10 Essential Free Mac Apps
I have a buddy that is purchasing his first Mac this weekend and it got me thinking about the kinds of applications that I recommend should be on his machine in order to have a smooth switch and get the most out of his new Mac. Here are a few apps that always find a home on every Macintosh I work on:
Quicksilver - absolutely essential. Once you learn to use Quicksilver to launch your apps and you’ll never dig through the Applications folder in the finder again. And that’s just the beginning. Find out more about how to use Quicksilver by watching Episode12 or Episode 17 of Macbreak.
Flip4mac - Nobody that owns a Mac really wants anything that has anything to do with Microsoft on their machine. Thankfully this app isn’t made by the boys in Redmond so it works really well. This app makes QuickTime work with Windows Media files - a video format which is used by many, many Web sites.
Perian - the Swiss Army Knife for QuickTime - meaning it’ll make QuickTime play files that it normally wouldn’t, like FLV. What this means is that you can download flash videos from Google Video & YouTube and actually be able to use them almost anywhere you can use QuickTime.
Firefox - Safari is a great, fast browser, but Firefox needs to be on your Mac. I use it as my everyday browser and with plugins for web development, del.icio.us bookmarks and ad blockers it makes browsing productive.
Cyberduck - I know a lot of Mac users love Panic’s Transmit application for FTP but I’m a big fan of Cyberduck. It works consistently and plays really nice with many of the other apps I use day-to-day.
Growl - Growl is a system notification app. It alerts you to various events that are happening on your machine. I use it to alert me to new mail and inform me of ftp upload completion (it plays really nice with Cyberduck, Mail.app, Adium, iPhoto (w/FlickrExport) and NetNewsWire
NetNewsWire - NetNewsWire is an awesome RSS reader. I use it to keep up on the news sites and blogs I read. It uses NewsGator to sync what I have and have not read between the various machines I use.
SuperDuper! - SuperDuper! is a painless backup & recovery software. During the mess that was the upgrade to OS X 10.5 I used SuperDuper to backup and restore my system more times than I wish to remember. It creates a disk image that is bootable from any firewire drive. It’s basic functions are free but it’s well worth the money for the extended functionality.
Handbrake - A DVD, ahem, backup tool. You know, for all those DVD’s you have that you’d like to have digital copies of so you can, um, watch them on your computer, without actually having to use the discs. It’s really great if you have an AppleTV, like me.
Adium - Adium is a multi-protocol chat client- meaning it works with AIM, Google Talk & Yahoo! and many more. It can be buggy, but it’s great for having one place to chat with everyone.
Widgets
Technically these aren’t really applications, maybe web apps, but most are just graphics with javascript, HTML and CSS. I don’t use them a ton but these two have found a special place on my Macs.
- Delivery Status Widget - works with all kinds of shippers and notifies you of updates via Growl
- Jared: The Butcher of Song - every once in a while you need to be serenaded - this is not for those times.
What about you?
Do you have any apps that are must haves on all your Macs? Have a widget you can’t live without? Drop me a comment and let me know.
Thanks for the list. Some of those same app seem to pop up on other blogs when people talk about what they really like. I’ve found iusethis.com for a source of popular apps and such. Off the top of my list would be the Unsanity products HERE, of course, as you’ve listed it already, Flip4Mac, and a few other good ones…an excellent vital info database, info.xhead, and another one by the Flip4Mac people, Drive In. And, I agree, Superduper is excellent as well.
No problem Antonio - I had yet hear of Drive In - seems like a great app and it would probably sell a lot of hard drives to store those big DVD disk images.
At this point though I’m a huge fan of Handbrake - for anything that Handbrake “can’t” rip in I use a program called Mac the Ripper - it will do a lot of what Drive In looks like it does except it only creates the image, so no playback on it. I use Mac the Ripper to pull in the main feature and bypass any copy protection. It takes some time but it usually works pretty well. I didn’t include it on the list because I only have to use it occasionally, unlike the others on the list which I use almost daily, in addition to that the download link doesn’t seem to be working.
Thank Josh. Getting acquainted well with my new mac!!! It’s FUN!!! I really appreciate the advice on the aps. Look foward to seeing what this baby can do!!! Cya!
Great list Josh! I use Filezilla (FTP) now that it’s gone Mac, having been a long time Filezilla user on PC. I never did try Cyber Duck.
You should also add NeoOffice to this list (neooffice.org), for a great free alternative to MS Office/iWork.
Yeah Josh, Drive In would definitely boost sales of hard drives. I like the way it makes complete imaged copies in the original resolution. The organization and ability to download artwork for each title, works well. Lots less demand on my Powerbook battery, too, as well as a cooler running machine. It only takes about 15 minutes to image a complete DVD with all the extras!
Mac the Ripper is good if I want to burn a disc, but I really haven’t used Handbrake…I’ll have to give it a look.
The other topic I’m interested in right now is the comparison between Adobe’s Lightroom and Apple’s Aperture. I get the feeling that, so far, people prefer Aperture, but some say it might be similar to the Beta vs. VHS war. If you hear of anything worthy, post it……..ciao
Did ja know that I switched gigs? I’m getting involved with this new fangled thing called the internet. Interesting stuff…you can look up the yellow pages online! Imagine that!