7 ms·
Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?
Just purchased my first macbook and I'm already digging it. When it comes to Windows and Linux I have a standard set of apps for both programming and security auditing that I load up. I know what's available and where to get it.
With this new mac I've already loaded up some stuff but what else is available? What are some free, and even low cost "essential" mac apps I should look into?
- karl11 17y agotextmate
- raquo 17y agoCoda
- crad 17y agoTo back up raquo here, Coda (http://www.panic.com/coda/ http://www.panic.com/coda/) is my current editor of choice for most things. It's got great collaborative editing, a very nice UI, good syntax highlighting and plugin support.
- arupchak 17y agoCoda is expensive ($99) but the convenience of working on remote files via SFTP within the program is unmatched. If your session gets disconnected in the midst of editing a file, nothing to worry about, Coda will automatically log back in for you and update the file you were working on when you save.
- zeeone 17y agoVIM does the same for free. $99 saved is $99 earned.
- jhancock 17y agoagreed. but many will use more than $99 worth of their time to figure out how to use it. If you've already paid the price for learning VIM, its an easy choice.
- arupchak 17y agoYou're right, but then I could also argue that any of these programs can be replaced by installing a linux port via fink and a combination of shell scripts. My point was mainly comparing Coda to other GUI text editors for the mac. It has other useful features such as one-window editing, integrated terminal, ability to preview CSS/HTML changes side by side with code, etc.
- HalcyonMuse 17y agoThanks! I was looking for a free alternative to Coda that did editing over sftp just yesterday!
- jroes 17y agoemacs with TRAMP does too
- pavel_lishin 17y agoI just mount everything via sshfs, and keep trucking with textmate.
- mrduncan 17y agoor, macvim (http://code.google.com/p/macvim/ http://code.google.com/p/macvim/)
- vaporstun 17y agoAquamacs (http://aquamacs.org/ http://aquamacs.org/)
- bretthoerner 17y agoCocoa Nightly :) http://atomized.org/wp-content/cocoa-emacs-nightly/ http://atomized.org/wp-content/cocoa-emacs-nightly/
- access_denied 17y agoBBedit is the best editor on the mac, by far. (ok, I am a cheapo and use emacs)
- chaosmachine 17y agokomodo edit http://www.activestate.com/komodo_edit/ http://www.activestate.com/komodo_edit/ free and open source.
- benofsky 17y agoNothing compares to textmate, fantastic price, unbelievably awesome editor.
- Derferman 17y agoI just found Smultron, and I love it. http://tuppis.com/smultron/ http://tuppis.com/smultron/
- lallysingh 17y agoBBEdit. But the two hit different crowds, it seems.
- brk 17y agoiTerm http://iterm.sourceforge.net/ http://iterm.sourceforge.net/ VLC Player http://www.videolan.org/ http://www.videolan.org/
- gregk 17y agoTextWrangler (free text editor), Gimp and Inkscape (free graphics) or Photoshop Elements ($90), OpenOffice (free) or iWork (office like from Apple $90), or MS Office ($150) depending on what you know and who you communicate with, Firefox browser (free), Xcode for Mac or iPhone development (free), Skype (free), Tweetie, no virus scanner needed for now, and an external hard Disk so you can use TimeMachine for backups are what I have added in the first 2 months with my first intel mac.
- randallsquared 17y agoI like Smultron over TextWrangler (and I say this as someone who paid for TextWrangler years ago, before they made it free). Also, Adium is very nice if you use any IM other than Skype.
- swombat 17y agoQuickSilver: http://quicksilver.en.softonic.com/mac http://quicksilver.en.softonic.com/mac - app launcher. Essential to a smooth OS X experience. Adium: http://adium.im/ http://adium.im/ - general-purpose chat client Cog: http://cogx.org/ http://cogx.org/ - For those of us who don't like iTunes, or want to play FLACs. WriteRoom or Scrivener: http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom | http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html - if you like to write (those are not for code) Textmate: http://macromates.com/ http://macromates.com/ - if you're a coder. Transmission: http://www.transmissionbt.com/ http://www.transmissionbt.com/ - for your torrenting needs.
- phn1x 17y agoone of the guys I follow on twitter just recommended this: http://osx.iusethis.com/ http://osx.iusethis.com/
- durdn 17y agoI was about to suggest that as well. It is tied to a very cool app called AppFresh. Recommended.
