pixelmator pro (I like it better than photoshop)

Epic! What processor and specs specifically? :3

Arc browser!!

Move the dock to the left thank. Me. Later

Daisy disk saved my laptop from being thrown against the wall, so there’s that.

Also rectangle. Love it.

Office 365

That wallpaper's hideous

My personal essentials:

Wipr - simple adblock for Safari (MacOS/iOS)

AlDente - useful if you’re keeping your Mac under charger for a longer time. MacOS has very similar feature build in but it may not work if you’re randomly plugging in and out your charger.

Rectangle - free tool for very quick windows management, snapping etc.

Keka - great software for compressing and decompressing .rar files and other compressed formats.

OnyX - great free software for performing overall maintenance in your system

AppCleaner - uninstall programs and delete leftover files

FlipClock - basic screen saver with a clock

Amphetamine - keeping your Mac awake, useful for longer tasks when doing them overnight etc.

Bartender, BetterTouchTool. Consider getting SetApp, if you need any help getting set up with that PM me.

Magnet - allows you to snap windows to designated areas on the screen

Aldente - allows you to set a charge limit when your laptop is plugged in

Malwarebytes, free antivirus software that works good

Aldente, it will save your battery health

Hey, new mac user here too. Do you feel any shutter, lag, or frame drop occasionally while opening and minimizing apps?

• Reeder (RSS)
• Affinity suite (Adobe alternative)
• Ivory (Mastodon client)
• Homebrew (package manager)
• OpenEmu (Emulation platform)
• Voyager as a PWA (Lemmy app)
• CotEditor (Nice lightweight text editor)
• Infuse (Native front end to plex/jellyfin or just SMB)
• IINA (like VLC but a much nicer native interface)
• Transmission (bit torrent)

There are others but these will the most applicable to most people.

Cinch, or magnet

Parallels Desktop, Finalcut, etc.

Raycast, what I like about it is the clipboard manager, and set it hotkey to `Opt + V` just like `Win + V` to retain my Windows habit 🤣

Pasta is a great clipboard manager.

Caffeine is a great little tool that prevents your laptop from going to sleep when needed.

Give this video a watch, I agree with many of the settings Quinn changes.

Enjoy your new computer!

Office 365 and Adobe Acrobat are a must if you use it for school or office work

Rectangle.

I have been using MB for quite sometime (10 years) and use a ton of apps. But I always try to give this suggestion to folks I know. Don’t just install apps. Use it the way it is and see what you need and install the ones that assist you in better productivity.

I have the same philosophy for adding stuff to my house. Set it up gradually. You will every bit of new that you add.

For instance: I remember the time I started using Alfred in place of spotlight and I appreciated the things that spotlight did not provide. But immediately came to the realization that, almost 99% don’t even need or want these.

I and my wife are both software developers and both have 2 Macs each and did these gradual installations, and our set of apps is almost 100 (maybe 99%) different based on how we started needing more than just was provided with the MacBook.

Rectangle. I cannot preach this one enough. The window snapping is amazing

Fantastical is, well, fantastic. Rectangle is really great too (it allows for easy window snapping).

bettersnaptool

Raycast, DisplayBuddy - on sale!, Magnet - also on sale!, Gemini

Also one menu

I like Magnet for window management and Screenflick for screen recording with useful tools

Rectangle if you want window snapping kind of like how windows does it.

Daisydisk for storage management

Also a music app of some kind to enjoy the fantastic speakers on the pro MacBooks

I use Barrier everyday. I switch between a docked MacBook and a PC and this has been a life saver using one keyboard and one mouse

Parallels (coherence is great for that seamless feel as if they were native Mac apps), istats (I mainly use it’d orbiter network monitor), bartender (declutter and have more space in the status bar), better touch tool (I use a Touch Bar MacBook, so that’s what I initially used it for, but it has since replaced a couple of other tools I previously used, you can customize touchpad gestures, keyboard shortcuts, and also includes windows snapping), aldente (to set max charge on and to help keep battery capacity longer, also Black Friday is coming up, and the dev has a history of offering a sale during this time, it’s usually the only time it gets discounted per year).

What are you using it for? graphics design?

For me :

• Rectangle fort shitty windowing in macos
• Brew as package manager that will make your life simplier if you have habit to work with the terminal
• Any cleaner like cleanmymac because of all “system data” junk left over by macos

They are essential for me