This page is edited by the mac users in the economics department in the aim to collect a list of useful Mac applications and utilities that improves the user experience.

File Transfer: See Transfer file with FTP.

• Cyberduck - is an FTP/SFTP open source software. Friendly interface to uploand/download files to/from the cluster, as well to access shared drives. Simply drag and drop your files and you are done!. Version 4.0 is also compatible with Windows systems.
• Other FTP programs include: FileZilla and Fugu

Connected to cluster from MacOS X/Linux using built in utility Terminal.

• Aquamacs

Aquamacs is the Mac OS X adopted Emacs version with friendly user interface. It preserves both the Emacs powerful standard shortcuts and the mac keyboard shortcuts. It has takes the appearance of OS X application, and can be easily picked up by users new to text editors.

• Vim for Mac

MacVim is the text editor Vim for Mac OS X. Vim is a powerful text editor with a short learning curve. It is easy to write up LaTex documents and color coding makes it very easy to spot errors. You can also use Vim to command other programs such as R. Some of the advantages of this Mac version are that it retains OS X keyboard shortcuts and support full-screen mode. You can also set the editor window background to be transparent which is often useful when you are reading a PDF and taking notes.

Some remarks:

- Configuration settings for Vim are set in the files “~/.vimrc” and “~/.gvimrc” where 'g' denotes Vim with a graphical user interface. You can tailor Vim to suit your needs, including shortcuts for LaTex commands that you use frequently.

- This FAQ [1] includes instructions on how to use LaTex with MacVim.

- 'A Byte of Vim' by Swaroop [2] is a great book about how to use Vim. It walks the reader through several examples that show off Vim's features.

- Advice: when learning how to use Vim, try to do everything from the keyboard and avoid using a mouse or trackpad.

• Xcode

Xcode is a suite of developer tools, and contains a collection of compilers including, but not limited to C, C++, Java, Python, and Ruby source code. Xcode can be found in the installation DVD came with macbook. Please note that gfortran is not included in the suite.

• Homebrew

Homebrew is a package management software for Mac OS X. It made installation of other open source software simple. It can be installed with command

$ /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/gist/323731)"

For example, to install the fortran complier, you just need to type in the command line

$ brew install gfortran

• Alfred