[Minnesota Nice]

Well, just bought a new Mac Book Pro (13" retina, 3.0GHz i7, 512GB SSD). Needed a new laptop and decided to treat myself for once.

What do I do first? Any apps or tricks I should know about? Mostly be using this for editing video/photos.

[ItsATumor]

How much RAM do you have on the machine? If you have 8GB I would recommend Adobe Photoshop. 4GB is the minimum but It is still useable. You should download Avast! free anti-virus, you might not need one but Avast has A webrep feature and many other helpful tools. The SSD in the MBP is going to help you with you editing and startup, it will be a lot faster and there will be less of a chance of memory loss. What other uses will this computer have? I can recommend more apps after that.

Final Cut Pro is a updated and more advanced version of iMovie, it is worth the money if you are at that level. You should also refer to my Security tutorial in my signature below.

[Minnesota Nice]

How much RAM do you have on the machine? If you have 8GB I would recommend Adobe Photoshop. 4GB is the minimum but It is still useable. You should download Avast! free anti-virus, you might not need one but Avast has A webrep feature and many other helpful tools. The SSD in the MBP is going to help you with you editing and startup, it will be a lot faster and there will be less of a chance of memory loss. What other uses will this computer have? I can recommend more apps after that.

Final Cut Pro is a updated and more advanced version of iMovie, it is worth the money if you are at that level. You should also refer to my Security tutorial in my signature below.

Well aside from typing papers and all that school shit, mostly working with Final Cut, Premiere, Photoshop, Lightroom, and using it for music.

It has as much RAM as I could get, it wasn't expensive and I can't add it later since it's a Mac.

[ItsATumor]

How much RAM could you get, Im guessing 8GB and you can add it later, there is a tutorial with is completely safe and it shows you how to remove the old RAM sticks and replace them. Im almost positive that the MacBook Pro can only handle 16GB, but 8 is enough. Microsoft Office 2011 is great for school, and so is Google Docs. If you want that link to the RAM replacement tutorial pm me.

[Minnesota Nice]

How much RAM could you get, Im guessing 8GB and you can add it later, there is a tutorial with is completely safe and it shows you how to remove the old RAM sticks and replace them. Im almost positive that the MacBook Pro can only handle 16GB, but 8 is enough. Microsoft Office 2011 is great for school, and so is Google Docs. If you want that link to the RAM replacement tutorial pm me.

It's 8GB, the 15" can have 16GB. Or that's what I was told at least. You might be able to configure a 13" with 16GB but I didn't.

[ItsATumor]

It's 8GB, the 15" can have 16GB. Or that's what I was told at least. You might be able to configure a 13" with 16GB but I didn't.

You are fine with 8GB, it's more than enough for almost all programs. You shouldn't need to take the risk of harming the computer for an extra 8GB. I unfortunately have only 4GB in my MBP and I have never had an issue.

[Minnesota Nice]

You are fine with 8GB, it's more than enough for almost all programs. You shouldn't need to take the risk of harming the computer for an extra 8GB. I unfortunately have only 4GB in my MBP and I have never had an issue.

Yeah I don't think I'll worry about not having enough RAM.

It's much faster than my previous computer so far.

[ItsATumor]

Yeah I don't think I'll worry about not having enough RAM.

It's much faster than my previous computer so far.

RAM is almost never an issue on Macs because not too many programs are RAM intensive. The things that are the best for Macs are: Editing, School Work, Developing apps. Most Macs are sold for these reasons and things that fall out of these boundaries need custom machines which are PC's. VMware, and Parallels are PC virtual machines and can run any programs the Mac can't. One last thing I would recommend is smcFancontrol. It's an app that controls the fans in your Mac and also monitors the temperatures. Setting the normal speed to about 4000 RPM will make the Mac sit at about 120F most of the time. If you get above 220F somehow shut off the computer immediately.

-Tumor