- boundlessdreamz 17y agoI'm recommending only free software here. 1. Adium for chat. It is just awesome.http://www.adiumx.com/ http://www.adiumx.com/ 2. Quicksilver. if you just want an app launcher spotlight is already good at that. http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-alchemy/downloads/list http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-alchemy/downloads/list [edit: updated link to point to the recent versions] 3. Caffeine is small program which puts an icon on menu bar on which you can click to prevent your Mac from going to sleep,dimming the screen etc. Very useful when watching long flash movies. http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/ http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/ 4. MPlayer This is a video player which plays almost anything you can offer. Also comes with excellent keyboard shortcuts support making it the best video player on any platform. Most people prefer VLC though http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ 5. Flip4Mac For those videos that MPlayer plays poorly, typically WMVs Flip4Mac provides a fee codec which integrates with your quicktime player. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcompo... 6. HandBrake For ripping your DVDs to MPEG4, there is no better tool. http://handbrake.fr/ http://handbrake.fr/ 7. Tweetie. if you use twitter, tweetie is the best mac twitter client by far. http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/ http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/ 8. Virtualbox This virtualization product from Sun Microsystems totally eliminates the need for parallels or Vmware if you plan to use the VM sparingly. http://www.virtualbox.org/ http://www.virtualbox.org/ 9. Evernote http://evernote.com/ http://evernote.com/ 10. Eigenclock. I find the OS X, menu calendar extremely limted. Eigenclock is a good replacement http://www.twistedtheorysoftware.com/eigenclock/ http://www.twistedtheorysoftware.com/eigenclock/ 11. Onyx for system tweaking http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs/english.html http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs/english.html 12. Transmission - bittorrent client http://www.transmissionbt.com/ http://www.transmissionbt.com/
- KirinDave 17y agoWhy does anyone recommend Quickisilver? It's suffering from massive bitrot these days. Most users report frequent crashes, hangs, problems waking from sleep, and general slowness compared to Spotlight and LaunchBar? I really wish it wasn't the case, but Quicksilver seems to have had its run and no one is stepping up to the plate to preserve it. Most everything else you list is awesome though (although I think Evernote is far from essential and I'm not sure "free" is the right word for it ;)
- hectcastro 17y agoQuicksilver.
- udfalkso 17y agoCyberduck (ftp - http://cyberduck.ch/ http://cyberduck.ch/) Adium (IM - http://adium.im/ http://adium.im/)
- phn1x 17y agoI see a lot of people recommending virtual pc but does anyone have anything to say about vm fusion? A buddy of mine was going to hook me up with a copy. I've used virtual PC on linux quite a bit but I was always frustrated with the lack of ability to bridge the networking.
- tortilla 17y agoI think it's great (trouble-free for me). No problems with networking and almost seamless. Though, I rarely use it for more than a few minutes each week. Just to test web pages out in IE. Which MultipleIE is great for: http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE
- crad 17y agoFusion works great for my needs.
- zimbabwe 17y agoFusion's good for everything but gaming. I use it for Linux but for Windows I stick to Boot Camp.
- chris24 17y agoFusion's really easy to use. I've got Windows 7 installed on it, using the 'Vista' install option, and it's working great. It makes it so easy to get it working on the network, and to create a shared folder between the VM and your Mac (if you ask it to).
- cglee 17y agoFusion is awesome, especially their "Unity" feature.
- maw 17y agoFusion works, but its full-screen mode is rather unfortunate—this is putting it kindly. While running full-screen, when you drag the mouse to the top of the screen, the Mac menubar appears. There's no way to turn this behavior off (please prove me wrong!). I honestly can't imagine a case where anybody could prefer this, and to have no option at all to disable it is a real disappointment. When my license expires, I'll take another hard look at Parallels.
- sirsean 17y agoMacFUSE w/ sshfs, and MacVIM.
- elai 17y agoOr ExpanDrive. It's alot cleaner than MacFuse + sshfs.
