Top 100 Essential Mac Applications 127

Application

Top 100 Essential Mac Applications

Hey

I love my Mac and I have hundreds of applications installed on it. As a result I wanted to do a post on what I believe are the top 100 Mac applications that are essential to any user. I’ve picked a variety of applications that I could think of. I have tried to go for the cheaper free option, but quite a few you have to pay for. If you think I am missing an application leave a comment with a link to the app and why you should think it should be included, it doesn’t have to be long, I just want your opinions. If you disagree with any leave a comment with your reasons.

Each application will be split into a couple of major sections. There are some applications that could be in more than one section, but that is not the point of this post. I will also include a link and a bit of descriptive text on what the application is about. There may be duplicate items of the same nature i.e word processing, i’ve included this due to the differences each application has. The list is in no particular order, mostly alphabetical.

If you want to take your knowledge of Mac apps a bit further I recommend these two books on Amazon, Cool Mac Apps and The Little Mac Book they have got some raving reviews and are probably a good read. I’m sure if you look through Amazon there is plenty of stuff that you can find.

Computer Files

This section is all about programs that can be used to work with files and applications

1) AppFresh
Software updater is great for Apple applications, but appfresh has the ability to check thrid party apps for updates. A great little tool for keeping upto date.

2) AppZapper
Although applications are easy to uninstall on a mac there are usually small preference files hanging about. Appzapper cleans up an uninstall all of those files.

3) Disk Inventory X
A simple program that scans your disk and visually shows what files takes up how much space, good to visualize if you are running out of space and you have some size hogs.

4) Grand Perspective
Very similar to Disk Inventory X, shows you what files take up how much space on your website.

5) OpenPlist

A very cool little tool if you need to end up editing Plist files.

6) Quicksilver
One of the best applications ever made for the mac. Its a quick launch tool that enables you to open and do practically anything. Very fun and really increases your productivity.

7) Stuffit
An application design to unstuff or unpack nearly any file. Create if you use archives a lot.

8) TextWrangler
A very cool text editor that lets you edit text files quickly. Sometimes more powerful than text edit.

9) TidyUp
An application that enables you to search through a list of files finds duplicates. Great if you have many files and you need to organise them.

10) Todos
Leaves no application behind. A very visual way to view all of the applications on your computer. Kind of surpassed by the stacks in the dock.

11) UnRarX
UnrarX gives you the abilty to easily uncompress .rar files. Very good, although stuffit can now handle .rar files.

12) Xslimmer
Give your mac a diet. It goes through and removes the powerpc or intel parts of your program. It can really reduce the size of applications. Can also break them if you are not careful.

Internet

This section is all about applications that use the internet or this type of connectivity in some way.

13) Adium
A simple all in one AIM, chat client. Supports, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and many other through the use of plugins and basic support. It does lack some functionality in some chat protocols.

14) ApGrapher
A great little program that offers the ability to find information about the wireless networks whizzing around your head.

15) Azureus
One of the best bittorrent clients out there. Has lots of user extensions through the use of plugins.

16) Colloquy
A really powerful application that can be used for the IRC networks. Special care has been taken in this application to make it blend in with the rest of the Mac OS theming.

17) CSSedit
A must for any web developer. CSSedit offers the best tools around to help you edit and modify CSS code for you webpages.

18) Cyberduck
A small lightweight application for ftp. Has some small niggles, but it is free. Transmit is better if you use ftp a lot.

19) Firefox
One of the best web browsers around in my opinion. Has a massive add-on library which you can customize to your needs. A viable alternative to safari.

20) iStumber
I found this a great small application that enabled you to view wireless and bluetooth networks quick and hassle free.

21) LittleSnitch
The application that snitches on any application that is trying to access the net to phone home. Great for protecting you privacy.

22) Netnewswire
A very popular RSS client for the mac, nuff said.

23) Skype
Offering superior calls over the internet, it is the application if you do a lot of talking and want a good quality transmission.

24) Transmission
A light weight bittorrent application that is gaining popularity. Its personal choice at this point of transmission verse Azureus.

25) Transmit
A great application from Panic that will feature a couple of time in this list. It is a powerful application for ftp uploads and downloads.

