My essential Mac applications

Submitted by alex on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 04:45
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About 2 years ago I switched from using Windows XP/2000 workstations to a Macbook Pro running on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and I've not looked back since. Now I'm on my second Macbook Pro running Leopard, making backups on a 500GB time capsule, downloading music and pod casts from iTunes and also using an IPhone.

I won't be able to go back to MS land anytime soon.

As a relative new switcher these are some of the 3rd party applications that I've come to rely on and have to install on any new Mac that I would use. Practically all applications are open source or free to use.

Internet

  1. Adium - Instance messaging for Gmail, Yahoo, MSN and loads of other through plugins.
  2. coconutWifi - Scans for wireless networks that are in range.
  3. Colloquy - IRC application that is simple and easy to use.
  4. Cyberduck - Great ftp application.
  5. Firefox - A great alternative web browser and I use it only for those rare occasions where Safari does not work well.
  6. Livestation - Watch BBC News, CNN and other channels live.
  7. Skype - Great VoIP application and IM. I use it primarily for IM for work and long distance out calls.
  8. Transmission - A simple to use bittorrent client.
  9. Tunnelblick - OpenVPN Client.
  10. Twitterrific - Twitter client which does not rely any RIA framework like Adobe Air.

Multimedia

  1. DivX - Divx encoder/decoder.
  2. Flip4Mac WMV - Watch Windows media on you Mac.
  3. Handbreak - Convert any type of video or DVD's to MPEG-4 or H.264.
  4. MediaTomb - Media server which supports PS3. Install using MacPorts.
  5. Perian - Add additional video format support to QuickTime.
  6. TubeTv - Convert flash based web videos to formats that can be played on your Ipod or IPhone.
  7. VLC - Media player that supports tons of audio and video formats.

Utilities

  1. AppCleaner - Uninstaller for applications and their preferences files which should have been part of OS X from the beginning.
  2. Caffeine - Prevents your Mac go to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers.
  3. coconutBattery - Shows the current charge, load cycles, current maximum and original capacity of your battery.
  4. FreeMind - Great Java based mind mapping application.
  5. Growl - Receive application notifications like new email messages, skype contacts logons etc.
  6. Istat Menus - Great system monitoring application. Sits on the menubar.
  7. MacPorts - Great tool for downloading, compiling and installing open source software. A must have if you want to have the same toolset as you do on most Linux distributions like svn, bzr, screen, irssi, wget etc etc
  8. OpenOffice - A good enough alternative to MS Office.
  9. Smultron - A good text editor for quick edits.
  10. Textwrangler - Another great text editor.
  11. The Unarchiver - Much better for unarchiving various file formats than the builtin unarchiver.
  12. TimeMachineEditor - Change the annoying default one hour backup interval of Time Machine.
  13. Quicksilver - Difficult to describe, I use it as primarily an app launcher but it does a lot more. Must have tool for keyboard shortcuts lovers.

Dev Tools

  1. Eclipse - Great IDE which I'm using primarily for Java development.
  2. Xcode - Development environment for Mac OS X.
  3. VirtualBox - A very simple and easy to use desktop virtualization environment. It's not as fast as VMware Fusion and it lacks some out of the box support for some linux distributions.
  4. VMWare Fusion - Great desktop virtualization environment, fast and stable.
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