Must have Mac Apps
January 22nd, 2008
A coworker was asking me some questions about the Mac, he had just received his new ThoughtWorks MacBook Pro. As a partial answer, here is my list of must have applications for the Mac. I have divided them into two categories – free and not free.
Free Apps
- QuickSilver – the definitive time saving app getting things done without doing them
- Growl – displays messages directly on the screen in a little transparent window
- Adium – Instant Message app that works with just about every protocol out there today
- Chicken of the VNC – excellent VNC client
- iStumbler – for finding WiFi hotspots
- NeoOffice – OS X implementation of OpenOffice.org (a Microsoft Office replacement)
- xCode – Apple’s IDE, this gives you C compilers and other tools you will need for compiling things like Ruby gems
- SvnX – Subversion Client (if you don’t want to use the command line)
- iSquint – converts just about any video format into iTunes, Apple TV, and iPod compliant video
- MenuMeters – puts a set of graphs in the menu bar that show you what your CPU, Memory, Networks connections, Disks are doing
- Perian – added codecs for playing back non quicktime compliant audio and video files
Not Free
- TextMate – the only editor for the Mac
- Transmit – FTP/SFTP client
- Omnigraffle – Visio replacement for creating diagrams
- World of Warcraft – I think this one goes without saying
That is all I can think of right now, as more come to me, I will add them.
Categories: Apple Mac, Miscellanous
Hey Chris,
A pretty good list, I will need to try out iStumbler and I Squint.
One thing that I quite like is Witch: http://www.manytricks.com/witch/
It gives you more of a windows style of alt tabbing, which I perfer, as I may have several textmate instances open that I need to switch between.
I also like using Aurora for a alarm clock:
http://metaquark.de/aurora/ It’s free and has a very nice simple interface.
The one app that may not be as necessary in leopard, that was needed in tiger is QuickSilver. Apple made great improvements to spotlight with leopard, so much so that I haven’t personally had a reason to install quicksilver as of yet. However that is my personal experience (YMMV).
The only other thing that I would mention, that may be too ruby centric is autotest. Autotest + Growl is one of the best tools I have come across for doing TDD.
Hi Nolan,
Witch looks interesting. In terms of windows and tabbing, I have gotten used to Command-Tab to switch between applications and Command-Back quote (Tildy) to switch between windows within an application. However, for a new Mac user, I can see how Witch would be a big help.
I also use Aurora as my alarm clock when I am on the road.
One more app that has become essential for traveling is Noise a pink noise generator that helps block out strange hotel sounds at night. (of course, Noise and Aurora don’t really play well together
)
I did not know about Command Tildy, thanks!
Text Wrangler is a useful text editor if you don’t want to fork out for TextMate, Delicious Library (not free) I found very handy for keeping track of my DVD collection, VLC is most handy if you have DVDs from a variety of regions.
Also, I stopped using Quicksilver because – is mucho used in Eclipse, and with Tiger spotlight is very nearly there anyways