- tortilla 17y agoOthers mentioned here are great. In addition, check these out: http://perian.org/ http://perian.org/ - adds native support to QuickTime for many video formats http://www.fluidapp.com/ http://www.fluidapp.com/ - Fluid, SSB (site specific browsers) http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/ http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/ - LittleSnitch, Monitor and block outgoing internet connections http://www.skitch.com/ http://www.skitch.com/ - Skitch, screen capture and sharing http://derailer.org/paparazzi/ http://derailer.org/paparazzi/ - Paparazzi, Full screenshots of websites http://www.sequelpro.com/ http://www.sequelpro.com/ - SequelPro, MySQL gui (I like Querious, but that's a paid app) http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html - The Unarchiver, unpacker program handles almost every format http://freeverse.com/apps/app/?id=7013 http://freeverse.com/apps/app/?id=7013 - Think, helps you focus on a single app http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/ http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/ - MercuryMover, resize, move windows with keystrokes (If you're OCD about window sizes like me) Other honorable mentions: Coda, Transmit, TwoUp, Typinator, UnRarX, CSSEdit
- Jakob 17y agoDont’t use Transmit. It’s slow and they haven’t released an update for months (years?). Yummy FTP ist the fastest and feature-richest FTP-client for the Mac. It’s synchronization feature is really good. (I bought both)
- jemmons 17y agoTransmit is every bit as fast as Yummy downloading and uploading a 10Mb file (S3 and SFTP), so I'm not sure what your impression is based on. The last release was 11/24/08. It's always updated to take advantage of/fix bugs introduced by new OSes. There hasn't been a release in a whopping 5 months (?) because Leopard's been out for a while and there aren't any outstanding bugs.
- robin_reala 17y agoThumbs up for Fluid. I use it for Google Reader and BBC iPlayer. Reader in particular works well as Fluid has built in support for it: it tags the Dock icon with the number of unread entries (à la Mail.app).
- asciilifeform 17y agoHome and End Key Fixer. I found my machine to be nearly unusable without it. Quicksilver, to avoid the terrible GUI as much as humanly possible. (I have my MacBook because it is the only non-Windows notebook with fully working suspend mode and peripherals. Why did you buy yours?)
- jhickner 17y agoDoubleCommand works great for this as well, even in Firefox 3, and includes a lot of other handy key-remapping.
- chaosmachine 17y agoDoubleCommand can cause kernel panics. KeyRemap4MacBook will give you a lot more options. http://www.pqrs.org/tekezo/macosx/keyremap4macbook/ http://www.pqrs.org/tekezo/macosx/keyremap4macbook/
- mad44 17y agocarbon emacs
- crad 17y agoboundlessdreamz covered a lot, here's a few more (mostly commercial but still awesome): 1. Things - Awesome task management - http://www.culturedcode.com/ http://www.culturedcode.com/ 2. Mailplane - If you use GMail this is a must. - http://mailplaneapp.com/ http://mailplaneapp.com/ 3. AppZapper - Remove everything about an app - http://www.appzapper.com/ http://www.appzapper.com/ 4. LittleSnitch - Filters and prompts on outbound ip connections - http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html 5. Undercover - Stolen Laptop Recovery app - http://www.orbicule.com/undercover/ http://www.orbicule.com/undercover/ 6. Fugu - SCP/SFTP App - http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/ http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/ 7. On The Job - Time and Expense Tracking - http://stuntsoftware.com/OnTheJob/ http://stuntsoftware.com/OnTheJob/ 8. Versions - Awesome SVN client - http://versionsapp.com/ http://versionsapp.com/
- citrik 17y agoI'll add my vote for Things! I was designing my own app to do this then Things came out. If you've ever been inspired by GTD - Getting Things Done, by David Allen, Things is an indispensable app, My third most used app next to Mail and Safari. It also has great support for syncing with the iPhone so you can take your lists on the road and store your tasks or ideas wherever you are.
- elai 17y agoCornerstone is a good alternative SVN client. Cyberduck is a pretty good general purpose SFTP/FTP/S3/etc client. I like billings better than on the job personally.
- benofsky 17y agoI find cornerstone a lot better than versions. Although moved to Git now and feel like an idiot for buying a subversion client!! :P
- tortilla 17y agoMailplane is great, especially if you have multiple gmail and google mail accounts.
- jhickner 17y ago1.) SteerMouse - tweak the mouse acceleration curve. If you're coming from a PC and you feel like your mouse doesn't move right, this will help. 2.) SizeUp - size and and position windows with hotkeys. For example, quickly set two windows to use exactly one-half of the screen each. 3.) Expandrive - mount S3 buckets, ftp sites, sftp sites as network drives. (Works great with textmate) 4.) Miro - excellent video player and torrent client with rss built in. Sort of like a torrent TIVO. 5.) Warp (http://www.ksuther.com/warp/ http://www.ksuther.com/warp/) - adds some new methods for switching spaces. I have mine set to switch if I drag the mouse to a screen border while holding command. 6.) Also, if QuickSilver doesn't suit your tastes, give LaunchBar a try. Getting used to using one of those two apps pays huge dividends.
