Operating System Software … The Best Things in Life Are Free … ish

  Do you like getting the most out of things?
  Does waste irk you?
  Does water run up hill?
  2 out of 3 isn’t bad … continue …

Are you sure when you got your laptop/mobile phone/tablet/desktop PC you looked around at all the applications that came installed with the operating system?
Am pretty sure my answer would be yes, and yours too, but how long was it before we were downloading this and that to supplement what was there, when what was there already might have been pretty good? Could be wrong, but think a lot of people play the latest game or start the application they were most excited about, and then forget to look at everything as a whole.

This particularly applies to Macs, for people who started with Windows … maybe the same the other way around.

Anyway … this post is dedicated to discoveries of the applications that came with your computer’s operating system … not really to compare with other ways of doing it … just marvelling at what is free…ish for you once you’ve got your computer … your comment additions would be most welcome, as my knowledge is pretty thin on the ground (especially the Android and iOS section … which have left blank for now … as for Unix/Linux) … is an ongoing blurb lengthwise and widthwise!

    Windows

  1. Windows Explorer … disk/directory/file maintenance
  2. Paintbrush … image edit program … love the way you can paste and move things from the clipboard on top of what you have done already … rudimentary rotation, skewing, scaling … and saving jpg with scalable resolution quality
  3. Notepad … simple text editor … do you tire of the overdesign of some other text editors? (if yes, Notepad might be for you 70%+ of the time)
  4. Wordpad … slightly less simple text editor … it can interface to Word documents sometimes … can sometimes handle carriage return problems Notepad cannot
  5. Task Schedular … create time-of-day procedures
  6. Command Prompt … possibilities for your own procedural creations via batch files and CMD.exe
  7. Windows Player … play video media
  8. Calculator … calculator
  9. Windows Mail (client) … windows default email client
    Mac

  1. Finder … disk/directory/file maintenance
  2. Safari … web browser
  3. QuickTime Player … play/record video media
  4. TextEdit … Word Processor can read HTML (shows HTML as the look of HTML) and DOC and export DF
  5. Xcode (installable free only in the old days … but free off Mac AppStore now) … C++, iOS apps
  6. Mail (client) … email
  7. Photo Booth … webcam … but thought it would be more applicable
  8. iMovie … create movies (with/without soundtrack) … great, but cannot simulate constant action very easily
  9. Preview … image/PDF viewer/editor … rotation, scaling
  10. GarageBand … creating music … anybody used this?
  11. iTunes … storing music and playing it
  12. Grab … screen/window/selection capture
  13. Terminal … access to Linux Bash environment and command line
  14. Time Machine … backups
  15. DVD Player … play DVDs
  16. FaceTime … like PhotoBooth?
  17. iChat … ?
  18. iCal … calculator
  19. iPhoto … image editing, slideshows
  20. Automator … automate processing
  21. Digital Colour Meter … can define a colour for web usage
  22. Podcast Publisher … can create a podcast
    Unix/Linux
    Android
    iOS

If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.

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