While I still had a Windows PC, I used either the MiKTeX or the TeXLive distribution with WinEdt.
To make the leap to the Mac world, the easiest thing is to download and install the free MacTeX package (http://tug.org/mactex/ ), which includes the TeXLive TeX distribution along with the TeXShop GUI editor.
While TeXShop does not allow the nearly total reconfiguration options of WinEdit, it is already quite flexible. By default it allows syncing in both directions between source and typeset. It has templates and symbol palettes if you want them; source coloring; command completion; etc. It can use macros, and some come with TeXShop itself; others are available on-line, and of course you can write your own.
For preview, you use the native Mac OS X Preview app. If you wish, you can also install the separate Flashmode app, which automatically updates the preview window as you edit -- much like the now-obsolete BlueSky "TeXtures" app used to do.
If you have your own TeX packages, fonts, etc., not available as part of the comprehensive TeXLive distribution, you can maintain these in a texmf-local tree (or, alternatively, in your user account Library/texmf tree).
When I switched from a Windows PC to a Mac, I thought I couldn't live without WinEdt, so I installed Parallels Desktop for Mac and can run WinEdt in a Windows virtual machine. I find, though, that I hardly ever use WinEdt any more: TeXShop suffices for my needs, even for maintaining a project as large as a book.
Community support for MacTeX (and TeXShop) includes a wiki and an active mailing list. See: http://tug.org/mactex/help/
[The current version is MacTeX 2013. Normally, you update to the latest versions of your installed TeXLive files using the included TeX Live Utility. At the moment, however, TeXLive 2013 is frozen while TeXLive 2014 (and hence its MacTeX 2013 derivative) is completing beta-testing.]
A short question. I got as a gift a MacBook Pro.. it will be the first time that I use a Mac..and I see that WinEdt8 is not possible to install there..
Most of the time I use my Toshiba (under Windows 7)..and from time to time I will use the Mac ..
Any advice to make easy to use the files en Tex (latex) in the Mac and on my PC?
——
Murray Eisenberg ***@math.umass.edu
Mathematics & Statistics Dept.
Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 240 246-7240 (H)
University of Massachusetts
710 North Pleasant Street
Amherst, MA 01003-9305