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Comment by aeontech | Hacker News Reader

command-shift-n to create a new folder even in a save dialog.

command-shift-g to quickly go to a filesystem path (supports tab completion. It's unix filesystem, so ~/ == your home directory. ~/Doc[tab] will take you to your Documents folder, etc).

As for speed - RAM upgrade and an SSD make all the difference in the world (as they would for windows as well).

Oh, also, if you're new to the mac, you might need some of these:

* Quicksilver http://qsapp.com/ - quick app launcher and much more.

* Adium http://adium.im/ - the only IM client you'll need

* Colloquy http://colloquy.info/ - IRC client

* DTerm or iTerm - somewhat better than default Terminal.app

* Hex Fiend - awesome hex editor

* HandBrake - video conversion

* Sublime Text / Textmate - really excellent programmer editors

* XLD - lossless audio conversion

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Personally, I'd go for Alfred ( http://www.alfredapp.com/ ) over Quicksilver.

While Quicksilver is supposed to be more powerful, it just never really clicked for me and didn't feel very smooth. Alfred felt like it fit it better and let me do what I wanted to do - especially with the powerpack installed.

Mostly I just use it as an app launcher, file finder (start with ' and only searches files), and file browser (start with / and you're browsing the filesystem). Anything much beyond that was just overkill.

Don't forget:

Native shortcuts to take various screenshots (unrelated to anything, but so useful and cool): http://guides.macrumors.com/Taking_Screenshots_in_Mac_OS_X

* Sparrow http://sparrowmailapp.com/ - Gmail done right

* TextWrangler http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/ - Best text editor, for any purpose and free

* Pixelmator http://www.pixelmator.com/ - Mac equivalent of Paint.NET except it's not free. Worth it though!

* Transmit http://www.panic.com/transmit/ - FTP, SFTP, you-name-it client

* LittleSnitch http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html - Software firewall for when you want to block certain apps outgoing web requests

Enjoy your new Mac!

Paintbrush makes for a good free image editor (http://paintbrush.sourceforge.net/) — I use Pixelmator as an almost-Photoshop replacement, but the former is good if you want something really light.

Regarding the screenshots, I find that 90% of the time I'm taking screenshots it's to show somebody something, so I really like CloudApp. (getcloudapp.com) You do the usual shift-cmd-4, but instead of copying the screenshot to the clipboard it uploads it to their service and copies a link to the clipboard. On top of that, their site is really clean.

I like Skitch.com, similar idea, but it lets you choose what you want to take a picture off, and provides a basic image editor (handy for adding annotations, highlights, etc.) before upload.

Oh wow, that is brilliant!

How did I not know about the command-shift-g shortcut? That is a awesome tip!

New iTerm user here as well, and I'm really liking it so far.

Don't forget VLC to play pretty much any video file you may get.

when I used a mac, I really preferred Terminal over iTerm (esp. for the large buffer size of term). I could do anything I wanted with Terminal (VT100 emulation etc. etc.)

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