William Bokunic’s Weblog

Mac OS X surprisingly comes with a lot of capable applications. It comes with a lot of stuff that would be on an essential Windows applications list, like a photo manager. But alas there are still many great Mac apps that I cannot live without. Here are what I feel are the top ten, in no particular order.

System Extension

• Stuffit Expander - Mac OS X doesn’t natively support RAR files. Stuffit Expander adds that support in a very elegant manner. Not only that but the previous Mac standard (.sit files) can no longer be opened in Mac OS X, so Stuffit Expander also has your back here.

• Perian - Mac OS X also lacks support for a lot of popular file formats, such as AVI and MKV. Perian will add support for these files as well as dozens of others. Perian isn’t a media player though, it’s simply a plugin for Quicktime. Alternatively you can go with VLC, but I’ve found that Perian is a better solution.

Utilities

• An alternative web browser - I’m not listing any one web browser here. Just get a second web browser and install it. This goes for any operating system. If your main web browser messes up what are you going to do without a backup? Personally I have three web browsers installed: Safari Beta 4, Omniweb and Camino. If Safari ever were to stop working I’d have two very excellent backups.

• iStat Menu - Being a power user I quickly want to know the state of my machine at all times. iStat Menu gives me that functionality by allowing me to add little items in the menu bar to indicate things such has how much memory I’m using, how much of my CPU is being used, etc. Get this application. It will save you a lot of time.

• OmniDiskSweeper - This is another very helpful system management tool. OmniDiskSweeper (ODS for short) will sweep any attached hard drive or partition and display in a very nice column view which files on your machine are taking up the most space. This is more useful for people on limited storage, like Mac Mini and Macbook owners are.

• Crossover - Sometimes you just can’t escape the Windows world, and for that there’s Crossover. Crossover allows you to run quite a few Windows applications in Mac OS X as if they were native apps. It doesn’t work for all Windows apps, but it works for many of them. If you need to use a Windows app, give the Crossover demo a try.

• 1Password - The built-in Keychain feature in Mac OS X, but if you want something far more powerful go with 1Password, 1Password organizes all of your passwords for various websites and lets you use a single password to log into these websites. So if you’re like me and use multiple passwords for different websites, 1Password will be a life savor.

Social

• Adium - I have an AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Gmail account. I don’t want to launch four different IM clients to log into those accounts. This is where Adium comes into play. It will easily let you log into all those accounts and more and display everything in a single contact list. Definitely a must have.

• Skype - Many people are now using this popular VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service. It’s great for calling family members who live far away, and makes for an excellent alternative to a landline phone. I’d highly recommend looking into it if you aren’t familiar with it.

• Twitterific - Many people are also using twitter. I’ve tried a lot of twitter apps for Mac OS X and none of them feel as nice and slick as twitterific. If you use twitter, grab this app.

There are many more applications I’d still recommend, but these are the core 10 I cannot live without.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 2:32 am and is filed under Applications, List, Mac OS X. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.