17 Must Have Mac Apps
Tagged as: Sep 25Well 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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
- 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.
- Adium - The Mac OS X port of the popular Gaim (now Pidgin) chat client.
- 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
- 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.
- Aquamacs - My favorite text editor (Emacs) lives as a fully native port to Mac OS X. Nice. Really, really nice.
- iTerm - Some nice features (tabbed sessions, bookmarks) to have on top of the default Terminal.
- Media
- 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…
- VLC Media Player - This media player can handle anything and everything (okay almost) that you throw at it.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!).
if you like open office, you might want to check out neoOffice, which is ported to run natively on osx. running stuff in x11 just sorta gets on my nerves sometimes.
good call on appcleaner. i’ll have to d/l that one.
firefox > camino.
@william
Good call on the NeoOffice. I’d heard of it before, but never tried it (for obvious reasons). I believe that Open Office is currently developing an Aqua version, but it’s unreleased yet so NeoOffice is appropriate for those who, like you, get annoyed with X11.
Do you get annoyed by X11 because the shortcut keys don’t work? I get annoyed about that sometimes, but I ultimately get more annoyed at how non-intuitive some of the Apple shortcuts are. Return changes a filename? Ridiculous. Nothing’s going to be perfect, and I can always be more nit-picky.
Have you tried all/any of the other applications that I posted here? Do you have must-have apps to add?
@derek
hahah, whenever i use a windows computer, i wonder why i can’t rename things using return. old habit i suppose.
if i recall correctly, the shortcuts in x11 work, but they just require the ctrl-key instead of the command-key, yes? at least that’s what i remember doing in gimp. but yeah, i couldn’t stand going back and forth.
quite a few of these programs are actually new to me. the programming ones, especially. most of the web and media ones i’ve used, though. been meaning to give aquamacs a whirl. might have to use monolingual, too!
haven’t done this on the macbook yet, but i’d recommend installing applejack, just in case you need to run maintenance stuff w/o going through the gui. i also have onyx on my computer, but i rarely use it. i guess it could be handy. oh, also, if you ever pick up some anti-theft software, there should be an open firmware password utility on your install dvd. little bit of extra security.
@william
Well I think that it’s strange to have return (probably one of the more commonly and accessible buttons) to mean “rename” because the usual action for a file is to open it, right?
Oh and I’d say that Quicksilver is an awesome program. I’m only just getting into it, but it has a way to turn around your workflow. There are pre-written scripts to do all kinds of neat things! And it’s excellent because it goes through a single interface. Have you tried it out much?
Hm well I’ll keep that applejack in mind, but I don’t think that’ll i’ll be using it. Have you found it to be very useful to you in the past?
I just found another interesting one. Check out RCDefaultApp which will let you change the defaults for any application. It seemed harder than necessary for me to do it otherwise (and telling Finder to always open a particular type didn’t seem to have the desired effect).
What do you mean an open firmware password? I’m not sure I even understand what that would be. I might get some security apps. There are a couple of good, interesting ones out there.
plan on getting leopard? it has some really cool features. check it out on the apple website if you haven’t already.
@ring
That’s a good question. I’m not sure that I’ll upgrade to leopard for awhile. The things that it has that are interesting all seem to be reproducible in (understandably) less beautiful ways. Time Machine looks really nice but is rather unnecessary as long as I backup like I should be doing. Spaces is nice because it’s integrated but its function essentially exists for me as Virtue Desktops. The most intriguing features are the new Finder and the Quick Open. Quick Open is not a new idea, but it would be nice to have. I know that it’s useful for me on my Ubuntu system anyways. Are you planning on upgrading?
Oh and what do you think of my list of Mac apps?
Textwrangler is another good text editor =) for those of u that are fans of BBEdit