I am a Mac Virgin - Day 3: Where the hell is MS Paint?

It's funny that the first thing a Windows user like myself wants to do when he starts using OS X is get Boot Camp running, but since I'm trying to determine whether the grass really is greener on the other side I'm totally resisting (because the only game I play is Tetris Friends which is a flash game that I can play on OS X anyway, lol).

So one of the first things I've noticed is there isn't any default paint program included with OS X. What up with that? How am I supposed to draw pictures of myself and make clever paintings of Tiger Woods?

So now I'm onto the stage where I need applications like Steve Jobs needs his plain black mock turtlenecks.

To tell you that I'm currently trying out a few different apps would be an understatement. There's so much junk installed on my computer right now it went from overflowing with awesomeness to don't let water touch them, they multiply!

Installing applications is definitely different from Windows - some applications come as DMG files which mount like hard drives while others come as actual installers. You open most up and all that's usually required is that you drag the application icon into your Applications folder. All the files copy over and you are able to use it. Simple.

To uninstall it you throw that application into the trash just like your day old sandwich. As far as most users can tell the story ends there, but if you know a little about programs you'll know that a program probably isn't really just an icon. Looking into it a little further you'll see some of the associated files.

For most people dragging the application to the trash means out of sight out of mind, but after some investigation you'll find out that just like pets applications can leave a lot of shit behind. And when you're into anal like me you don't want that shit lying around.

Luckily there are apps for that. Things like AppZapper, AppDelete and AppCleaner (FREE!) seem to really help out. Drag the unwanted app to one of those apps...?...and it tries to find associated files and gives you the option to delete them as well.

Anyway, here's a list of basic apps that I've gone with that I think are pretty essential, if you have any other suggestions let me know.

• Firefox (I love my Greasemonkey and Google Toolbar)
• Gmail Notifier (shows you incoming mail and calendar events)
• Messenger for Mac (only messaging program I use outside of Google Talk)
• Seashore (Makes me realize that MS Paint in Windows 7 is da bomb)
• The Unarchiver (handles rar and other zip files)
• AppCleaner
• VMWare Fusion (is this considered cheating?)
• Cyberduck (s/ftp)
• Transmission (turns out utorrent for OS X is the worst thing ever)
• VLC (although it has some problems playing subtitles and skipping for MKV files, tried Perian but it sucks)

You do get a few freebies: ssh, scp, vi are built into terminal!

On a side note cut & pasting files around in Finder is a little weird, I almost find it faster to do it in terminal rather than open up a new finder window go to the location you want and command + move the items over. Delete doesn't actually delete either you need to right click move to trash or click the trash button. If someone knows a quicker way to do these things I'd love to know because I haven't found out yet.

Another thing I've noticed is that applications don't really close when you close them. There's CLOSE but there's also QUIT. Unlike Windows when you close an application in OS X it exits the current instance but sticks around and you can see it there in the dock. Here's what Apple has to say:

To quit an application, choose Quit from its application menu (for example, choose Quit iTunes from the iTunes menu if you want to quit iTunes). Keep in mind that closing a window (by clicking the round, red button) will typically not quit the application. Either choose Quit from the application menu or use the keyboard shortcut: Press the Command key (the one with the Apple logo) and the Q key simultaneously (Command-Q).

I'm not sure why its built this way but I figure they think if you use an app, you're likely to use it again real soon so we might as well cache it? I've had no problems with this setup, its easy enough to quit applications - just command + q that or right click.

That's the basic stuff, time to move into more interesting territory.

And an update on the hard drive situation, I'm running into hardcore Error -36 (I/O error (bummers)) problems with one of them, I think it's just about ready to buy the farm. Time to do some more shopping I guess.