- ropiku 17y agoAnother +1 for SizeUp, since I bought a display for my MacBook I love it. I also like if for "name your price".
- bayareaguy 17y agoHere's a related thread from last year: - Ask YC: Mac virgin wants to know, what would you install? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=131241 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=131241 My earlier list http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=131263 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=131263 hasn't really changed but I do find the recently posted Black Tree Visor http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465334 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465334 to be very useful.
- ronnieliew 17y agoThis post might be useful: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/110065/must-have-tools-for-an-os-x-switcher/110178#110178 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/110065/must-have-tools-fo... It listed all the userful tools that would be relevant to a programmer.
- chris24 17y agoThanks for that... I was just looking for a syntax highlighter for Quicklook! http://code.google.com/p/qlcolorcode/ http://code.google.com/p/qlcolorcode/
- papa 17y agoLots of excellent pointers from others...I'll add a few I haven't seen posted: - InstantShot: nice little screenshot utility (I use it daily) - VueScan: swiss-army knife of mac scanning apps if you need to hook up a scanner. Costs a little, but you get lifetime upgrades. Well worth it. - LittleSnitch: network monitor. tracks what kind of network activity your apps are up to. Costs a little, but also worth it if you value your privacy. - JollysFastVNC: fast and free VNC client (I've been using it over Chicken of the VNC). - OmniDiskSweeper: Disk utility shows you which files are hogging up the most hard disk space. Free. I also recommend many of Omni's other products. Omnigraffle (not free) is also excellent for diagramming. Also, not mac specific, but the sqlite manager plugin for Firefox is also very helpful. I don't know where others go to find different Mac apps, I usually hit macupdate.com (and sometimes versiontracker) these days, mostly out of habit, but would love to hear other recs for this.
- coderholic 17y agoThere is a good list of free (as in beer) Mac apps at http://www.freeapps.co.uk/mac http://www.freeapps.co.uk/mac
- lmoorman 17y ago1password. A must that makes your life much easier.
- chris24 17y ago1Password's nice, but I've found Sxipper [1] to be better if all I need to use is Firefox. Sxipper has a really nice way of handling password changes, multiple accounts, and comment forms. [1] - http://www.sxipper.com/ http://www.sxipper.com/
- hboon 17y ago* OmniFocus * CSSEdit
- chris24 17y agoHere are some of my favs: 1) Quicksilver. (free) http://blacktree.com/?quicksilver http://blacktree.com/?quicksilver 2) VLC Media Player. (free) It plays pretty much every type of video file. http://videolan.org/vlc http://videolan.org/vlc 3) Skitch. (free) Essential for quick screenshots, and quick annotations of screenshots. http://plasq.com/skitch http://plasq.com/skitch 4) Tweetie. (free - ad supported - or $20) The best native Mac app for Twitterring. http://atebits.com/tweetie-mac http://atebits.com/tweetie-mac 5) TextMate. (~$54) It's handling of projects, bundles, etc. is excellent. http://macromates.com http://macromates.com 6) HTTP Client. (free) http://ditchnet.org/httpclient/ http://ditchnet.org/httpclient/ 7) OmniGraffle. ($100-$200) Excellent for constructing user flow diagrams. http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/OmniGraffle/ http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/OmniGraffle/ 8) The Hit List. ($50) It's one of the best GTD apps for the Mac. http://www.potionfactory.com/thehitlist/ http://www.potionfactory.com/thehitlist/ 9) TinkerTool. (free) For customizing OS X. http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html 10) Secrets. (free) For easy access to hidden application preferences. http://secrets.blacktree.com/ http://secrets.blacktree.com/ 11) Sequel Pro. (free) For accessing MySQL databases in a nice GUI. http://www.sequelpro.com/ http://www.sequelpro.com/ 12) Fluid. (free) If you have a commonly accessed site, Fluid is great to create a SSB (site-specific browser) for it. I have a Fluid SSB created for railsapi.com, which allows me to easily launch it with Quicksilver and start searching the Rails docs right away. http://fluidapp.com/ http://fluidapp.com/
