This is a fairly generic guide to most of the software that I feel is essential for an Apple Macintosh. It isn’t exhaustive, extensive, authoritative, or any other “-ive”, but it may be a good place for you to start if you are new to Macs. Everything is free or has a trial version.
Why? Because I just spent the better part of a couple hours writing an email to a friend who just switched from Windows, and I figure maybe it will be helpful to others as well. And I wish I would have had a simple guide like this when I started a few years ago. (I’m sure they are out there, I probably just didn’t look for them.)
Here we go, in absolutely no particular order …
iStat Menus
I like iStat Menus a lot. They give you data about available disk space, fan speeds, internal temperatures, network activity, and a nice replacement for the default clock.
http://www.islayer.com/index.php?op=item&id=28
Price: Free
Twitterific
This is the Twitter client that I use. Not useful unless you are using Twitter. Hopefully you’ll start using Twitter at some point, though.
http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific
Price: Free with ads, $15 for version without ads — I use the free version as the ads are not annoying at all
Adium
Adium is a instant message client. With your Gmail account you can use the Jabber protocol to chat with people. Also supports every other client including AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, and many others.
Price: Free
Skim
Skim is a PDF viewer. Much better than the default Preview app, Skim allows you to bookmark your spot in a PDF file as well as annotate the document. This is a great app for reading the PDF versions of the manuals that come with most applications these days. I’m usually pissed off at work on my Windows machine when I’m reading PDF files, wishing there was a version of Skim for Windows, which there is not.
http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/
Price: Free
Flickr Uploadr
The Uploadr tool from Flickr is a great way to import photos to your Flickr account without having to use the web interface. Recommended if you are going to post photos to Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/help/tools/
Price: Free
Google Earth
What can I say? This one is just fun. I bet you’ve used it, but know that there is also a version for your Mac.
Price: Free
iStumbler
(Only useful for laptops.) iStumbler is a cool tool if you take your Mac out and about and need to search for a WiFi signal. Shows you signal strength, whether or not it is an open network, etc. This is a much better alternative to the built-in tool that comes with OSX.
Price: Free
Nocturne
Nocturne is a very simple tool that just changes your entire display to a dark, monochromatic mode. You can also use a red tint. This is for viewing your Mac at night when all the lights are out. Pictures look a little funny, but text is very easy to read under low-light conditions.
http://docs.blacktree.com/nocturne/nocturne?DokuWiki=41f3b94c84707e7000ecff1a295b5ceb
Price: Free
TextWrangler
TextWrangler is a basic text editor. Text as in plain text. No fancy formatting, no tricks, just text. Even though you may not use this very much, it’s a good idea to have it around in case you ever need it. I prefer it over the default TextEdit app that is bundled with every Mac.
http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/
Price: Free
Unplugged
(Only useful for laptops.) Another single-purpose program. It tells you if your computer becomes unplugged while you are using it. This may not seem important, but with the MagSafe power cords these days, it’s actually quite easy to accidentally jar the power coupler loose and not notice it until your battery runs out. Unplugged works best with Growl. It should prompt you to download and install Growl, and you should definitely do that. (I think Adium recommends Growl as well.)
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/29478
Price: Free
Slim Battery Monitor
(Only useful for laptops.) This is a replacement for the built-in battery monitor. I like it better because it takes up less space in the menu bar and offers a few more features than the default monitor.
http://www.orange-carb.org/SBM/
Price: Free
Pixelmator
Pixelmator is a sort of Photoshop app, but not as powerful. It is written in pure Cocoa (the latest development framework for OSX) and takes advantage of all the Core Graphics features in OSX. If you want to do light image manipulation, Pixelmator is a good choice. Note that if you only want to do red eye reduction, adjust levels, crop, etc., you can do all of that in iPhoto. You can demo Pixelmator to make sure it is right for you.
Price: $59
SuperDuper!
Get this. Period. It is the best backup software out there in my opinion. There is a free version, but the free version doesn’t let you do incremental backups, and you will want to do those. Personally, I would skip Time Machine (the built in backup software), but you can use both Time Machine and SuperDuper! in conjunction with one another. Time Machine is incredibly painful and silly if you want to restore your entire system. Get SuperDuper! and make sure you are doing backups.