26) Undercover
A piece of software that dials to the undercover servers if you computer has been stolen. Great if you use a laptop, less useful on a desktop.

27) Unison
Another piece of panic software that enables you to use the usenet newsreader networks. A really good piece of software if you use usenet a lot.

28) Vidalia
A GUI controller for the Tor anonymity network. One click on, one click off, simple and easy to use. Best of all its free.

Multimedia

This section is all about video, images and sound. Anything of this nature is included here.

29) VLC
The all in one application for watching videos. Supports nearly every codec imaginable.

30) Aperture
One of Apples Pro programs for organizing and altering photos. A very powerfull application although comes with a bit of a price tag.

31) Audacity
A free audio editor which has a few advance features that make it create for editing audio for your videos or other applications.

32) Blender
A free 3D modeler which has the same power of many of the most advance applications on the market. Comes with quite a steep learning curve.

33) Delicious Library
A very cool application used to organise your books, movies, games and CD’s. You can use your built in iSight to save time by scanning your books. Very cool and fun to use.

34) DeskLickr
A simple application that uses the vast photo resource of flickr to change your wallpaper every so often. Makes a cool change.

35) Desktastic
Anoter Panic app. This time it can be used to write directly on your desktop. Very cool if you use a tablet for your daily work.

36) Gimp
The free image editing program. Used by many open source and linux users. A create start since Leopard doesn’t include any image editing software.

37) Google Earth
One of the best applications from Google. Use it to zoom in on planet earth and explore the world around you. A great time waster, as well as a very useful tool if you are going anywhere and want to check out the surroundings.

38) HandBreak
An open source application that can quickly convert DVD’s to Mpeg-4.

39) iLife
The all in one package made by Apple. I don’t think this needs any explaining.

40) iShowU
This application takes a direct recording of your screen. Great if you want to make recordings of specific applications. You need a good CPU, a bit of a power hog.

41) Joost
A very hot application that lets you watch free TV. Beautiful application even though the amount of TV stations are a bit small.

42) Photoshop
The high priced application for real pros who want to edit and manipulate images and photos. Not for people with tight wallets.

43) Pixelmator
The medium priced application that has a lot of great image editing potential. Not as expenisive as Photoshop.

44) Shapeshifter
Bored of your interface? Let shape shifter change it for you. Not Leopard compatitble although this is likely to change.

45) Theme Park
A great little app which lets you delve into the resource files for applications and lets you change them. Not as powerful as Shapeshifter but lets you tweak little bits of your operating systems interface.

46) TVShows
A little app that downloads all of the torrent files for your favourite TV shows. You need a bittorrent client to finish the process off.

47) Wallsaver
Puts your screensaver as your wallpaper. Add a bit of life to your desktop.

Little Apps

Little Applications are small applications in size that add a bit of functionality or are just plain cool.

48) Autorate
A simple piece of software that rates your musis in your iTunes libary based on the number of plays and track skips.

49) Fish
A simple little program that shows you little fishes swimming around.

50) iAlertU
A little program that can arm your computer. Moving your laptop will set of the alarm and alert you to intruders.

51) Liquidmac
Once again using the motion sensor in a laptop. This program fills the screen with water which you can play around with by moving your computer.

52) MacSaber
Let your Mac become a jedi. Once again using the motion sensor makes cool lightsaber noises. Don’t let the mac fly out of your hands as it has with a couple of people.

53) Quinn
Tetris on the extreme side of life. A cool little app with amazing graphics on the old arcade favourite Tetris.

54) Resize ‘Em All
A little program which can be used to resize images.

55) Rulers
Put a ruler on your screen. This application lets you measure nearly anything on your screen, great if you are in the design world.

56) smcFanControl
A small application that runs in your menu bar to control your fan speeds. A must if you think your computer runs a bit hot.

57) TimeOut
One for the work-a-holic. A little application that tells you to take a break and stop what you are doing.

58) Wallsaver
Sets your screen saver as your wallpaper. A great little program to add a bit of movement to your desktop.

Tools

This section of essential applications is all about tools. These are tools to do specific task or just to give you information.