- zimbabwe 17y agoI'm going to be a fuddy-duddy and say: most of these apps are not essential for the Mac. Lots of them are nice, but you can skip them entirely when you're just getting started. Here are the ones I consider absolute essentials for my daily work: MegaZoomer - http://ianhenderson.org/megazoomer.html http://ianhenderson.org/megazoomer.html - lets you full-screen zoom any application. That mixed with TextEdit gives you the best word processor you'll ever need. Quicksiler - linked all over - this will fill in every hole you have in your computer usage. I use it to fix a lot of shortcomings in iTunes, for instance, and while I don't use it as insanely as some people do, even light usage makes your life a lot easier. It's also a full-featured file browser, which is excellent. Perian - http://perian.org/ http://perian.org/ - makes your life a lot easier when you're watching videos or listening to music, without forcing a reliance on the ugly VLC. GlimmerBlocker - http://glimmerblocker.org/ http://glimmerblocker.org/ - Unless you use Firefox, this adds every feature you'll need to every browser you've got. (Firefox is an awful browser that rebuilds a lot of Mac features from the ground up, and so it isn't affected by this.) It blocks ads (selectively, so you can allow the ads you don't mind), blocks entire sites, and adds retroactive functionality to sites. The big one for me is the Youtube downloader. Growl - http://growl.info/ http://growl.info/ - This one's really easy to abuse, but if you set it to notify you of all the really important things - FTP file uploads and long processes and so on - then you get a very nice way of keeping yourself informed of all your computer's goings-on. Those are the ones that I absolutely need for my Mac. Here are the ones that are obscure-ish and rarely recommended and yet are terrific: Max - http://sbooth.org/Max/ http://sbooth.org/Max/ - converts every format but wma, so your library stays neat and organized without any complaints about iTunes. Freedom - http://macfreedom.com/ http://macfreedom.com/ - disables the Internet, so you can't procrastinate at all. FuzzyClock - http://www.objectpark.org/FuzzyClock.html http://www.objectpark.org/FuzzyClock.html - makes your clock much more humane. Chax - http://ksuther.com/chax/ http://ksuther.com/chax/ - Fixes a few things in iChat to make it an acceptable chat system (I really dislike Adium for a number of reasons).
- davi 17y ago(not free, but cheap) taskpaper http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper scrivener http://www.literatureandlatte.com/trial.html http://www.literatureandlatte.com/trial.html curio + small pen tablet http://www.zengobi.com/products/curio/ http://www.zengobi.com/products/curio/, http://www.wacom.com/bambootablet/bamboofun.php http://www.wacom.com/bambootablet/bamboofun.php
- quizbiz 17y agoWhat about... games? :P
- chris24 17y agoWorld of Goo is a must-have, even for non-gamers. It's makes for a nice break from doing actual work. ;) http://www.worldofgoo.com/ http://www.worldofgoo.com/
- bjelkeman-again 17y agoMultiwinia - RTS stick man slaughter. Somewhat heavy for a Mac Mini or the latest MacBook Air. Fast and fun. Not much resource management, you can get down to the fighting straight away. And for $19 you can't really go wrong. http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/multiwinia/ http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/multiwinia/
- juliend2 17y agoI just reinstalled my mac today. Here is what i installed so far : 1-quicksilver 2-iTerm (terminal. with tabs) 3-Photoshop CS3 (cs4 is slow on my macbook) 4-Transmit 5-DropBox client 6-Textmate 7-Git 8-The Hit List (best osx app for lists) 9-LimeChat (irc client)
- JoshRosen 17y agoGitx is a native OS X GUI for git. It comes with a nice command line tool, gitx, that works like gitk. http://gitx.frim.nl/ http://gitx.frim.nl/
- sreitshamer 17y agoNambu Twitter client. I like it much more than Tweetdeck.
- makecheck 17y agoSome of the things I use: - DragThing; you will never miss Apple's Dock, this is an absolutely essential desktop enhancement, e.g. to create multiple tabbed docks anywhere you want, with themes. - OmniWeb (now free); I've tried many web browsers, and I like this best. Safari engine. - MacTelnet (tabbed terminal). It now works for local programs and not just servers, so I use it instead of Terminal. - SnapzPro X (or alternatives), useful for doing more intelligent screenshots or video captures. - DesktopCalendar (by Takashi Hamada), a really nice use of space and very configurable. Also has a menu option. - Growl, for pretty and unobtrusive notification windows. This is actually really well supported by 3rd party applications. - SCPlugin, if you're a Subversion user; nice Finder integration.
