I've just switched platforms from Windows to Mac OS X.
Along the way, these apps and utilities have proven
particularly good:
Essentials
- Growl Event
notification facility.
- JumpCut Multi-item
clipboard buffer.
- NeoOffice OpenOffice
using Mac widgets (no X Windows).
- Parallels Virtual
machine for OS X. Runs Windows XP
beautifully. $
- Quicksilver Curiously-good alternative
to the Dock, shortcuts, and digging
through folders. ("A unified, extensible
interface for working with applications, contacts,
music, and other data.")
- SuperDuper! The only disk
imaging program for Mac OS X that actually
works (i.e. creates a bootable image with metadata,
resource forks, ACL's, Finder flags, etc.
intact). $
Network
- Adium Multi-protocol
chat client.
- AFSMonitor and SharePoints Create and
monitor Apple File Shares if you're
not running OS X Server.
- iStumbler WiFi access
point finder.
- Little Snitch Outgoing
firewall restricts outgoing network
connections. $
- Mail Stamps Mail.app's
icons are remarkably ugly. Fix them with Mail
Stamps.
- Yummy FTP Slick SFTP
front end. Update your web site
securely… $
Office
- Adobe Reader 8 Acrobat
reader. Slicker than Preview.app, and Universal since
version 8.
UI Tweaks
- Focus Indicates the current app as a
transparent icon. I have two 24" monitors, and this
helps me stay oriented.
- Lab Tick Lets you set your
Mac/PowerBook's keyboard backlight
manually. The ambient light sensor doesn't work so
well…
- SteerMouse 3rd-party driver for
multi-button USB and Bluetooth mice.
May work better than your mouse manufacturer's Mac
driver. I prefer SteerMouse to the rarely-updated
USB Overdrive. $
- OpaqueMenuBar Kills Leopard's
translucent menu bar. Apple: it's called "contrast."
Get some.
- VirtueDesktops If you want
virtual desktops and you're still
running Tiger, this is the only way to fly.
VirtueDesktops plays nice with Parallels.
Zooom Window-managment
enhancer. $ Very buggy under
Leopard, and no prospect of fixes until March '08
(two months). No longer recommended.
Utilities
- AppZapper The best Mac
uninstaller. $
- Bwana Formatted man
pages in your web browser.
- BrowseBack Caches a PDF of every web
page you browse. Days-or-weeks later, you can find the
page again in BrowseBack. This saves me at least twice
a week, every week. More useful than Leopard's Safari
History search.
- CharacterPal widget Displays
keystrokes and HTML codes for
characters.
- Disk Inventory X Disk
consumption visualizer.
- FuzzyClock Displays the time in the
menu bar in "ten past eleven" style.
- iStat Pro Excellent
system-monitor widget.
- iTerm Multi-tab command
line. Still worth using vs. Leopard's
Terminal.app: the zoom button on the window frame
zooms vertically, not horizontally, and you can make
the window transparent.
- KeePassX Mac port of the KeePass
password safe.
- Lingon Mac OS replaces cron and UNIX
init stuff with a new daemon,
launchd. Lingon is a GUI editor for
launchd config files.
- MacPorts Open source package
manager that works most of the time.
Sponsored by Apple these days.
- MenuCalendarClock Puts the date in the
menu bar, plus iCal hooks if you
upgrade to the paid version.
- Minuteur Egg (countdown)
timer and stopwatch with a beautiful
UI.
- Plain Clip Strips formatting from
clipboard contents. Very useful
before "paste."
- RCDefaultApp Prefs pane to tweak the
default application for file
types.
- ServicesScrubber Gets rid of useless
items on the Services menu.
- SmartReporter Polls your hard disks for
SMART errors. Emails you when it
spots trouble coming.
- TextExpander Keyboard
macros for OS X. Expensive, but
slick. $
Development
- Eclipse Excellent Java
IDE (and C++, and…)
- TextWrangler Excellent freeware
text editor from the makers of
BBEdit.
- Xcode Apple's development
environment for Mac OS X.
Media
- Audiobook Builder Rip
audiobooks for your iPod, if you're
lazy. $
- Flip4Mac The free Player lets you play
Windows WMV audio and video on your
Mac.
- Max Do-it-all music
ripper and converter. The daily build "Max-r1328"
runs on Leopard.
Toys