59) Apple Remote Desktop
One of Apples many programs that lets you work effectively on your network. This app lets you look in on a remote desktop and work with it remotely.

60) Battery Health
One of many tools used to help you find out how much juice is left in your Mac battery. A tool for any laptop.

61) BootCamp
Installing Windows on a Mac is never easier with BootCamp. A simple program that create a partition on you disk for installing windows.

62) BwanaDik
A menu bar monitoring tool for you network. Lets you find tons of info about you LAN and WAN in one easy to reach place.

63) Carbon Copy Cloner
For serious back ups you need somthing like Carbon Copy Cloner that can clone your entire drive quickly and easily.

64) Chmox
Chmox is a program that enables you to open .chm help files on your Mac. Chm files are not supported in preview.

65) Coconut Battery
A personal favourite of mine, this is another battery tool to monitor the health of your battery. I wish my laptop was run off coconuts.

66) DasBoot
DasBoot is a tool to create a diagnostic and repair kit for your computer to put on an iPod or flash drive.

67) Flip4Mac
The tool endorsed by Microsoft to help with those pesky .wmv files.

68) FreeDMG
This software creates drag and drop .dmg archives on the fly. Easy to use if you make a lot of disk images.

69) GeekTool
GeekTool is a preference pane module to show system logs, unix commands output, or images (i.e. from the internet) on your desktop.

70) Growl
A very useful tool that is used by many applications to show a clean way of displaying messages to you. Like the bubbles in Windows except a hell of a lot better.

71) Hardware Monitor
Hardware Monitor is designed to check the various pieces of hardware on you computer for faults and problems as well as give messages back to you.

72) Hex Fiend

Editing hex files cannot be easier with Hex Fiend.

73) HoudahGeo
HoudahGeo allows you to add Geo data to any image within the EXIF data. Helps you find your way around the world in your images.

74) iStat Menus
iStat Menus off a wide range of statistical analysis of your computer including various hardware bits. Their widget is one of my favouites.

75) Mac Pilot
This piece of software allows you to modify various parts of your computer that you would normally have to do through Terminal.

76) MacJanitor
This little app cleans up various system files and other bits and bobs to keep your computer running smoothly.

77) MainMenu
MainMenu is another piece of software to help you keep your computer running smoothly. This one has more advance options such as rebuilding the spotlight database.

78) MenuMeters
Another monitor piece of software but this one is designed to run within the menu bar.

79) Monolingual
Who needs to know French. Monolingual removes the languages from the computer that you do not need.

80) Operation
A project management tool that lets you organise your projects quickly and easily.

81) Parallels
Highly recommended virtualization software for virtualizing other OS’s.

82) Service Scrubber
Helps you organise and remove services from your menus (Name of App > Services)

83) SquidDan
Once a very popular proxy tool for sorting out your own proxy for handling your internet connection. Has become disused over time.

84) Stomp
Stomp those big files down to size. Helps reduce video files into more compressed formats.

85) SuperDuper
Another great backing up utility although its not fully Leopard compatible at the time of writing.

86) Synergy2
A very cool little application that lets you share a mouse and keyboard between one or more computers.

87) TinkerTool
A tool that lets you access more preferences the Apple has built into the OS.

88) VMWare
Another very good piece virtualization software to enable to to virtualize other OS’s.

Work

This final section ,and to round up, is going to be all about top programs for use at work.

89) Cha-Ching
A simple money program that helps you organise your accounts, budgets and finances.

90) Concept Draw
More of a group of programs that offer a wide range of applications such as flow charts to mind maps.

91) Filemaker
A cross platform database application, that has amazing power and potential.

92) iWork
Apples work application package to complement iLife, a good package if you want the Apple integration although lacks on some features.

93) Microsoft Office
Office is one of the most prominent packages on the Windows machines for work programs. Very good on Mac, although some small annoying bugs.

94) Money2
Another application for managing your accounts. The interface on this program is amazing.

95) Neooffice
An Open Office port to Mac, like Microsoft Office, except its free.

96) Nvu
A very powerful webpage editor for designing and creating websites. Just as good as Dreamweaver.

97) Omnigraffle
A brill program that offers a really cool way of creating presentation diagrams. Check out the Omni Groups offerings for all of the cool programs they have to offer.

