My brother recently bought a new Macbook. His purchase has given me incentive to write this (just point him, and others here when they’ve just bought a new mac).
Obviously, not everyone is going to want all the same applications as me, so I’ve grouped them into categories. If you don’t do any development or design, then obviously disregard those respective sections.
Everything is freeware or open source unless otherwise specified.
If you have a need that isn’t filled by these apps, then check out iusethis.
This article is in progress…
General utilities
Quicksilver
An awesome app that every mac user should have. Its index is extremely fast (far faster than spotlight) – I use it for launching apps, as well as a variety of other things. Definitely worth reading about its many uses.
Homepage
Download
The Unarchiver
Extracts all the file formats that OSX’s built in archive helper fails to support.
Homepage
Download
CoRD or Remote Desktop Connection
If you’re using RDP, then either of these will do. My choice depends on the weather.
CORD
Remote Desktop Connection
Skitch
Allows you to to annotate and scribble on your screenshots with arrows, text and shapes.
Not only that, but Skitch lets you upload (to either their service, or others like Flickr) and share the link your uploaded pics with one click.
Homepage
Internet
Adium
If you do any IM, you should be using Adium. Supports virtually all protocols, and is highly customisable.
Homepage
Transmit
Payware. Great UI for transferring files over FTP, SFTP, and SCP.
If you don’t want to cough up the dosh for Transmit, then Cyberduck is a good alternative.
Homepage
Download
Transmission
Torrent app. My only let down for Transmission is lack of support for HTTPS trackers. You can also try Azureus, for a more full-featured (and resource-hungry!) torrent app.
Homepage
Download
NetNewsWire
One of my favourite apps for OSX. NetNewsWire became freeware early this year, making it a much better choice than Vienna, or other desktop feed readers.
NetNewsWire simplifies feed-reading, but I feel its most useful feature is integration with NewsGator. This means that all my feeds, as well as the read status of individual posts gets synced to the service, letting me keep track of read/unread items at home as well as work!
Homepage
Download
Media
NicePlayer
A lightweight media player, that has a great lack of chrome, making watching videos enjoyable.
Homepage
Download
Perian
Video codecs for OSX, so you can watch divx, xvid, etc. in NicePlayer or QuickTime.
Homepage
Download
VLC
If something can’t be played by Perian, then give it a whirl with VLC. It also has more features than NicePlayer, like subtitles, and being able to sync the audio (useful for poor encodings).
Homepage
Download
Design
TextMate
Payware. A very good reason to buy a Mac. TextMate is great, not only for its built in features, but for its ‘Bundles’. The most productive text editor I’ve used. It also makes for a nice development environment for Rails.
If you don’t have the money for TextMate, or will never use any of its features, then Smultron is also good.
Homepage
Download
CSSEdit
Payware. I like CSSEdit sometimes over TextMate for editing CSS, as it shows the result of your edit straight away. You can also override live sites with it, dig through all the elements on the page and what CSS is affecting it, making for very quick incremental changes in CSS.
Homepage
Download
Adobe Creative Suite
Big time payware. Not much to say here, Photoshop flies on a Mac, Illustrator and InDesign are also great.
Homepage
Download
Development
MacPorts
Previously DarwinPorts, MacPorts brings many GNU apps to OSX. Has worked mostly flawlessly for me. I’ve never used fink, but it has similar goals and I’ve heard good things.
Homepage
Install
VMWare Fusion
Payware. Fusion has been great for me, I’ve run multiple VM’s of Linux and Windows, and it’s been very pain-free.
Unity is a great feature, letting you run Windows apps in their own window, side-by-side with native Mac apps.
Homepage
Download
MacFuse and sshfs
If you do any work on external servers, these two combined let you mount an ssh resource like it is a drive, letting you do your work without constantly downloading/uploading files.
MacFuse and sshfs
Others
maestroec (of #mac on austirc.net) just spat out a whole bunch of other apps:
- AppFresh – great for application updates
- Clutch (web GUI for transmission)
- Flickr Uploadr
- FormulatePro (better than preview annotations ???)
- HandBrake for ripping DVDs
- iSwiff – standalone .swf player .. good for games
- JBIDWATCHER – for sniping ebay
- MacSolitaire (free heh)
- MacTracker … database of every apple product made
- Measuring Cup (open source version of YummySoup! and MacGroumet .. which i’d prefer)
- MetaX .. absolutely essential for tagging media files
- Pac The Man X …. yeaaaah
- Photo Drop .. make mini applications to resize/convert/change many aspects of images
- Dockables – little applications for the dock to do things like shut down / restart / display sleep etc.
- QuickShareit … kinda like skitch for files
- RapidoSerial … good if you have a heap of serial numbers to keep track of
- Tuna Pitch .. awesome guitar tuner!!! – uses the built in microphone
- VirtualBox .. freebie virualisation .. bit slower than the paid ones but seems ok .. still in beta
Trackbacks for Essential Mac OSX apps
Gr8 list. May I also recommend Ecto for posting to multiple blogs and Paparazzi for screendumping a whole browser window inc. the bit below the fold.