“Must Have” Mac Applications

Your Mac already comes with some great applications such as iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto etc, below are some “must have” applications to join that list of great software I know everyone could use.

Adium

Although iChat is good, it doesn’t support Hotmail accounts or other accounts to the best of my knowledge. Adium is the all in one instant messaging client. As a result it enables you to talk to anyone using pretty much any method. It doesn’t yet have Skype support, although I remember seeing a rumor somewhere that it is going to be supported.

AppFresh

You have Software Updater for updating Apple applications. AppFresh is the application for updating every other application. It can check for updates for Widgets, Applications and other programs on your computer. A must have for keeping your Mac up to date.

AppZapper

Installing and uninstalling applications is really easy on the Mac. But the problem is, application leave preference files, cache files and other files all over your Mac. As a result you can end up with hundreds of files doing nothing and consuming space. AppZapper is designed to take take of this for you by finding every file associated with it and deleting them for you. Although you could do this by yourself AppZapper is a lot quicker.

Bittorrent

Which ever flavor you want of Bittorrent client you want, you really should have one. If you get past all of the illegal files which you are not supposed to download, you can find a whole range of interesting programs, music and other files all legally free. It is also a really good way of getting massive Apple updates. Have you every found an Apple update you have download to be missing pieces and corrupt. If you put it into a Bittorrent client and find the same file on the web, Bittorrent can fix it for you.

Cyberduck

Although Cyberduck isn’t the best FTP client, it is free. In the growing age of blogs, websites and more web interactively having and FTP style client is very useful in quickly downloading files off the web. You could use Terminal and go command line, but it is more difficult. For the newbie user having a simple FTP client is a must.

Firefox

Probably against Apples interests but Firefox, I find, is one of the best web browsers out there. Safari and Firefox are very similar, but Firefox is a lot more customizable and supported with more extensions and features.

Gimp

On a Mac you don’t have any image manipulation or drawing techniques. You do have Preview which can be used in smaller circumstances to manipulate images and change them, but nothing is as good as Gimp. You could have Photoshop, although that is expensive software and probably wont be installed by default.

iStat

With all that power under the hood you may want to get a bit more information about how you Mac is performing. iStat is designed to show you pretty much anything about your Mac. From CPU usuage to fan speeds iStat covers pretty much anything. Very useful for finding out how you Mac is performing.

KeyCue

KeyCue helps you to use your Mac OS X applications more effectively by displaying a concise table of all currently available menu shortcuts. You no longer need to memorize and remember key combinations; just press the command key and KeyCue tells you what you want to know. Over time, you will automatically remember frequently used shortcuts and start working more efficiently.

Onyx

Onyx is a multifunction maintenance utility for Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel). It allows you to verify the Startup Disk and thestructure of its System files, to run misc tasks of system maintenance, to configure the hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock and of some of Apple’s own applications, to delete caches, to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome and more.

SuperDuper

SuperDuper is the most advanced, yet easy to use disk copying program available for OS X. It can, of course, make a straight copy, or “clone” – useful when you want to move all your data from one machine to another, or do a simple backup. In moments, you can completely duplicate your boot drive to another drive, partition, or image file.

Handbrake

HandBrake is a video transcoder that takes your movies and transfers them to a format that’s useful on your computers, media centers, and portable electronic devices like iPhone, iPod, Apple TV and more. It converts most any video formats to a handful of modern ones.

Quicksilver

Quicksilver is a unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data. Anyone using a computer (and the Macintosh is no exception) spends a lot of time locating files and applications, and then carrying out actions on those items. The Finder is a reasonably good tool for getting a visual overview of the contents of your disk, but it isn’t ideal for quickly locating and manipulating files, especially if you have a deep and complicated folder structure, or if you prefer keyboard navigation to using the mouse.

Skype

Skype is the best application for anyone who wants to talk long distance to anyone in the world. It offers the cheapest calls and some of the best quality calls for any Internet application. Although iChat has audio calling, Skype does it better and your can call out to anyone.

TextMate

TextMate is the best application for writing text. It is just you and the text. There is no fancy formatting going on or text manipulation that you do in Word or Pages. It comes into itself with the programming side such as CSS, PHP etc. It may not be must have default install but it is very close and should be on every Mac.

VLC

Quicktime can render quite a lot of movie and audio files. Every so often it can come across and file that it can render, although it is a standard video file. VLC, is the super video application. For my experiences it can render pretty much any movie, even if the is corrupt. A lot better than Quicktime.