98) Process
Another program by Jumsoft on this list that lets you plan and organise your projects.

99) Quicken
Another personal finance program, but this one feels more corporate and official.

100) Yojimbo
A cool little program that helps you organise all your bits of information, great if you end up filling up dashboard with millions of stickies.

Well folks, there you have it, my personal Top 100 Essential Mac Applications. I hope you agree that there are some awesome applications out there. It has taken me over a week to put this togther and if you think I have missed any please leave a comment with the program you would like to include and a reason why.

Update: The white backgrounds do look a bit unwell designed, I didn’t realize as I put it together otherwise I would have kept them as .pngs.

User Additions: Its About Time. A cool app to help you switch to Mac, I will have to check this one out.
Pacifist, to help you open .pkg files.


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Where To Next?

127 Responses to “Top 100 Essential Mac Applications”

  1. 1

    For Switcher, “It’s About Time to learn the Switch to Mac” – http://www.ItsAboutTimeProducts.com

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 8:21 pm

  2. 2

    Glad to FileMaker is on the list, by version 7? FileMaker Pro 9 is the latest version.

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 8:28 pm

  3. 3

    What about Pacifist from http://www.charlessoft.com/
    Pacifist 2.5.1 is a shareware application that opens Mac OS X .pkg package files, .dmg disk images, and .zip, .tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, and .xar file archives and allows you to extract individual files and folders out of them….

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 8:32 pm

  4. 4

    Pweew, that’s a impressive list. But, one comment, I’ve done alot of work with Nvu and the output code could be better.. Is Nvu really the best free html editor??

    Comment By Billiga flyg on February 5th, at 8:33 pm

  5. 5

    Thanks for the new apps those are some cool ones to check out.

    Nvu, i’m not sure about the output can be a bit fiddle. Nvu is the most free one I have found.

    Comment By James Powell on February 5th, at 9:08 pm

  6. 6

    I’m glad to see Transmission and Cyberduck on the list. I like using Cyberduck to FTP into my XBMC.

    Comment By Bill on February 5th, at 9:13 pm

  7. 7

    Wallsaver gets two spots on the 100 list eh?

    Nice list though, glad I’m not missing out on too much.

    Comment By Edward on February 5th, at 9:18 pm

  8. 8

    Great list, I’ve use quite a few of these on a regular basis.

    I must say, I’m surprised Panic Software’s Coda did not make it on here. Same people that make Transmit. Once I started using Coda, it made Transmit, TextWrangler, and CSSEdit, and even Mac’s Terminal obsolete. Powerful, brilliant, and cheap (around $89, $69 with a purchased Transmit serial code).

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 9:20 pm

  9. 9

    2! Oh dam. I had a couple crop up that I managed to eradicate. But there is always one. Never mind.
    Thanks for pointing it out.

    Comment By James Powell on February 5th, at 9:21 pm

  10. 10

    Great list, and 85) SuperDuper is now fully Leopard compatible…and probably the best backup program I have ever used!!! Complete bootable copy of your hard drive on a scheduler.

    Comment By KnightRyder on February 5th, at 9:21 pm

  11. 11

    Thanks for your posts guys. I didn’t play with coda. There is always one that could be added.

    I didn’t no shapeshifter is Leopard compatible when I made the list it said it wasn’t. My Bad.

    Comment By James Powell on February 5th, at 9:24 pm

  12. 12

    I would add the radiosherpa radio widget to that list. Provides a real-time guide for what’s playing online.
    http://www.radiosherpa.com/widgets/dashboard/

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 9:24 pm

  13. 13

    “essential” is a bit misleading many of these apps are completely useless.

    Comment By JHKramerica on February 5th, at 9:31 pm

  14. 14

    Why are these apps completely useless?

    Comment By James Powell on February 5th, at 9:35 pm

  15. 15

    Thanks for the list – I agree with James and have had pretty good luck with NVU.

    Another one I found recently is deskUNPDF from http://www.docudesk.com. This is very useful in my workflow to convert PDF to .doc, .xls, html, xml etc…

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 9:42 pm

  16. 16

    Great list. Looks like a lot of work went into making it, and it shows!

    deskflikr is awesome, now I can stop searching for new desktops every week and have it auto-change every day!

