Buying iMac - what about software

What software you buy when buying Mac

[smallcompany]

I'm pretty sure I'll buy iMac soon. I'm 100% PC guy right now.

When I go to configure it online, I see some software offers and wonder if any of them are worth of being included.

I use Creative Studio and will use it on my new iMac. I'll have VMware installed, too - for Windows based apps.

So, besides hardware and protection plan, should I bother about anything else that runs on Mac OS?

Thanks

[swa66]

Adobe's CS: you can crossgrade to the mac, you'll need to call them for that.

You'll need a windows license for use in VMware Fusion (one that you can activate if you reinstall from scratch).

For the rest it all depends on what you want to do ?

Some of the apple software:

iLife 09: comes with your mac, no need to buy separately (those of us with older versions might want it)

iWorks 09: bundles pages, numbers and keynote. It's an alternative to word, excel and powerpoint respectively from office. It's cheaper if you buy it with you mac and unless you really like office, it'll blow you away with the possibilities, but it's different, so you have a learning curve.

Aperture: is more or less an alternative to PhotoShop, I don't own a copy but I know serious semi-pro photographers who just love it.

Microsoft has office for the mac: Office 2008, more expensive than iWork, more compatible with the rest of Office on the PC too. I've been cursing at it just like I did on a PC :) . Last stunt it pulled on me made me redo from scratch all templates I made for a business customer. Guess I just won't get to like Microsoft products.

[weeks]

Like swa66, I have the Office package from MS on my Macs. At a major convention I chatted with the Apple people in the booth, telling them how keen I was on their products, etc. Somehow, we fell into talking about Office (I suspect he was trained to do so) and I got an unasked for demo of Mac's word processing, etc.

You can check some of the other online reviews of it, but I was impressed with what I saw, especially the templates for their powerpoint type products (Keynote) and their Word, called Pages.
[apple.com...]

Again, I don't have it, but check it out.

[weeks]

I'll pass this on from a young friend of mine about iWorks. "It might work great. But, if you have it at home it's likely you're working on MS at work and the little differences will drive you nuts."

[swa66]

I use both iworks (less) and office 2008 (more), I only get annoyed at office. For some reason it's always office that crashes that -even though I use it more- has hidden what I need beyond where I remember where it is, that has quirks with not rendering content as it should, that's just not flexible enough to do what I need done, ...
So why do I use it: compatibility with the rest of the world who expects word/powerpoint/... and to stop whining if I use iworks, openoffice, etc to edit .doc/.ptt files since it's not "from Microsoft".

A friend of mine uses iWork at home and office 2007 (PC) at work and he told me "why am I being punished to have to use Office ?"

[travelin cat]

smallcompany,

I think Swa pretty much covered it. However, if you need financial software, I have found AccountEdge to be great. Also, don't forget to upgrade QuickTime to QuickTime Pro.

To get QuickTime Pro:
Open QuickTime Player.
Choose QuickTime Player > Buy QuickTime Pro.
Follow the onscreen instructions.

It's only $29.99 and you get:
Capture audio and video
Share easily via email
Create movies for iPhone, iPod, and Apple TV
Create H.264, MPEG-4, 3GPP & 3GPP2 content
Save movies from the web

[weeks]

Quickbooks, which once turned their nose up at Macs, is available now. However, my accounting firms has trouble with my Quickbooks files on their PCs.

Adding link:
[support.quickbooks.intuit.com...]

[moose606]

I bought a new pc in January, which was only available with vista. After fighting with vista for two days, I decided to return it, and go with an Imac. I thought the transition would be painful, but I was wrong. Within a day, I felt as if I had been using it for years. The only problems I had was changing to Adobe CS4 for mac. Go for it.:)

[CrustyAdmin]

Some apps I like on the Mac
Coda
Scrivener
Yojimbo
DevonThink
Tinderbox

Not all are web apps, but they are all useful, to me, anyway.