- jgranby 17y agoI second OmniWeb. It's the best browser there is. The tab implementation is second to none, in particular the ability to discontiguously select multiple tabs. Site-specific preferences are also incredibly useful.
- travisjeffery 17y agoEditors: MacVim, Emacs.app (build from source `./configure --with-ns` -- f Aquamacs and last resort TextMate Torrent: uTorrent RSS: NetNewsWire PDF, Document Reader: Skim
- mwbrooks 17y ago+1 NetNewsWire
- pWneD 17y ago1. Quicksilver - There are already explanations on this and I don't like Spotlight that much. 2. MacPorts - If you are a developer or you're just an open-source lover, this is a must have app for you. It has 5811 open-source programs ready to install, easy and... open-source! ( which is good... ) 3. TexMate - My every day editor, I don't use another one besides this one. 4. Adium - For chatting. 5. pgAdmin - For PostgreSQL administration. I don't use MySQL that much. 6. Growl - Another must have for system notifications, I don't realy know why Apple hasn't put one in OS X yet. 7. OmniGraffle - For Visio projects and such. 8. Things - For task managing. 9. Tweetie - The best Twitter client I've ever found. 10. Transmission - For P2P file transfers. I don't like uTorrent very much. 11. AppZapper - To uninstall programs. When you delete an app some configuration files are left behind, with this program all the files related are also deleted. 12. Evernote - Well... to take notes! Even better if you have an iPhone. 13. VMWare Fusion - For virtualization 14. Scribbles - For those moments when you get inspired and just want to make some draws :) 15. Adobe - Photoshop and Dreamweaver between others are a must. 16. Teeworlds - Best game ever and... Open-Source!!!! 17. Toast Titanium - For recording CD's and DVD's. 18. ScreenFlow - To record your screen and make nice video editing These are not by "like" order, they're by the order I remembered them. I wouldn't recomend installing iTerm because Terminal.app does the job nicely and it has tabs as well. I'll had more if I remember some.
- zackattack 17y agoCyberduck for FTP. Colloquy for IRC. VLC for video. Growl for notifications.
- elidourado 17y agoEveryone is linking to Quicksilver. I am a former Quicksilver user, but I find it unbearably slow and bloated. Instead, I use Google Quick Search box, which does most of what Quicksilver does with much less bloat. http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/ http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/
- hbien 17y agoTerminal.app + Visor is a great combination for me since I use the command line so much.
- teilo 17y agoControllermate (http://www.orderedbytes.com/controllermate/ http://www.orderedbytes.com/controllermate/) - This is an outstanding program that allows you to customize almost any USB keyboard / mouse / controller / joystick to do exactly what you want, with a very clever and powerful graphical scripting environment. I have a Logitech Dual Action (with NO Logitech drivers instaled) wired up to switch spaces on the D-pad, volume on one joystick, screen brightness on the other. One button plays and pauses iTunes. I use it to add volume buttons to my Das Keyboard. No more crappy HID drivers. You can also create custom acceleration curves for mice.
- soundsop 17y agomacports (http://www.macports.org http://www.macports.org) for installing unix utilities that are not already included in OS X.
- philwelch 17y agoIf your file system ever gets corrupted, DiskWarrior. DiskWarrior will reliably maintain and rebuild your FS. It will work when fsck fails and is better than the other paid alternatives. It looks like (and is) a Mac OS 9 port, but it's the same filesystem so no worries. If your filesystem is ever, ever fucked, DW will save it if anything can. It costs $100, so don't buy until when you end up needing it. But at that moment, buy it (unless your data is worth less than $100, I guess).
- joechung 17y agoStuffit Expander.
- JoshRosen 17y agoI prefer The Unarchiver http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html
- vansteen 17y agoI've seen many time Unarchiver saying a archive was corrupted or was unable to decrypt with the right password. Now I use unrar in command line. (imported from macport) . Much better!
- ivankirigin 17y agoI actively use firefox (and camino + safari to have multiple sessions for the same site), iWork, tweetdeck, birdshot, itunes, last.fm, VLC, uTorrent, Quicktime pro, snaps x pro, skype, textmate, parallels (though switching to VMware), RescueTime, DropBox, and QuickBooks. About 40% are paid apps.