    Thanks

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 9:43 pm

  17. 17

    funny how most of these “essential” apps are installed by default on most Linux distros…

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 9:44 pm

  18. 18

    iBank is a lot nicer then Quicken for managing finances on your Mac. Version 3 which is about to come out in beta was runner-up in Apple’s Leopard design competition. It’s pretty hot!

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 9:47 pm

  19. 19

    What about QuickShareIt? http://quickshareit.com. I use QuickShareIt like 1000x a day!

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 9:50 pm

  20. 20

    Are there any programs similar to “snip-it”
    that work on Mac?
    V.C.

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 10:06 pm

  21. 21

    What about AudioSwitcher? It’s a great little program that makes it easy to switch your audio input/output device. An annoying little problem that Apple forgot about.
    http://www.spikesoft.net

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 10:33 pm

  22. 22

    For those not happy with NVU, you might try Aptana Studio. It’s an open-source, GPL-licensed HTML/CSS/JavaScript editor with a bunch of Ajax libraries baked in.

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 10:43 pm

  23. 23

    Thanks for the posts guys. Some of those programs are really insightful.

    Thanks

    Comment By James Powell on February 5th, at 10:46 pm

  24. 24

    Eclipse beats Nvu any day of the week. Probably a bit too comprehensive for the average noob, but, powerful and opensource. (modules for anything related to programming, very stable application)

    Pixel Mater isn’t just ‘cheaper’ it is *alot* cheaper – $50 vs. $700

    Bean is an excellent, light weight, RTF document editor.

    FileZilla beats Cyberduck in my opinion.

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 10:50 pm

  25. 25

    OnyX!

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 11:04 pm

  26. 26

    what no TextMate

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 11:34 pm

  27. 27

    ditto, textmate is vastly better than textwrangler.

    that being said, how come some of these essentially duplicate the features of other apps – e.g. parallels vs. vmware?

    Comment By Jane on February 5th, at 11:35 pm

  28. 28

    Launchbar! :P

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 11:39 pm

  29. 29

    Smultron
    http://smultron.sourceforge.net/

    The Unarhiver
    http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html

    Toast 8
    http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/toast/titanium/overview.html

    Perian
    http://perian.org/

    Comment By Anonymous on February 5th, at 11:45 pm

  30. 30

    I would recommend:

    1) The Unarchiver over StuffIt. StuffIt Expander is pretty irritating, you have to fill in a form first before you can even download it. The Unarchiver is completely free.
    2) Smultron is a great free text editor
    3) Vienna is another nice RSS reader.
    4) ChronoSync is a backup utility which is, IMHO, better than Time Machine, although it isn’t as easy to use.

    Comment By Husky on February 5th, at 11:55 pm

  31. 31

    I noticed Navicat was missing from this list. I use it along with Coda daily. Cocoa MySQL is also a decent alternative.

    Thanks for the great list!

    P.S. The link to Delicious Library is currently pointing to Blender.

    -beauford.vox.com

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 12:06 am

  32. 32

    BBEdit

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 12:15 am

  33. 33

    Great list,

    Thanks

    Comment By Podnosh on February 6th, at 12:21 am

  34. 34

    Macs have 100 apps?! Congrats!
    I never knew there were that many programs for Macs.
    Someday it may even be a real OS!
    Although, I must point out that I only saw about 6 REAL programs. The rest was just a bunch of crap to tweak a Mac.
    I thought it was supposed to “just work“. Why tweak it?

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 12:34 am

  35. 35

    Great list, thanks. I’m a new Mac user, and this has given me lots of ideas.

    By the way, about Monolingual – I can think of about 120 million people who need to know French. Being monolingual doesn’t seem like much of an advantage to me.

    Comment By Simon on February 6th, at 12:35 am

  36. 36

    Here’s two I use a lot:

    Info.xhead – Personal Secure Database

    http://www.xheadsoftware.com/info_xhead.asp

    Recorder.xhead – Voice Recorder/Player/Converter

    http://www.xheadsoftware.com/recorder_xhead.asp

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 12:51 am

  37. 37

    This looks like a great list! I’m a fan of textwrangler, not so much of cyberduck though.
    I’m assuming VLC is a favorite for many college students.

