My Mac Software List

You know, since I got my MacBook Pro last year, I’ve become a total Mac convert. I bought Neela a MacBook Pro. I bought a Mac Mini as my desktop, replacing a huge custom built PC tower. I even bought another Mac Mini for my entertainment center, to watch digital media.

And I’ve installed a lot of software. And I’ve removed a lot of software. And some sits around being unused.

Well, here are my lists of Mac software I use, recommend, and why – in no particualr order, just as it comes to my head. Keep in mind, this all on top of the standard Mac OS X software, including iLife ’08.

Stuff everyone should have: (Don’t complain, it’s all free, but you should donate)

• Smultron – Free – Text Editor. You have to have a text editor. OS X’s built-in TextEdit is fine, but Smultron gives you code highlighting, indenting, tag completion, and SO much more.
• Quicksilver – Free – Launcher application and much more. Use it to find and launch an application, take shortcuts to common tasks like sending an email, or use one of the myriad plugins to extend your favorite application. (I use it to create Remember the Milk tasks all the time). It can index your entire computer so you can find files. Just install it and definitely go through some of the screencasts – I learned a lot through the screencasts, which really opened my eyes to the power of Quicksilver.
• Adium – Free – Instant Messaging aggregator tool. Yes, iChat is nice, and I love the screen share, video chat, and audio chat. But most of the time, I just need to IM with someone on one of 5 of the networks. Adium lets me connect to all of them, combine multiple listings of a person to a single contact, and it’s actually more intuitive than iChat because all my contacts are in a single list.
• UnRarX – Free – You’re going to have RAR files you have to deal with at some point. If you’re not trying to create RAR files, but just extract the contents, this is a great little app that just works easily and well.
• Skitch – Free (in beta) – Screen capture & image sharing utility. Great options for capturing the screen, including timed shots. You can also quickly share the shots via your mySkitch site, or .Mac site, all from within Skitch.
• FireFox – Free – Web Browsing. Duh. Just do it.
• VLC (Video LAN Client) – Free – Video playback. Great compatibility with every format I’ve come across; pretty reliable. Anytime you go searching for how you should playback a video file (on any platform, really) people will always say VLC.
• Perian – Free – Along the same lines as VLC, Perian adds a bunch of codecs to Quicktime, allowing you to use Quicktime for most video playback. VLC may be more efficient and reliable, but Quicktime (and Front Row) are nice to look at and to use.
• Cyberduck – Free – File transfer utility. Great, just great. Provides all the functionality you want, doesn’t disappoint.

Kinda specific stuff:

• XBMCPlex – Free – Media Center software. A must have replacement for Front Row if you plan to use your Mac as a media center. Works with the Apple Remote. Get xTV, the Apple TV skin for XBMC and you’re all set.
• iWork – $70 – Apple’s office suite. Provides you with a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation applications. Really user-friendly, really easy to use. Great templates out of the box. Nice layout options. Love it. Can’t use it enough. (Mostly because no one else at work uses it)
• MarsEdit – $29.95 – Blogging software. If you blog on your Mac, you’ll love this app. It’s missing WYSIWYG functionality, but it has everything else: it’s scriptable, calls external editors, and works with most blogging sites/software. (None of the blogging software out there has WYSIWYG if it connects with any blogging services)

Truly specialized stuff:

• Parallels – $80 – Virtual machine for running Windows or Linux side-by-side with OS X. If you’re just making the transition from Windows to the Mac, this is a must-have. I found it hard to make a clean, fresh break from Windows. But I was able to transition to all the Mac apps and not lose productivity by using the Windows apps I was accustomed to. See also: VMWare Fusion
• Crossover – $60 – Another solution for running Windows software on your Mac, using the open-source Wine Windows emulation software. Crossover provides a GUI for installing common (and supported) Windows applications. The biggest drawback is usually that the graphics in a Crossover-installed application will not render very quickly. But it reduces your memory overhead from running full-fledged Windows (512MB to 1GB+) to just the application itself (likely less than 100MB). I’m a big fan of Crossover.
• VisualHub – $23.32 – Video conversion. Takes in pretty much any format and spits out a huge array of formats (AVI, MP4, M4V, MOV, WMV, etc.). Gets rid of all the complexity and you just have to choose the output quality you want. See also: Handbrake for DVD-to-AVI conversion.
  Techspansion is no longer developing or selling VisualHub.

Alright. Well that’s it for now. I’ll try to keep this list updated, as life goes on.

Got some favorite apps you think should be on the “gotta have it” list? Tell me in the comments.

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