The essential Mac OS X freeware list Sat, Jun 23. 2007
It's now official - I'm a Mac user. After flirting with Ubuntu Linux for a year, watching Knut Sætre (my coworker) use his MacBook Pro and reading all the switch stories around the net I decided time had come for a change. So far, I'm definitely not regretting anything. OS X seems to me like Plug 'n Play the way it was supposed to work. Everything integrates out of the box, and I've so far never even SEEN the word "driver". 
I've always meant that my "work computer" should work without fiddling and never need tweaking. This was the reason I waited so long to try Linux, and this is exactly the reason I love OS X.
As those who know me might know, I love researching stuff on the net. In addition to that, I've also got a personal policy of always using freeware when it does the job - my own way of avoiding pirated software. It also helps freeware authors get a nice user mass, so I can't say I feel sorry for NOT buying commercial alternatives.
So one of the first things I did (actually before I received my black new-model MacBook with 2GB ram) was researching for apps I needed. And now, after actually testing them I figured I might publish my findings, so others could benefit from it as well. 
So here it is, my list of Mac OS X "must have" freewares:
- AppFresh
- Integrates into iusethis.com and keeps all your apps and widgets up to date.
- AppTrap
- Uninstalling could be as easy as dropping the application in the trash, but there's always some settings left behind. This application integrates with your trash, so that when you drop application in it, you will be asked if you want to remove other files beloning to the application as well.
- Audacity
- Easy straight-forward digital audio editor. Wav, MP3, Flac and so on. Great for cropping ringtones and such.
- Burn
- Burn is a CD burning software. It's not much to say about it, it does what it's supposed to do.
- Chax
- Makes iChat much more useful, by adding a lot of small features and options.
- CocoaMySQL
- A desktop client for MySQL. Think of it as phpMyAdmins agile little brother.
- CocoASpell
- Sadly, OS X doesn't come with a norwegian spelling dictionary. Installing this gem will take care of it.
- Colloquy
- I'm a regular IRC'er, and sadly Mac only has one decent client and this is it. It's still a bit rough in the edges, but works nicely.
- Dockless
- Dockless let you make any app run in the background (no dock icon).
- Flip4Mac
- This is a WMV (Windows Media Video) plugin so you can watch online video encoded as such.
- Growl
- Gives youy nice bubble notifications from a lot of programs. Very configurable and very pretty. Make sure you also install the extra utilities, like HardwareGrowler to get instant statusnotifications on USB devices, network connections and so on.
- ies4osx
- While some people might prefer a root canal before running Internet Explorer, some of us actually need it.
- Komodo Edit
- Komodo Edit is the freeware (or light if you prefer) version of ActiveState's Komodo IDE. Even this stripped-down version has more features than any other free alternative out there. It's also a big bonus that it look and feels identical on Windows, Linux and OS X. Syntax coloring, project management, inline compilation, error checking, autocomplete and much more.
- MacFusion
- Wouldn't it be nice to mount ftp and SSH servers as network folders, accessible directly from your desktop? MacFusion does exactly that! It requires MacFuse from Google installed.
- MacPorts
- The BSD Ports system adapted for Mac. Gives you all those geeky UNIX tools.
- Menumeters
- I'm addicted to know at a glance how my computer is working. Menumeters does exactly that by giving you small menubar indicators of your network, memory, cpu and disk usage. All completely configurable.
- Miro
- A video broadcast thingy that hands-on beats Joost any day. Completely open source, free and filled with more content than anyone can hope to find the time to watch through.
- MoodBlast
- Update the status of Facebook, Adium, iChat, Twitter, Skype and more from a small popup window. Incredibly easy.
- NeoOffice
- The only usable free Office-replacement for Mac as far as I know. It's based on OpenOffice, which hopefully has their own OS X version available soon.
- Onyx
- A system maintenance tool that let you perfom some "behind the scenes" maintenance tasks and tweaking of some hidden options in OS X.
- Perian
- Adds support for a ton of additional media formats to QuickTime. Too many to list here.
- PhotoBook
- A Facebook photo browser for the Facebook addicts out there.
- Renoise
- Trackerbased music sequencing software. Mostly for nostalgic reasons.
- RescueTime
- Mostly for fun, but also for self-reflection. RescueTime logs and analyzes what programs (and websites) you actually spend time on.
- Skitch
- This is the ultimate picture... uhm... faciliator.
Inputs from screenshots, files, drag'n'drop. Annotate, draw, edit. Outputs to drag'n'drop, webpublish, file, anywhere. I use this all the time! - Skype
- While iChat has very good conference abilities, it's not cross-platform. For audio/video conferencing with Windows users, this is the only viable alternative.
- Smultron
- Smultron is what is known as a "Notepad replacement" in the Windows world. It does syntax highlighting for most programming languages, and has some very powerful text processing tools available.
- Spark
- Spark lets you create global hotkeys for just about everything. I use it to start Terminal.app, control iTunes and much more.
- Transmission
- A simple and effective BitTorrent client.
- Vienna
- I'm an information junkie, and I can't get by without a decent RSS reader. Vienna has all the bells and whistles while remaining easy on the eyes as well as easy to use.
- VLC media player
- The ugly and cumbersome, but extremely powerful media player. I install this on all operating systems. It uses builtin codecs for all media formats you can throw at it. Whenever I encounter a file I can't play elsewhere, VLC will. It even has conversion abilities.
- WhatSize
- I just recovered 60GB harddisk space when testing this! It analyzes our harddrive to help you find those space hogs.
- Xee
- From time to time I need to browse quickly through a folder of pictures and delete those I don't want (I'm a hoarder). This image viewer is perfect for just that task, but probably a couple of more as well.
And a couple of games:
- Otis - Easy puzzle game
- Quinn - Tetris
- Solitaire XL - Solitaire
Some might want to know which I browser I prefer for Mac, but the truth is that I'm still testing out my options. I started out with Opera, went through Camino, Safari 3 beta, Opera 9.5 alpha and Safari 3. I'll let you know when I've settled in. Here are my Safari extensions:
- Sogudi - Keyword search from adress bar
- SafariBlock - Small and effective adblocker
- Inquisitor - Inline AJAX-style search bar
- Webkit webdev tools - Just what I said
I will probably update this entry as I discover new applications (and scrap my old ones), so if you're a Mac user yourself, feel free to bookmark it.
