Mac OS X Coveted Application List for Windows Equivalent

I know its a long windy road for first-timers, while contemplating if his windows applications would even be available in a Macbook to begin with. Rest assured, its from a been-there, done-that approach I pen this article. Believe me, it does take some getting used to for some applications.
  • Mail - Mac mail got that licked over Outlook or Thunderbird. But hey, Thunderbird is also available on the Mac OS X. And if you are using Opera Mail, things still look rosy with no change in how you pull your mails in.
  • Windows Media Player - Living in the 21st century, I have long ditched WMP for VLC, making VLC the preferred choice to play back all my media files encoded in any universal codec on earth. How about iTunes? It's good too.
  • Remote Desktop - Microsoft offers Remote Desktop (Mac) 2.0 for a while now and my daily use of it indicates blue sky condition.
  • DOS - Mac's variant called Terminal may throw you off a bit if you are a hard-core "ipconfig" user, forcing you to now use "ifconfig". Ping still works there but you are better off using the jazzy GUI of Network Utility found in Mac's application folder.
  • VPN Client - Cisco offers a Mac variant of her Cisco VPN client and my use over the last year to connect to remote office sites prove as smooth as silk. You may want to check with other vendors if one is natively available too. SSL VPN is always available to those who doesn't.
  • IE - Who needs IE when Firefox, Opera and Safari is readily available. OK. Some very old bank ecommerce sites may still grumble when you fire up Firefox but that's quickly becoming history. For die-hards, the only two current options to have IE on a Mac is achieved either with vmware fusion or boot camp.
  • Microsoft Office - Again, a mac variant is available from Microsoft or better still, Neo Office, Open Office or Google Docs, which is just standing next to you. For ultra-sleek documents, consider iWorks, which I use primarily today
  • Torrents - Vuze is around, whose worrying?
  • FTP - Filezilla rocks!
  • Anti-virus - What virus? OK, as a precaution, have clamXav ready. All others are just a waste of dollar with an entailing conspiracy theory behind each vendor.
  • Music Composer - Garageband just puts older props to shame, with the movie - Music and Lyrics demonstrating its ease of use by Hugh Grant. Windows does not bundle any such goodie.
  • Windows Movie Maker - Dive in to iMovie. You won't be sorry. Small learning curve.
  • Windows Explorer - Mac's equivalent - Finder. Enough said. Cool as ice.
  • Acrobat Reader - Built-in by default in Mac OS X.
  • Java Runtime - Built-in by default in Mac OS X.
  • ZIP - Built-in by default in Mac OS X, but use unrarx if things get out of hand.
  • Others - Most commercial apps like Photoshop already offers a Mac version; and that includes games. But, let's face it - hard-core games are still played today in Windows. Sorry.