A lot of noise has been made lately about OS X and the Mac. I think it's an exciting time to be a Mac user, with people (even non-techy people) having an interest in the Mac.

Example: About every other week or so, when I'm at the coffeeshop, someone comes up to me and says something about my iBook. Sometimes it's people reading the stickers, sometimes its "So whatdayathink about those Macs? Lotta people love 'em, so I hear..." But still, it happens, and it seems like my iBook has gotten more attention in 3 months than my old Powerbook got in 3 years. ('Course, my iBook is actually modern looking, and has stickers, something I would never have done to the titanium case of the Powerbook G4 (400Mhz baby!).)

So anyway, here's some links for new and old Mac users alike:

Guide To OS X Software For Switchers

I HAVE YET TO SEE a Switcher's Guide that actually focuses on the Switcher. Most seem more concerned with listing a few personal favorite programs or touting some of the wonderful features of OS X itself. My goal is to simply outline those applications that are not only the most useful, but have direct bearing on the life of those who have recently made the jump from Windows. I will also include links to several Mac-friendly websites as well a few extremely helpful keystrokes.

Aka: The "Where do I customize stuff? Where do I see what's going on? Where are my administrative tools that I have to do on Windows? Where's my command line? Where's WinZip? Where's..." article.

10 tips for new Mac users, switching from Windows

This take on the subject handles keyboard shortcuts advanced (or intermediate) Windows users have grown used to (navigating controls in a window, for example), which have a Different Way on the Mac

OS X Apps that are losing their Mojo

Number 3 on the list: BBEdit. After God Knows How Long of using BBEdit (ok, probably 7 years or so) I'm using TextMate 80% of the time. With BBEdit I can edit text, but TextMate wants to help me write code (in a good way).

Don't believe me? Have you seen some of the screencasts made for TextMate? I'll save you the time subscribing to the RSS Feed for screencasts and just point you to the HTML Screencast (QT Movie). Watch the first 30 seconds of it and be amazed.

These days I use TextMate for most of my Python work, and I've (mostly) moved my C/C++ work to it as well. I've pretty much replicated the Jump To Definition/Symbol and Code Sense/Lookup in Reference commands from XCode and CodeWarrior in Textmate, thanks to the CTags bundle and my Look Up Selected MacOS API script. Could I have done both of those in BBEdit? Yes. BBEdit understands CTags, and it understands Unix scripts. Will I backport these scripts to BBEdit? Probably. But do you understand the significance here? I've owned TextMate since April 2006 and I wrote for it first, instead of the editor I've been using for 7 years.