Geekviews

Since purchasing an original Mac mini about a year ago, I’ve come to realize and appreciate how elegant OS X is, to the point where I’m planning on switching over fully once the Intel-based Mac workstations are released. The following is a collection of free applications that make OS X even more pleasurable to use. I’ve tried each one out and added it to my virtual toolbox. This isn’t intended to be an exhaustive list of software, just an easy, one-stop-shop for software suggestions. I hope you find them useful.

Many of these sites accept PayPal donations so if you find an app particularly useful, why not donate a couple of bucks to the author?

Anti-Virus

• ClamX is an excellent virus scanner based on Clam Antivirus.

Benchmarking

• Xbench is a useful system benchmarking utility.

Chat Clients

• Adium X is my favourite Mac chat client and allows you to connect to AIM, ICQ, MSN and others.
• Fire is also pretty good, but tends to be updated less than Adium X
• Gizmo allows free Internet telephone calls.
• Skype provides voice and video chat.

Email Client

In case you don’t want to use Apple’s excellent Mail.app, you may want to give Thunderbird a whirl. It also includes news and RSS readers.

• Thunderbird email client.

FTP Clients

• Cyberduck supports OS X’s Keychain and Rendezvous.
• Fugu is a front-end for OS X’s built-in Secure FTP.

Games and Emulators

• MacMAME is the “Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, for those times when you want to play Pac Man or Donkey Kong.
• Mugrat is a Colecovision emulator.
• Solitaire XL gives you Solitaire on your Mac, in case you miss the PC version…

Image Viewers and Editors

• LiveQuartz is an image editor built on Quartz.
• VitaminSee is a fast image viewer.

Launch Bars

Launch bars are kind of like Windows’ Start menu. All of these work well and provide slightly different functionality, so choose the one that suits your needs.

• Butler is one of my favourites as it gives you quick access to your bookmarks.
• Quicksilver is a favourite among Mac users due to its power and extensibility.
• TigerLaunch is the first launch bar I tried. Simple and no frills.
• XMenu is similar to TigerLaunch.

Note-Taking and Text Editing

• TextWrangler is a free text editor from Bare Bones Software. You even get a discount on the BBEdit if you download it!
• VoodooPad Lite is a cool wiki-like note taking application.

Office Software and Word Processing

• NeoOffice/J is an office suite based on OpenOffice.org and doesn’t require X11.
• OpenOffice.org is an office suite that requires X11.
• Abiword is a standalone word processor.

RSS Viewers

• NetNewsWire Lite is a stripped down but still very functional version of NetNewsWire.
• Vienna is another RSS reader with many features.

System Monitoring and Tweaking

• AppleJack is a more advanced tool for troubleshooting problems with your Mac.
• MenuMeters provides all sorts of information on network, hard drive, CPU and memory status.
• OnyX allows to you to perform cleanup and maintenance on your Mac, and gives you access to some of OS X’s hidden features and settings.
• SMARTReporter is a great utility for checking drive status and will warn you of impending drive failure.
• TinkerTool provides access to additional settings in OS X.
• Tweak Freak lets you tweak lots of OS X’s settings
• Yasu automatically runs scripts to keep your Mac in tip top shape.
• Preferential Treatment ensures your preferences are properly set.

TV Schedule

• Fat Cat Zap2It client gives you TV listings on your desktop.

Utilities

• Handbrake Lite copies your DVDs to your 5th generation iPod so you can watch your movies on the go!
• iBackup is a nice application for backing up files from your Mac. It’s a little buggy, but when it works it does a great job.
• Paparazzi! is a handy application for capturing screen shots of web pages. It’s very useful when you want a shot of a page that scrolls off the screen.
• Senuti lets you copy files off your iPod and back onto your Mac.

Weather

You might not want to switch back to the Dashboard every time you want to check the weather. In that case, check out these free weather apps.

• Meteorologist sits in your menu bar and displays current weather and extended forecasts.
• WeatherDock is similar in functionality to Meteorologist.
• WeatherMenu is similar to the others but doesn’t provide weather for my exact city.

Web Browsers

Not surprisingly, most of these browsers are based on Mozilla…

• Camino is a Mac-only browser based on Mozilla.
• Firefox is the favourite browser of many Internet users, also based on Mozilla
• Flock is a “social” browser based on Mozilla.
• Mozilla is the granddaddy of them all, and my browser of choice under Windows. It’s actually a suite that includes email and an HTML editor, if you want to get technical.
• Opera is one of two browsers listed here that isn’t based on Mozilla.
• SeaMonkey is the next generation of Mozilla.
• Shiira is based on Web Kit, the open source framework behind OS X’s Safari browser.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 19th, 2006 at 1:12 am and is filed under Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.