Can someone help me with issues designing a typeface using a Mac?

I’ve only heard of Fontographer.
(I have it, but have never actually got around to using it.)

I don’t know what type of file it saves as.
But I would imagine that would be more important (than what program)?

Though, this is coming from someone who doesn’t work in the industry.

I know that fonts are, essentially, vectors but there is a lot of other data like hinting and kerning for each character. I’ve really only heard of people using Fontographer which seems to be a pretty widely used piece of software. If you’re planning on doing a full character set… may the force be with you or something. There’s a lot of characters out there!