College: A Mac survival guide (Pt 1)
College session is just beginning, your parents have just bought you a shiny white MacBook, you’re all moved into your dorm…and you have no idea what this “OS X” is, how to use it, or how you’ll ever get used to using 2 fingers to scroll. Never fear, college newbie: I’m starting a series in which I will give you tips that will make your college experience (with your Mac at your side) one to remember.
For part one, I want to get your feet nice and wet with the applications every college kid needs without making you feel like I’m throwing you in the deep end of a shark-infested pool of things like alpha open source programs or anything requiring a command line. Now, to 101!
First off: many older individuals don’t really appreciate the stock a college student puts into a solid instant messaging program. There really is no way to explain how vital instant messaging is; after all, we need to know what’s going on with our friends without actually talking to them.
As such, a reliable instant messaging client is necessary. Trusty OS X comes standard with iChat, which is really fantastic due to its simplicity; however, there are quite a few features lacking. If you want to use anything else besides a .Mac account or AIM, you’re what us college kids call, “SOL.”
Moreover, you can’t customize a thing; in a world of FaceBook and MySpace, custom is the only language we speak. Lastly, if you don’t feel like being harrassed online but want to stalk your friends’ status and activities, “invisible” mode is a must-have feature.
Put plainly, iChat won’t give you that; however, Adium will. Adium is a completely customizeable, multi-platform chat client that gives you the best of all worlds; invisibility, options for completely customizing your lists and messages, and reliability.
Next up: what do we do in college, if not spend copious amounts of time watching different videos, sharing multimedia content over instant message with friends? Not much, I reply. Quicktime, though excellent in a lot of areas, is not the best application for watching movies, as there are file formats (such as .wmv, a Windows only format) that it refuses to play.
The best application for running every format under the sun is called VLC Player; not only will it play all those pesky file formats that your native Mac software complains about, you can make videos full-screen, and the navigation is quite seamless.
If you, as many college students, engage in the “sharing” of video content, there is really no superior player available than the VLC Player.
Be sure to stick around for part two, when I’ll cover torrenting solutions and a sneaky way to Facebook and instant message in class without your professor knowing!
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