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.")
  • LaunchBar An excellent commercial Quicksilver clone. I think it’s better, and it's supported, unlike quasi-abandonware Quicksilver. $
  • 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.
  • ExpanDrive Maps a remote file system as a local disk drive, over SFTP. Works beautifully. $
  • 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. Dead site.
  • Yummy FTP Slick SFTP front end. Update your web site securely… $

Office

  • NoteBook Organizes notes, outlines, documents, screenshots, URLs, you-name-it in a notebook format. Very slick and useful. $
  • Skim “designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file.” Excellent.
  • Adobe Reader Acrobat reader. Slicker than Preview.app, and Universal since version 8. Big, slow, wants to install Adobe Air. Use Skim or Preview instead.

UI Tweaks

  • Focus Indicates the current app as a transparent icon. I have two 24" monitors, and this helps me stay oriented.
  • jitouch Superb extensions to trackpad/Magic Mouse multitouch gestures. The low price makes this a no-brainer. $
  • Lab Tick Lets you set your Mac/PowerBook's keyboard backlight manually. The ambient light sensor doesn't work so well…
  • OpaqueMenuBar Kills Leopard's translucent menu bar. Apple: it's called "contrast." Get some. Obsolete: use System Preferences/Desktop & Screensaver/Translucent Menu Bar.
  • SizeUp Keyboard-based window sizer/mover. I’m using SizeUp more and Zooom less. $
  • 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. $
  • VirtueDesktops If you want virtual desktops and you're still running Tiger, this is the only way to fly. VirtueDesktops plays nice with Parallels. Obsolete, like Tiger.
  • Zooom Mouse-based window sizer/mover. $

Utilities

  • AppZapper The best Nice, simple Mac uninstaller. $
  • CleanApp Interesting, sophisticated uninstaller. Optionally uses OS X to monitor file creates. $
  • 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. Snow Leopard will show you the date now.
  • 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.

Development

  • Eclipse Excellent Java IDE (and C++, and…)
  • RubyMine Decent-and-getting-better Ruby IDE from the IDEA people. $
  • 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.

Toys