    Comment By GradBlogger on February 6th, at 12:54 am

  38. 38

    Nice list. Very close to what i own.
    I’d add:
    BBedit more complete than Textwrangler
    CircusPoney Notebook, more intuitive than yojimbo
    ecto for blogging offline
    Trailrunner for tracking your joggings
    Last.fm for listening to music
    Acquisition for P2P
    Writeroom for rtf editing

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 1:12 am

  39. 39

    Great list. I would recommend KompZer instead of NVU though…it’s and upgraded version based on the original NVU code.

    Comment By Anschauung on February 6th, at 1:21 am

  40. 40

    Seems to me Transmit is way more powerful than Cyberduck. Nice list of apps though.

    Comment By Gareth Boyd on February 6th, at 1:25 am

  41. 41

    Great list!
    I would add 3 more:
    ‘Viewit’ from hexcat; incredibley fast photo viewer. An OSX answer to ACDSee (http://hexcat.com)

    and 2 favorites from Rogue Amoeba (http://rougueamoeba.com):
    Audio HiJack Pro – catch those streaming audios!
    NiceCast – rent some cheap ShoutCast server space somewhere and broadcast your iTunes to the world.

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 2:56 am

  42. 42

    What I don’t is a good solid drawing application. Something along the lines of MacDraw or Canvas.

    There has not been one since OS9.

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 3:14 am

  43. 43

    What about sketchup from google?

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 4:12 am

  44. 44

    Awaken is a pretty cool app too, excellent for timer, playing music before going to sleep or its main purpose, alarm for morning. Nothing better than being awaken by your own music instead of the annoying BipBip of the alarmclock…

    Comment By Joannie on February 6th, at 5:27 am

  45. 45

    the list could have use Snapz Pro X on it…

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 5:30 am

  46. 46

    Thanks for the great list.
    you got one more subscriber.

    awesome on desflikr.

    Comment By assabakie on February 6th, at 6:23 am

  47. 47

    caffeine is useful

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 7:42 am

  48. 48

    Another great program I use for audio conversion, including WMA to MP3, is called Switch. It is free and incredibly useful! download it here:
    http://www.nch.com.au/switch/switchmac.zip

    Comment By Travis Howland on February 6th, at 8:01 am

  49. 49

    GraphicConverter is excellent! It has to be on the list.

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 11:57 am

  50. 50

    Caffeine should be added to the list if it was’nt already suggested. Great for MacBook Pros

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 3:02 pm

  51. 51

    How can any Mac user live without TypeIt4Me?

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 3:47 pm

  52. 52

    FREE
    Safarisatnd (plugin) for safari
    Visor (plugin) For terminal
    WideMail (plugin) for apple mail
    RDCDefaultApp for file types
    SizzlingKeys for controlling itunes
    img2icns so everyone could create a nice looking and personalized coverflow
    LiquidCD for burning
    TacoHTML
    iBackup

    $$$
    YummyFTP
    Awaken
    Yep

    and many more not mentioned in the article

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 4:47 pm

  53. 53

    What about Visual Hub
    http://www.techspansion.com/visualhub/

    Great Video conversion software.

    Comment By Steven on February 6th, at 6:02 pm

  54. 54

    Or who needs to know english ? Parce que le français est une très belle langue et que l’anglais n’est pas celle le plus parlé dans le monde !

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 6:39 pm

  55. 55

    Not a word.

    Comment By James Powell on February 6th, at 7:12 pm

  56. 56

    Wooow ! I’m impressed with your amazing job of compiling 100 Mac Applications.
    Your page is bookmarked and I thank you very much for this great job.

    Comment By Laurent Bourrelly on February 6th, at 8:46 pm

  57. 57

    PimpMyNews.com is a killer new “talking” news & blogs app that should be on the list.

    It converts breaking stories from the web’s top 1,000 blogs to audio – so you can listen to them (instead of read them) whenever and wherever you want to.

    Apple named it a “Staff Pick” and the site says people from 114 countries are now using it.