- scottymac 17y agoSome stuff I use that I didn't see mentioned: MenuMeters: http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/ http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/ Hyperspaces: http://hyperspacesapp.com/ http://hyperspacesapp.com/ Yojimbo: http://barebones.com/products/yojimbo/ http://barebones.com/products/yojimbo/ Leap: http://www.ironicsoftware.com/leap/ http://www.ironicsoftware.com/leap/
- pstinnett 17y agoJust adding in LittleSnapper for keeping screenshots of sites / designs I like and also Wallet for keeping track of my passwords.
- rw 17y agogcc (not installed by default)
- tommy_chheng 17y agoTextmate - Best text editor hands down. Cyberduck - FTP client.
- cericsmith 17y agoI just went through the same thing. Follow me on twitter as I explore the world of OSX and my adventures with all things "Hackintosh": @cericsmith Here's my list: 1Password -- Perhaps the greatest piece of Mac OSX software. You must try to believe it. Password storage/sync/creation/ID management at its finest. http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password Unison -- If Windows newsreaders hadn't stopped evolving around 1998, they might have come up with something like Unison in... 2150. http://www.panic.com/unison/ http://www.panic.com/unison/ MusicBrainz Picard -- For fixing the "Unknown Artist/Album" issues. http://musicbrainz.org/doc/PicardDownload http://musicbrainz.org/doc/PicardDownload BluePhone Elite -- Neat Smartphone/iPhone tricks with Bluetooth. Ever wanted to have your machine wake up or sleep when you were just out of range? This is an app for you. http://mirasoftware.com/BPE2/ http://mirasoftware.com/BPE2/ Toast Titanium 10 -- Sure, Leopard can burn discs... but Toast is much more than that, and it's elegance exceeds anything on Windows. http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/toast/titanium/overview.html http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/toast/titanium/overview.ht... iLife 09 -- iPhoto's face rec. is just cool, and iMovie beats the snot out of Movie Maker. http://www.apple.com/ilife/ http://www.apple.com/ilife/ Stuffit Deluxe 2009 -- Not as necessary as it used to be, but still nice to have available. http://my.smithmicro.com/mac/stuffit.html http://my.smithmicro.com/mac/stuffit.html Parallels 4 -- Many people like VMWare Fusion, but Parallels 4 has support for a lot more configuration of the VM -- support for up to 8 processors, the ability to have VM's start off of CD and/or Disk Image/ISO, is killer. http://www.parallels.com/ http://www.parallels.com/ Little Snitch -- knowing when your applications are "phoning home" is important. http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html DiskWarrior -- HFS+ disk maintanance package and more. Fix disk errors... http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html AppZapper -- Yes, theoretically uninstalling apps on the Mac is straight forward, but AppZaper gets all the flotsom and jetsom that would otherwise be left behind. Great for nuking preference files, etc. http://www.appzapper.com/ http://www.appzapper.com/ ClamXav -- Ok, we know that Mac's don't get virii, per se... but this cross-platform, donation-ware AV tool gives peace of mind when running random software you download from the Net. http://www.clamxav.com/ http://www.clamxav.com/ FileSpot -- Spotlight is nice, but FileSpot takes it to another level. http://mac.synthesisstudios.com/mac/filespot/about http://mac.synthesisstudios.com/mac/filespot/about GimmeSomeTune -- integrates with iTunes and pulls/updates album art and lyrics, and works with Growl. Updates iChat status and images based on what you're listening to. Sweet. http://www.eternalstorms.at/gimmesometune/ http://www.eternalstorms.at/gimmesometune/ HighLight -- Instantly add file(s) or folders to your Spotlight search index. http://homepage.mac.com/superpixel/highlight/ http://homepage.mac.com/superpixel/highlight/ SimpleComic -- a great comic PDF viewer. http://dancingtortoise.com/simplecomic/ http://dancingtortoise.com/simplecomic/ TED -- This program scours the usual suspects for new TV episodes and integrates with your favorite Torrent program to automatically download them! http://www.ted.nu/ http://www.ted.nu/ DropBox -- 2GB of free, sync'ed cloud storage for your Mac (or PC/Linux box). Incredible in conjunction with 1Password. http://www.getdropbox.com/install?os=lnx http://www.getdropbox.com/install?os=lnx The Unarchiver -- Ok, so you don't like Stuffit? This will pull apart almost