10MacApps
A little while ago, Laurence Simon came up with the wonderful idea of what are the Ten Blogs I Would Take To A Desert Island. That turned into a huge meme, and well, I though why not take it a step further, and ask Mac Lovers – their ten most favorite apps. Forget, the Microsoft Office, or any of the applications that are bundled with an Apple. Instead, focus on small freeware and shareware applications that have helped you get the most out of your Mac.
I think it would be great if we wrote why we love these little apps (or scripts if you want to) and share them with everyone else. This would be a good way to discover some goodness which we might all be missing out on. So here is my list of apps, I love the most.
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QuickSilver, a launcher on steroids.
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Ecto, still the best blogging client in the world and well worth the $18 dollar price.
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NetNewsWire – a lot of pretenders out there, but when it comes to Apple like intuitiveness, this is my choice for a RSS news reader. You can get a freeware version as well.
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VideoLan/VLC - the cross platform media player that is better at handling video files better than any other player. Of course the price is right.
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BluePhoneElite, the perfect application to help you get the most of your bluetooth enabled phones. SMS, caller ID and a iTunes pause function, make it the most used application on my PowerBook.
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Cocktail, a general purpose utility for Mac OS X. The application serves up a scrumptious mix of maintenance tools and interface tweaks, all accessible via a gorgeous graphical interface and toolset. Definitely a must have for us non-UNIX geeks.
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CandyBar, the perfect way to spend your weekend, when all your friends are off doing ungodly activities like climbing mountains, biking or simply running. This is the perfect tool for pimping your Mac.
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USB Overdrive X – turbocharge your multibutton mice for optimum productivity.
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FolderShare – The simplest way to keep your folders synchronized between various Macs and even PCs. There is a free version as well.
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Camino - Even as a beta product, it is still feels better than Firefox and better than Safari!
All right folks, lets this meme going!
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You may want to look at http://MyProgs.net – where you can store list of programs you use.
I’ll put in a vote for OmniWeb’s browser… Tab organization and the ability to save workspaces are must-have’s for modern browsers.
Oh yeah, and a vote for “carbon copy cloner” and “wiretap”, too.
Quicksilver (’nuff Said)
Desktop Manager : Ability to have multiple desktops.
Adium : Supports most if not all the IM systems and has tabs.
TextWrangler : Tabs, open/save to remote servers
OmniWeb : The ability to have workspaces, moves tabs between windows, individual site prefences. It isn’t the best, but what it has in features makes up for it.
NetNewsWire : Simple, light, quick.
X Resource Graph. Helps me keep track of my Pbook tempature, and memmory usage.
iTerm : The Terminal redefined.
JunkMathcher : No More Spam, plugin for Mail.app.
MPlayer : The other free video player for OSX.
I would put Macaroni, Transmit, Taco & Combine PDF on the list.
For me – add in Adium, Mainmenu, Textpander, Junkmatcher, mail.appetizer…
My ten must-have apps are (in alphabetical order):
-> Adium X – I’ve used other multi-protocol IM clients, but Adium has become my app of choice.
-> BluePhoneElite – I agree, this is a great app and very useful. Have it set up to keep a record of incoming and outgoing SMS messages which is also very nice.
-> DragThing – great great launcher
-> iChat – Even though I use Adium X most of the time, I still keep iChat running on a different account for video conferencing. It’s by far the easiest way to video chat.
-> Interarchy Still my favorite file transfer client. The latest revisions have made it work the same way as OS X, making it very intuitive.
-> NoteBook – I keep an immense amount of data stored and organized with this app. Most natural way for me to keep myself organized.
-> Photoshop – Among other things I’m a photographer – so there’s no way to live without Photoshop.
-> SmartBook – Technically obsolete since Apple added smart groups to the address book – but this app does something Apple doesn’t – it’s smart groups can be synced via iSync, while Apple’s cannot. Hopefully they’ll fix this, but until then…
-> SpamSieve – Best Spam solution I’ve found. It’s not perfect, but it saves me endless hours.
-> VLC – Amazingly free, and works with more media than any app I’ve tried.
Om Malik has a great little write up on his blog about 10 ‘must have’ apps for the Mac. A while back Lockergnome had a great article that a lot the new killer apps were moving over to the Mac and Gear Live has to agree. This list includes most…
1-Click Answers
Adium
Azureus – bit torrent
Butler – app launcher
Camino – sweetest browser
coconutBattery – battery info
FetchArt – grabs album art for iTunes
MacStumbler – hot spot finder
Mac the Ripper – great DVD ripping software
MenuCalendarClock – integrates with iCal or Entourage
Mouse Zoom – control speed of mouse and track pad
Onyx – perfect maintenance program
Spirited Away – just keeps my desktop clean
Text Wrangler – simple text editor
VLC – great cross-platform video player
VooDooPad Lite – cool tool for creating wiki’s
Weather Dock – weather info with small footprint
Witch – tab through open windows not just programs
You Control: iTunes – easy tool bar controls
there is alot of good freeware on a Mac. After trying all of these, take a look at FreeMacWare.com