17 Must Have Mac Apps

Sep 25

Well after Unboxing My MacBook Pro, I got right on getting my new computer setup the way that I wanted it. A big part of this is downloading and installing applications that I want to use. Macs are often purported to be ready to use out of the box. While generally true, there are many areas where I already knew of a application that I preferred to use over the installed one (if the installed functionality even existed). For those interested, I’ve included a list of the programs that I installed. Check it out and maybe you’ll find something useful for yourself!

Oh and I grouped the applications into categories so adding up the number to 17 might take a little bit of mental math on your part. Then again, you could just take my word for it.

• Utilities

  1. Quicksilver - A very popular application that allows you to access a lot of things through a single interface. It allows you to treat things as objects, which is very cool and very useful.

  2. Virtue Desktops - A virtual desktop application that has cool effects. Unfortunately this project is no longer under development because of the impending Spaces feature of the next version of Mac OS X (Leopard). It’s still a good one, though.

  3. smcFanControl - Monitor and increase the speed of your fans. This is pretty useful to use on my MBP because even though it seems stable, it can get hot. I raise the fan RPM for higher load situations.

  4. Monolingual - On suggestions, I realized that there was unnecessary space taken up by localization files. Found this easy-to-use program that will remove the localization files for all of your applications! Saved a couple of GB.

  5. AppCleaner - When you delete things on a Mac, they give you the impression that you’re completely done. That there’s no hassle of “uninstalling” programs like in other operating systems. But that’s not entirely true. They will actually leave things behind. Use this free application to completely remove applications when you want to get rid of them!

• Productivity

  1. Open Office - This free cross-platform suite of office programs is great! This requires that X11 be installed as well, but in truth this is an excellent substitute for purchasing Microsoft’s suite. Check it out at least before purchasing MS Office for a large amount of money (compared to free).

• Web

  1. Firefox - The (now) ubiquitous open-source web browser is a must. I would try Camino (and I still might), but I love the extensions on Firefox too much at this point.

  2. Adium - The Mac OS X port of the popular Gaim (now Pidgin) chat client.

  3. CyberDuck - A great FTP and SFTP browser. If you don’t know what FTP and SFTP are, then you won’t need this, but if you do then this is absolutely a good application to look into.

• Programming

  1. Xcode Developer Tools - A necessary first step if you want to develop applications for Mac OS X. It’s an Integrated Development Environment that I’ve only tinkered with to make some sample apps but with which I fully intend to use in the future.

  2. Aquamacs - My favorite text editor (Emacs) lives as a fully native port to Mac OS X. Nice. Really, really nice.

  3. iTerm - Some nice features (tabbed sessions, bookmarks) to have on top of the default Terminal.

• Media

  1. GIMP for Mac OS X - The best full-featured, open-source image modification program I know. Needed to install X11 from the Install DVD, but that’s no big deal. Don’t think that they’re going to make a Cocoa version of this, but I just found GTK+ for Mac OS X so that GTK+ apps (like GIMP) can run the apps without X11. Maybe I’ll try to see if I can help out with that project…

  2. VLC Media Player - This media player can handle anything and everything (okay almost) that you throw at it.

  3. iRecord - Going to (haven’t yet) use this program to schedule and use my MBP as a Digital Video Recorder through my cable box. What does that mean? Hopefully being able to record HD content to my MBP! VLC is necessary for this task as well.

  4. Audacity - An excellent program for recording and modifying audio. Pretty necessary for me right now since I’m in the process of digitizing a good-sized vinyl record collection.

  5. Handbrake - A DVD ripper. Never used, but have heard lots about. Will be useful if I want to watch a DVD without taking the DVD with me.

I’ll probably have another post about getting interested in setting myself up with programs that will help in utilizing cross-platform applications. Let me know if you have any others to add, and I’ll consider using it if it suits me. Found any of these to be useful and you hadn’t heard of them before? I’d love to hear (and I’m sure the developers of the applications would too!).