I run my mac with the filesystem set to case sensitive mode.

I do this because I’m a programmer, the languages I use are cases sensitive, and I tend to write software that is deployed on linux, which is case sensitive.

So imagine my surprise when I went to install photoshop, and it wouldn’t install because it only supports case insensitive file systems!!!

I’d like to add that this is the only piece of software I have found that hasn’t worked on case sensitive HPFS+.

FFS! Adobe, it isn’t 1999. How lame.

Personal Firewall Software

OS X comes with a built in personal firewall. however, many people don’t realise that the firewall is, by default, disabled.

To enable the firewall, open “System Preferences” and select “sharing” from the “Internet and network” tab.

Click on the “firewall” button, then simply click “start”.

That’s it.

Mac Antivirus Software

At the time of writing, OS X users still enjoy virus free computing; well, sort of. There are no shortage of exploits, and OS X versions of popular software applications like firefox and skype carry the same vulnerabilities as their windows counterparts.

Additionally, there have been a number of worm scares in the past, and with the recent release of Safari for Windows we have seen a slew of exploits for safari.

So, should you install mac antivirus software? Vendors pitch AV software at mac users using the good citizen argument – whilst we might not be at risk, we are putting other OS network users at risk.

In short, I would advise investigating one of the leading commercial packages from Sophos, McAfee or Norton.

Alternatively, there an OS X port of the popular Free Clam AV.

Anti-spyware software

As far as anti-spyware is concerned, whilst there will certainly be a need for this in the future, and probably soon – there hasn’t been much activity in this sector so far.

MacScan and Norton Internet Security mac 3 both claim to offer anti-spyware controls for OS X. However, after reading the reviews of these products on macupdate, and Amazon – I’ve decided to hold off from purchasing one of these just now.

Summary

Definitely enable the OS X built in firewall, seriously consider purchasing some decent Anti-virus software, and be aware that the mac anti-spyware market is still in its early stages.

So, I’m new to OS X… what should I use on the mac?

My requirements are:

1. GPL or other open source license (i.e. Free)

2. Must support sftp!

3. Rock-solid; I don’t want crashes, and I need resilience to Internet instability.

4. Simple to store multiple ftp profiles in; I have several websites to manage.

5. Must be simple to use; I don’t want to be fussing about with my tools.

6. Must support the OS X keychain

If that matches your needs people, then look no further than the Cyberduck.

Cyberduck fits all of the above, works with spotlight, bonjour, keychain and AppleScript. You can bookmark ftp sites, and quickly switch between different locations. I integrates with your favourite text editor, and even supports Growl!

This means that if you install Apple Boot Camp, create a Boot Camp partition and install Windows into it – you then have the choice of running that same Windows partition natively (using boot camp) or through Parallels Desktop or with VMware Fusion. Are we spoilt for choice?

Surely now – OS X truly owns Windows!

OSX 10.4 comes with trial versions of iWork and MS Office 2004. I haven’t looked at iWork yet, but I did take a quick look at MS Office 2004 (I say a quick look – I uninstalled it after about ten minutes).

Introducing NeoOffice.

NeoOffice, based on OpenOffice, is designed and built for OSX. It works very nicely in the OS X environment, general use and tool placement is familiar and intuitive – decidedly more so than Office 2004.

The version of NeoOffice I’m using is NeoOffice 2.1 patch 0, which apparently includes some recent improvements that make the product significantly faster than OpenOffice on OS X.

Now – I’ve always thought that Word and Excel offer far more features than I’ll ever use – so I figure I’m unlikely to feel like I’m missing out on MS Office while using NeoOffice.

I’m not planning on writing any complex structured documents in the next few months (I’m on holiday), but I am drafting this post using NeoOffice right now. So far I can report that NeoOffice has been 100% rock solid.

I’ve also opened spreadsheets that were created using Office 2003, in NeoOffice Calc – again nothing fancy, but it coped just fine.

So in short, if you’re like me and use probably 5% of what word has to offer (and probably less than 1% of Excel), then NeoOffice might well be worth a look.

Do you have experience with NeoOffice, or other office products on the mac?