The Air is a great machine but what I really like about Apple is the software and the fact that is a Unix machine, I switched to Mac about 5 years ago after about 8 years using linux, so this are my 2 applications that I can't live without.

1. 1Password from AgileBits
2. Billings from MarketCircle

Everything else has a replacement except those 2 jewels, anyway here's also a list of optionals but that I use a lot and that I highly recommend:

- Alfred (if you're geek, let's you do a lot with your keyboard like quick math operations, enter a url, search google, youtube, etc and also replaces Spotlight to find files). It's still beta but it worth a try.

- Transmit if you need to move files to servers with FTP/SFTP/S3 etc

- iStat Menus to show memory, cpu and network usage.

- Postbox for email altough Apple's Mail is a good client, I just love Postbox's shortcuts to archive, junk, reply, quick reply, etc.. really helps me to achieve inbox zero.

- The Unarchiver to handle all the compression formats, (zip, rar, 7z, etc) so you don't have to think again about what to use to extract that file (DON'T EVER INSTALL STUFFIT EXPANDER)

- VLC for video and also Perian to add more formats to QuickTime

- WriteRoom if you write, this will help eliminate all the clutter and distractions, it has worked for me specially to write down ideas.

That's about it, I'm a web developer so for my particular work I use MacVim, TextMate, Sequel Pro, Charles and MAMP Pro but I understand these are not very useful for most people.

Great blog btw, I recently discovered it from HN, hope you like the mac ;)

r.

I'm still acclimating to new keyboard shortcuts - Command/~ instead of Alt/Tab to switch within the same program. Still acclimating to the Mac trackpad (I'm impressed-in-theory, but in practice I'm not as finely tuned/coordinated with it yet). I liked Toshiba because I travel a lot, and my Toshiba laptops always took a serious beating and kept running without problems. And I was fast on the keyboard after seven years of them.

So - the jury's still out. But I strongly suspect it'll be better overall... hmm, I still don't know about the keys on the keyboard being more spread out. I liked sliding my fingers across the closer-together Toshiba keyboard, though I'm a really fast typist from playing text-based games 10-15 years ago - I can see how 99% of people would want a keyboard that guides them more, whereas I'd rather have one that's closer together and faster. Accuracy isn't a problem...

Anyways. I think on balance it's going to be a huge gain. I'm not traveling as much in the near future, and not traveling as ruggedly, so worrying about the computer's durability isn't an issue. After acclimation, I think everything will work as well or better, except maybe the keyboard layout - but it's hard to say for sure. Overall I'm excited.

Thanks for the very thorough comment. Shooting you an email as well to say thanks.

A made the jump 8 months ago! Recommended software:

Evernote for note-taking, absolutely love this. Sparrow email-client if you are using gmail. And maybe MarsEdit for writing blogposts? If you can get used to all the keyboard shortcuts Alfred is cool too!

As for small tweaks, if you are used the window-snapping I can recommend BetterTouchTool. Caffeine is a nice tweak too.

Sebastian,

I have a suggestion. As long as you are switching software for tracking, I recommend, you switch over to plain text files. That way, if you ever get an urge to write programs to crawl all that data you keep, it will be easy. Thats what I do, and every now and then, it produces some graphs with results I would not have expected.

Rusty

Depending on which size drive you got with your Air (the smallest SSDs probably wouldn't work), the first thing I'd do would be to install Windows onto a small Bootcamp partition (30-40GBs?) and create a virtual machine from it using either Parallels or VMware Fusion. Then install ONLY your most critical Windows apps/data on that. That'll allow you use those Windows apps within the OS X environment while you hunt for replacements. Or abandon the hunt altogether if you wish. :-)

With that done, you can sell the old Toshiba and start really enjoying your new Mac!

BTW, the first thing I install on any Mac I touch—and there are a LOT of them—is Quicksilver (http://qsapp.com/). This is similar to the Alfred app mentioned above by roberto and Joost, but (in my humble opinion) way better.

The second thing I install is Dropbox, then 1Password. (Dropbox first only so I can backup/sync my 1Password data file to it.)

Despite trying just about every GTD/task-management app on the market (partial list here: http://alternativeto.net/software/my-life-organized/?platform=mac), I still haven't found the perfect one. For the moment, my favorite is The Hit List.

For writing, I completely agree with roberto about WriteRoom. Get it. Edit the Full Screen Mode preferences to your liking (it may take a bit of time to figure out what you like), and enjoy.

For light number crunching, get Soulver. To quote it's website, "it's quicker to use than a spreadsheet, and smarter and clearer than a traditional calculator." Awesome piece of software.

Hey Sebastian, let's get in touch again if you want me to guide you through some mac features. Mac is great, if you know how to use it well you'll never look back.

- Antisocial (http://anti-social.cc/) and Mac Freedom http://macfreedom.com/ are the most baller productivity softwares ever. They allow you to cut off online distractions and save willpower ressources in the process :)

- Evernote Desktop is an external brain. It's absolutely wonderful for capturing, storing, organizing, finding and reviewing ANY reference material. Basically all my life (journals, receipts, scanned documents, reference articles) is on Evernote.

- OmniFocus is an extremely powerful software dedicated to GTD. You don't need to go online to use it and you can sync it with your mobile devices.

- OmmWriter Dāna (free) is a gorgeous and zen text processor, ideal for writting long blog posts. The paid version is ridiculously cheap and even greater (Dāna II).

- Newsfire is a good nice RSS aggregator. It allows you to read your feeds even when you're offline.

Nobody mentioned 'Growl'. That's your centralized notifications app, which all the other apps tap in to. Old version is free, new one is in the Mac App store for $1.99.

People mentioned Alfred - I use an alternative called LaunchBar which does several things.
- First off it's an app launcher, type a shortcut to start LaunchBar (it drops down from the bottom of the top menubar) and then start to type an application name and it'll sort a list for you. You can assign abbreviations to some apps (ph for Photoshop, v for MacVim, sql for Sequel Pro - you choose).
- Secondly it's a built in calculator, just start typing numbers and it will go to calc mode.
- Finally, this one is killer, it's a clipboard history manager. I press a different shortcut (you define these yourself) and I get access to the last x things that I copied to my clipboard. That's a must have.

I'd also recommend checking out iA Writer for your writing needs. It's a really nice minimalist text editor with support for Mark Down. http://www.iawriter.com/