14 Mac OSX Apps I can't do without
Posted by rmp at 11:49 16th May 2008
I recently did a clean installation of my ppc powerbook, about 3 or 4 years' old. I was able to surreptitiously acquire a copy of Leopard , not yet officially supported by the systems group at Sanger . Moving from Panther this was a bit of a jump but everything went pretty smoothly. I chose to do a clean installation rather than an upgrade because I had so much cruft on the laptop I only wanted to be left with the things I actually used.
Reinstalling my non-O/S applications afterwards (especially those which I'd been version-marooned on, not being on the more common Tiger release) made me really appreciate the ones I actually use. In the order they're on my taskbar (no particular order) here are the apps I can't do without:
Microsoft_Remote_Desktop
Great application - unimaginably useful - I remote administer most of my extended family's computers with this (over SSH) now. The ability to mount local drives remotely is a blessing and it generally performs better than VNC which I also use for administering older PCs without the RDP service (primary WinXP Home).
Adium
In my opinion the best unified instant messenger client out there. It even comes with Twitter support.
Skype
Of course - everyone should be using something like this. I previously had X-Lite too but didn't tend to use it very much, most of my social network being on Skype.
Colloquy
A fantastic IRC client. I've fond memories of mIRC on Windows, BitchX and X-Chat being the other clients I use occasionally. I usually find myself in Colloquy for my IRC needs these days.
Firefox
Primarily for development. I still find it doesn't work briliantly for regular surfing but the development tools are unparalleled.
Camino
My day to day browser - the same engine as Firefox under the hood but better-integrated with the OSX control panel and preferences.
Audacity
The best, cross-platform, audio editor out there. WAV and MP3 support amongst other things. Simple and easy to use.
GIMP
Probably the closest free thing to Photoshop. Enough said..
VLC
The VideoLAN client is my preferred video player. It supports all the formats I've ever thrown at it and has shoutcast support amongst other things, too. MPlayer is another one I use occasionally too as I find the subtitle support better.
humaxGui
At home I have a Humax PVR and this app provides file transfer on/off it. It's *really* slow but it works just like an FTP client.
Aquamacs_Emacs
The time I don't spend in a web browser or terminal I spend in Aquamacs. In my opinion the port of Emacs to OSX with the best spread of features.
Neooffice
I used to prefer OpenOffice but it had to run under X. I started using Neooffice as after the reinstall I noticed it had been ported to Openoffice 2 which has much better foreign file support. Neooffice runs natively (though it is Java).
SSH Keychain
Open virtually all the time I manage all of my remote work and administration via SSH keychain, particularly the tunnel management. It could all be done using command-line ssh and the .ssh/config if pushed but I like the auto-restart and convenience of having it in a desktop application.
Quicksilver
Shortcuts for everything and everything via its shortcut. Quicksilver is impressive and I know I've hardly scratched the surface with the things it can do.
Looking through that list there aren't many other applications I have which I couldn't do without - MacPorts is worth a mention, as are the MySQL_GUI_Tools and Processing plus various other drivers and applications
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