Mac OS Goodies

Here are some of what I have found to be very useful, so far. Enjoy!

Essentials:

  • Adium: an IM client like no other. Powered by libgaim! (Free)
  • Aperture: Digital Asset Management for photos and more.
  • Transmission: Cross-platform BitTorrent Client (Free)
  • BluePhoneElite: Allows you to send and receive SMS (and calls) via your Mac.
  • Chmox: A Windows CHM (Compiled HTML Help file) Reader. (Free)
  • Firefox: Need I say more? (Free)
  • Growl: A notification system for Mac OS X. It allows applications (like Adium, Skype, iTerm, VirtueDesktops, FlickrBooth, etc) that support Growl to send you notifications. (Free)
  • HardwareGrowler: Its an application that sends Growl notifications when devices are connected or disconnected from your Mac. (Free)
  • Little Snitch: Personal Firewall which alerts you if an app is trying to make an outbound connection. Great for containing Trojans or simply knowing where your apps are connecting to. A Must-Have!
  • MacSaber: Turn your MacBook into a Light Saber! (Free)
  • Merlin: MS Project-compatible poject management app
  • OmniFocus: A professional-grade personal task management that supports GTD.
  • OmniGraffle: Visio-compatible Diagramming Tool
  • Senuti: Senuti is a simple application that allows you to transfer songs from your iPod to your computer. (Free)
  • SnapNDrag: Effortless Screen/Selection Capture (Free)
  • TextExpander: It saves you countless keystrokes with customized abbreviations for your frequently-used strings and images.
  • TNEF’s Enough: allows you to read and extract files from Microsoft TNEF (Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format) stream files (win.dat, winmail.dat).
  • Twitteriffic: one of the best Twitter clients out there. (Free)
  • VLC: Multimedia Player (Free)
  • WriteRoom: distraction-free writing software.

For Power Users:

  • iTerm: Multi-tabbed terminal emulator ala-MultiGnomeTerminal (Free)
  • MemoryCell: See how much memory each running app is consuming. (Free)
  • Path Finder: A Finder replacement on steroids.
  • ServiceScrubber: restructures the services menu, changes service keyboard shortcuts, and disables services. (Free/Donationware)
  • Vim/Vi: The best Text Editor there is! (Free)
  • VMware: Run Windows, Linux, etc simultaneously on your Mac. No need for BootCamp.

Dashboard Widgets. Since I’m not much of a fan of Dashboard, I make sure only a minimal list of widgets are running at one time. Here are my mostly-used ones:

  • Calendar: The Built-in Calendar widget.
  • CurrencyConverter: Err, Foreign Exchange Rate app, with auto rates update.
  • Google Reader: displays the number of unread items in your feeds. (Free)
  • iStat Pro: a comprehensive system monitoring tool. (Free)
  • MailWidget: checks for new mail in the server without Apple Mail running. (Free)
  • Todo: a lightweight and fast widget to manage tasks. (Free/Donationware)
  • QuickCal: helps you create quick calendar events using natural language expressions (Free)
  • Weather: The Build-in Weather widget. Do make sure you search for “Manila, Philippines” if you are indeed in the PH. Yes, there are other Manilas out there.


Posted on 19 February 2007
Filed under: Tech
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  • I love the colour of this page. This is a very interesting one. Cheers!
  • Hello Ariel, I haven't tried iPodDisk.
  • Ariel
    Bossing, which is better, Senuti or iPodDisk?
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