This is gonna be fun. First of all, you were smart enough to buy the best UNIX box out there. That’s right. Your Mac’s backside is powered by UNIX. Stability, reliability, and security are things you no longer have to worry about…

OK, let’s begin…

First thing you have to do is a “Software Update”, you’ll find it in the “System Preferences” – and while you’re there, set this to happen on it’s own daily.

Backup your data as often as possible. How often? It really depends on your answer to this question: If your computer crashed today, what data can you do without? You can always reload your programs and toys, but you can never replace your data once it’s gone. As a Mac user, you don’t have to worry about this as much as a Windows user, but it does happen (USER ERROR is always the number one killer of data)…

Have a different password for everything and do not let your computer remember any of them – NEVER LET YOUR COMPUTER AUTOMATICALLY REMEMBER PASSWORDS OR FORM INFORMATION – look on the Internet for good/bad password creation. Change your passwords as often as possible (at least once every three months). 86% of you have to remember two or more passwords anyway. We Mac user do have the “KeyChain” which will securely remember this stuff, but I personally do not trust anything but my brain to protect this information…

Turn your firewall on, you’ll find it in the “System Preferences” – the best firewall in the world is built right into your system…

Unless you are actually sharing something, make sure all “File Sharing” is off, you’ll find it in the “System Preferences”…

In your “Account Settings” (in System Preferences), turn “File Vault” on – it locks everyone but you out of your data (kind of an internal firewall)…

You have the best Email application in the world built into the OS – it’s called “Mail”. Use it…

You have the best Web Browser built into the OS – Safari. Use it…

You have the best multimedia player (Quicktime), movie player (DVD Player), and audio player (iTunes) built into your system already, but you can take it a little farther by using the following “freeware”:
VLC – Between VLC and Quicktime, you can play any form of audio or video you can think of…
MacTheRipper – will help you download your movies to your hard drive in Video_TS format (which is the native format coming off the DVD). Video_TS format is cool cause I can make an exact backup DVD. It also keeps all the features – it’s just like I’m playing it off the DVD itself…
HandBrake – if you want to save space on that external hard drive for more movies, this program will take that 5-8 GB Video_TS file, above, and turn it into 1-2 GB mpeg-4 file. It just snags the “feature” – and with subtitles, if you like. I have digitized all my DVD’s with this program, so I can put them on my iPhone & iTouch…
Another one I really like is MPEG Streamclip, which allows you to take just about any video file and cut from “here” to “there” and then save that to just about any video format – it’s great for making clips of your favorite parts of movies. I have a pretty cool video that I made full of the funniest scenes I’ve ever seen. 2 hours of laughs…
Audacity – an audio program which will help you record from any audio input on your Mac straight to a file – and edit it…

You have an extremely reliable Calendar and ToDo List (both part of iCal) and Address Book built into the system already…

Get .Mac (now called MobileMe) – a few things that come with it:
19+ GB of online storage (for backups, data, email, whatever)…
You can sync your iCal, Address Book, Email, and Safari bookmarks to .Mac, view them from any computer with an Internet connection, or sync the to another computer (including you iPhone)…
You can send your iCal info to your .Mac webpage, and share it, so you and others can see it from any computer…
The program is built directly into the Finder, so drag and drop simplicity for backing up data…
There’s way more to .Mac than is here, just get it and find out the rest yourself…

Make sure X11 is working – you’ll need it to run the next few programs on your Mac…

Save yourself a few hundred dollars and use openoffice.org instead of Microsoft Office. It opens and saves all Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets and presentations – and it’s FREE!!! It’s an open source project – so not only is it free, it has a lot of cool features that no other software has (people like me think of a feature that we want, make it happen and then send it in to openoffice.org so everyone can have it)…
There is actually another project out there called NeoOffice which is basically OpenOffice without the need for X11…

If you’re looking to save some money on desktop publishing software, InkScape is a free program that can replace either Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw and Scribus is a free program that will replace either Adobe InDesign or QuarkExpress…

Download and install “The Gimp“. It’s FREE, and it totally replaces Photoshop…

Download and install these free utilities:
MenuMeter – which puts RAM, Processor, Network Activity and a few other cool things on the menu bar so you can see them all the time…
X Resource Graph – does everything MenuMeter does and a little more, but displays on your desktop…
YASU – totally the one stop shop for cleaning up your Mac. Very cool and easy to use free tool…