iBook/OSX software

Most of my priority-purpose software has now been installed on the iBook:

VirtualPC creates a virtual drive on your Mac which emulates a PC environment, in a window or fullscreen. I was about to buy VirtualPC with Win98, but I found that you could just buy the DOS version at half the price, and just install a licensed copy of WinNT/9x/XP onto it anyway. I needed this for three things: run Windows apps if needed, test websites on Windows browsers, and download images from my pencam, which has no MacOS drivers. Bad news, though: VirtualPC hangs when connecting to the pencam, no matter how much RAM you have. Not feasible.

Fortunately, I remembered macam, which works like a charm, downloading photos from the camera to TIF images in any folder you wish, at a decent speed. Even the support rep at Aiptek suggested it.

(TIF. Sniff.) :(

I had initially intended to use the full Mozilla suite for all my email and web browsing needs, but it suffered from plodding speeds and some UI cruft. I settled instead for the lightweight Gecko-based Chimera, and OS X’s own native mail app suffices for email, though I detest the lack of a “Send Later” message queue. Hopefully a new Opera for OS X will be out soon, with all the functionality I desire from it.

iChat, while cute and functional, is AIM-only, so I downloaded Fire, an excellent little universal IM client for OS X. Not quite as tight as Trillian on the PC, but again, it suffices.

Of course, what digital artist can be without Photoshop? I borrowed my landlord’s Photoshop 7 CD, which he wasn’t using, though I intend to buy my own licensed copy when the money presents itself.

For text and coding, BBEdit Lite and JEdit. The latter looks very, very promising as a GNU programmer’s editor, but being Java-based, it’s a bit slow.

Palm Desktop, of course, to keep my Palm synced. I would use iSync, but my Serial-USB adapter only works with OS9. I may just buy a new PDA in the near future. Again, if the money presents itself. Not likely.

I’m still wondering about FTP GUI apps, but it looks like you can just use the Go to Server function in the Finder. Besides, I really should get down to learning how to do it from the CLI.

Okay, it’s late/early, and I need to work on a multimedia project tomorrow. I’m soooo swamped. Good night/morning.