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
Price: $27.95
1Password
This is another one that I feel no Mac user should be without. It is a password manager, so it will remember all of your passwords for various sites, and will also keep track of credit card information and auto-populate it into a web page for you. One of the best ways to protect your online identity is to make sure you use secure passwords and never use the same password twice! 1Password will automatically generate passwords for you and then store them for future reference. When the time comes to log in to YouTube, you just click the Restore button in your browser and select the identity you wish to use. This is especially handy for sites where you may have multiple accounts, such as MySpace. The first thing I did after I got 1Password was went and changed every single password to something unique. If one site gets hacked and the password gets out, it isn’t useful to the attacker because that password isn’t used anywhere else. Pretty nice!
http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password
Price: $34.95
Flip4Mac
This is pretty much required. You need it to play WMV (Windows) video files in your Quicktime player. The web will be a very annoying place if you don’t have this.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx
Price: Free
VLC
An alternative video player. If Quicktime and Flip4Mac won’t play it, then VLC might. I don’t use this unless I have to, but I have it around in case I need it.
Price: Free
iWork ’08
The iWork suite from Apple includes Pages (word processing), Numbers (spreadsheet), and KeyNote (presentation software). It’s a solid app and I very much prefer it to Microsoft Office. If you need to do anything like a résumé, Pages is going to be the place to do it. Numbers blows the doors off of Excel in almost every way for which people use a modern spreadsheet (which, interestingly, isn’t necessarily number-crunching).
Price: $79
Quicksilver
I really like Quicksilver and can’t imagine using a Mac without it, but you may not feel the same way. Quicksilver is mostly a task launcher — a way to launch programs from the keyboard without having to use the mouse. For example, I type ⌘ + Spacebar and it brings up a little menu in the middle of the screen. I start typing “Di”, press enter, and the Dictionary application is displayed. So I’ve basically launched Dictionary.app with 4 keystrokes, instead of having to go to the Finder, go to Applications, scroll down, then double-click Dictionary.app. Very much a timesaver if you like using keyboard shortcuts. Quicksilver will also do a lot more (and I mean a lot more!), but mostly I use it for launching programs.
Price: Free
SpanningSync
This is the last one I’ll mention, and I only mention it because it is so incredibly useful. SpanningSync will synchronize your iCal and gCal (Google) calendars. Why is this useful? Because gCal is really a superior calendar application in almost every way, but it is nice to be able to edit appointments locally and take advantage of the iCal application integration built in to OSX. I believe there is a free trial available. Obviously this is not useful for people who don’t use Google’s calendar.
Price: $25 per year or $65 for a lifetime subscription
(Note: I use SpanningSync in conjunction with Google’s Outlook synchronizer application to achieve a Zen-like state of calendar bliss between my work and home computers. I can edit an appointment anywhere and it will show up on all of my calendars. Google’s sync app is free.)
.Mac
Sigh … OK, one more. This one is really not necessary at all, but it may be useful for some people. This is a service from Apple that gets you 10GB of online storage, syncing features, services like Back to My Mac (a remote access solution I do not use, that I hear is fraught with configuration problems), and an email address. Note that your 10GB of space needs to be split up between email storage and other online file storage. It is advertised as a place where you can keep the contents of your home directory, for example, but my home directory is 45GB right now, so obviously that won’t work for everyone. The only thing I really like about this service is that it makes publishing photos and web pages from iPhoto and iWeb incredibly easy. It should probably be a lot cheaper than it is. 30GB is the maximum amount of space they will give you (for a price). A 60-day trial is available.
Price: Starts at $99.95 per year (Yikes!)
Others?
There are of course many, many other applications out there, but most of those are specialty apps that you have to really want or need (Aperture, Photomatix Pro, OmniFocus, OmniOutliner Pro, Hazel, Scrivener, VisualHub, Transmit, Coda, CandyBar, Audio Hijack Pro, Times … just to name a few!). I also didn’t mention Firefox, because I assume you already know about that, and Safari is a pretty decent browser.
Disagree? Have an Opinion?
Great! I’d love to hear it. Email me, dave AT vander — wall DOT org (minus the dash), and let me know, or just post a comment here. Note that you need to be a registered TypeKey user to leave comments. Sorry, Charlie.
Enjoy your Mac!