anything. http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html Movist -- A media player based on ffmpeg/VNC that has a more polished UI than VNC. http://code.google.com/p/movist/ http://code.google.com/p/movist/ VNC -- open and play anything. Perian -- Add the ability to open and play most media formats that ffmpeg can handle inside of QuickTime. http://perian.org/ http://perian.org/ Pixelmator -- who needs Photoshop? This $50 application is the bees knees. Cool UI, great features. http://www.pixelmator.com/ http://www.pixelmator.com/ doubleTwist -- Part media manager, part file conversion utility. If you need those TV shows on your PSP, this can handle it. Notably, doesn't support iPhone (yet). http://www.doubletwist.com/dt/Home/Index.dt http://www.doubletwist.com/dt/Home/Index.dt MPlayer OSX Extended -- the benefits of Mplayer on OSX. More polished than VNC, more stable (at this point) than Movist. http://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/ http://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/ FreeDMG -- The ability to create Disk Images/.dmg files. http://www.kelleycomputing.net/freedmg/ http://www.kelleycomputing.net/freedmg/ Tweetie -- The newest and most controversial OSX Twitter program. http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/ http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/ Boxee -- a "10 foot interface" for managing your media and Internet content sources such as Hulu. http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/ http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/ SuperDuper -- quickly and easily clone your HFS drives. http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription... iWork 09 -- Pages is what Powerpoint will never be -- Fun. http://www.apple.com/iwork/ http://www.apple.com/iwork/
- sh1mmer 17y agoThere are lots of great suggestions here, one I haven't seen yet is Spirited Away. (http://drikin.com/spiritedaway/ http://drikin.com/spiritedaway/) This app hides app you haven't used for a little while so the app you are using currently is the most prominent thing on the screen. I find it really helpful to declutter my screen in a non-invasive way. You can also exclude things like video players and the like from being hidden.
- jedediah 17y agoCarbon Emacs
- appl3star 17y agoDeveloper: Coda, Cornerstone, TextWrangler or BBEdit, iTerm, ForkLift, Querious, Changes, iChm Web Designer: CSSEdit, Flux, Dreamweaver, xScope, Xyle Scope, Picturesque Researcher: Evernote, DevonThink Pro, ConceptDraw MindMap User: LaunchBar, Overflow, Little Snitch, Super Duper Web Junkie: 1password, Firefox, Tweetie, NetNewsWire, ClamXav, DoorStop Firewall, Net Monitor Freelancer: TimeLog & GrandCentral Photographer: Photoshop CSx, Portrait Professional, Aperture 2, GraphicConverter, PhotoReview
- abyssknight 17y agoQuicksilver (App launcher) Onyx (Maintenance scripts) Apple Developer Tools (Terminal/GCC/XCode) SubEthaEdit (Collaborative Editing) Textmate (Defacto standard editor) Cyberduck (SFTP Client) Perian (Codecs)
- vansteen 17y agoI've got my Macbook pro 6 months ago. The best thing I ever buy. I'm programming and I use to use a Windows and a FreeBSD box before. Here, some free and commercial softwares I use everyday: 1. Terminal: Visor - Quake-style terminal http://visor.binaryage.com http://visor.binaryage.com 2. Uninstaller: AppTrap http://konstochvanligasaker.se/apptrap/ http://konstochvanligasaker.se/apptrap/ 3. SFTP: http://www.expandrive.com/mac http://www.expandrive.com/mac 4. Quick remote filesharing: http://www.getdropbox.com http://www.getdropbox.com 5. IDEA: NetBeans or ZendStudio 6. Virtual machine: Parallels - http://www.parallels.com http://www.parallels.com 7. Text editor: TextEdit or TextWrangler - http://www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/ http://www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/ 8. VPN: The native OSX thing does the job 9. Mobile sync/Addressbook: iSync does the job (Use http://www.feisar.com/ http://www.feisar.com/ to find your mobile plugin if iSync doesn't have it natively) 10. SIP softphone: Telephone (works with Googlevoice+Gizmo5 and my local UK SIP provider) - http://code.google.com/p/telephone/ http://code.google.com/p/telephone/ 11. Notifier: Growl - http://growl.info/ http://growl.info/ 12. Movie player: VLC or Quicktime+Perian codecs - http://perian.org/ http://perian.org/ 13. Chat: Adium 14: Desktop display: GeekTool - http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/ http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/