    You can sign up for free at: http://www.PimpMyNews.com

    Comment By Anonymous on February 6th, at 9:45 pm

  58. 58

    no Bibble? a little surprised, but never used it on a mac…..

    Comment By Anonymous on February 7th, at 1:49 am

  59. 59

    You missed ScreenSteps.
    http://www.screensteps.com

    Comment By Rodd Lucier on February 7th, at 3:24 am

  60. 60

    Very interesting list, even for a long time Mac user (since 1996). Thanks!

    It would be helpful to add prices to this list. It does make a difference if an app is free or costs $20 or $1000. It’s easy to say, eg. BBEdit is better than TextWrangler, but the latter is free and the former is $125. (They are from the same company. TextWrangler is a “lite version” of BBEdit.)

    0xED is a very nice and clean hex editor. Freeware.
    http://www.suavetech.com/0xed/0xed.html

    There is a very good and free CD/DVD burning app called simply Burn.
    http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/

    Nvu is free and easy to use but it produces very bad code. Beginners starting with Nvu don’t learn how to do things right.

    @ Simon re. Monolingual: Most MacOSX apps come with localizations for many different locales (languages) built-in. These use up disk space. If you’re very low on space and you know you are not going to use these apps in anything other than your language (be it French or English or Japanese or…), you can delete the other localizations. This leaves the app itself completely unchanged. Apps like Monolingual can automate this kind of “clean-up”.

    Anonymous’s French posting ( Parce que le français est une très belle langue et que l’anglais n’est pas celle le plus parlé dans le monde !) means »because French is a very nice language and English is not the most spoken one in the world«.

    Comment By Schoschie on February 7th, at 8:49 am

  61. 61

    Thanks for posting Schoschie you make some good points. I was going to add prices to the list but by the time I remembered it would have taken me to long to go back and do it.

    Comment By James Powell on February 7th, at 9:08 am

  62. 62

    well its all excellent ideas but “Just Use Blue and White Again” give a unique look no doubt

    Comment By www.mobile2fun.com on February 7th, at 10:56 am

  63. 63

    Ever seen Taco HTML Edit from Tacosw.com? It’s great and free.

    Comment By Jay Robinson on February 7th, at 12:55 pm

  64. 64

    I suggest:

    Mac Messenger : lots of people use it ( free)

    Limewire pro: p2p gnutella files share network( free&paid)

    screen grabber : take frame by frame captions from a movie file .great for torrent descriptions . (free)

    Iserial reader : to get the newest software serial keys versión ( of course free )

    Onyx :keep your mac in good shape (free)

    Visual hub : powerfull & simple video converter ( paid)

    Mactheripper : Rips dvd content by chapter or full dvd data for “backup” (free)

    dvd2onex2 :create & customize dvd from several file sources

    Toast titanium : a must be burning tool (paid)

    FinAL CUT : the best video editing software for mac. Profesional or not (paid )

    Comment By pato on February 7th, at 9:13 pm

  65. 65

    http://www.macnewsonline.com/wp/the-ultimate-mac-apps-list/

    has a more precise updated list that I like to start with.

    Comment By Anonymous on February 9th, at 3:19 am

  66. 66

    why did you remove Archimedes? (open source AutoCAD alternative)

    Comment By Anonymous on February 9th, at 6:36 am

  67. 67

    Archimedes was never on the list in the first place.

    Comment By James Powell on February 9th, at 10:39 am

  68. 68

    As a student, Skim is a must-have program. It looks and feels like preview – but allows highlighting and notes in .pdf files. As more and more of our work comes in .pdf – its nice to not have to print everything for note-taking purposes. Not as slick as the paid version of Acrobat – but it’s free!

    Schoolhouse is also a nice free program that is used to organize assignments, group projects, grades and other deadlines. Most of the calendar and organizing programs aren’t that compatible with a student schedule. If only I knew how to integrate it with iCal…..

    And thanks for the tip about Undercover…..I am extremely intrigued.

    Comment By draconismoi on February 10th, at 2:57 am

  69. 69

    It’s a great list but what about Onyx. It’s for my liking one of the best mac maintainence apps out there.

    Comment By Anonymous on February 10th, at 1:57 pm

  70. 70

    No Final Cut Pro?

    Comment By Anonymous on February 10th, at 6:28 pm

  71. 71

    Any QoS on the 100 apps?

    Comment By Anonymous on March 3rd, at 9:06 am

  72. 72

    Nice list, Some apps I know and love. Canvas is a stunning app, much under-rated, I have used it for eight years. New one I love, NoteMind. (see Apple productivity downloads), Very smart, useful, intuitive prog. Except for one ‘Dozer all comments polite and Nice. Typical of Apple people. Consider. Apple apps may only be 1/10th the number of ‘Doze trash, but the general quality is light years ahead.
    Cheers, have you bookmarked now.
    Modeller.

    Comment By Anonymous on April 1st, at 8:50 am

  73. 73

    Circus Ponies Notebook is an awesome program that has revolutionized the way I organize my info (to-do lists, class notes, projects, journals, etc.) Students will LOVE this app, and will kick themselves for not downloading it sooner. $50 for standard download, $30 for students/educators, $100 for a family pack. Download the free trial and see for yourself.
    http://www.circusponies.com/

    Comment By Anonymous on May 13th, at 12:19 am

  74. 74

    What is the best burning software you have? For audio cds, dvds, vcds, data cd, etc?

    Comment By Anonymous on May 18th, at 6:39 pm

  75. 75

    Toast is very good.

    Comment By James Powell on May 18th, at 7:45 pm

  76. 76

    Do macs still need anti-virus softwares? IF yes, what is the best to use?

    Comment By Anonymous on May 20th, at 6:54 am

  77. 77

    I don’t think they do at the moment.

    Comment By James Powell on May 20th, at 3:15 pm

  78. 78

    A great application is Sapiens, i use it 24/7 on my mac

    Comment By Anonymous on May 29th, at 12:54 pm

  79. 79

    Great list!

    What about “SilverKeeper”? It is free and very efficient in backing-up my HDs.
    I use it daily and it never failed me.
    Find it at http://www.lacie.com or http://www.silverkeeper.com
    Cheers!

    Comment By Li Tse on June 3rd, at 9:33 pm

  80. 80

    Another cool app is Fanurio which is a time tracking and billing application designed for freelancers.

    Comment By Greg on June 10th, at 11:57 am

  81. 81

    For people doing any outdoor activities like running, hiking or biking, TrailRunner should be on this list. TrailRunner is a route planning and journaling tool with GPS and nike+ support.

    Comment By berbie on June 30th, at 8:56 pm

  82. 82

    update my iphone
    looking to update my iphone
    can u told me how ? and where i need to look?
    thank you
    laurent

    Comment By laurent Vincent on July 14th, at 11:11 am

  83. 83

    @Vincent. Sorry I can’t help you I don’t have an iPhone.

    Comment By admin on July 14th, at 11:21 am

  84. 84

    Hi !
    Dunno if anyone told you already but there’s a link error on delicious library ;) (N°33)

    Anyway, thanks from France.

    Comment By Bobow_Danceur on July 27th, at 9:55 am

  85. 85

    Great list, thanks for sharing!

    Comment By Rik on August 2nd, at 2:39 am

  86. 86

    Hello. I would like to suggest you a very good file sharing application called Skitch. It can take screenshots a lot more effectively than the pesky Mac hotkey function(can do crosshair snapshot, fullscreen snapshot, and webcam snapshot). You can then use it to instantly save a file in the format you like, or host it with one click thanks to your own Skitch(personal) database. You can then link from there easily and share the file on the internet. Also has extremely basic image editing tools(mostly a little text). It’s also very pleasant to note that it has amazing Mac OS X-like graphics, runs smooth, fast, and can blend into the top menu bar. I highly recommend it!

    http://www.skitch.com

    Comment By Konrad on August 5th, at 7:26 pm

  87. 87

    this is an essential list! thanks.

    Comment By Bee on August 8th, at 4:35 am

  88. 88

    Thanks for this excellent information. I highly recommend Journler which is similar though much better than Yojimbo as well I highly recommend Midnight Inbox for information management. A must have file access popout is Pi-Pop as well Filegazer which shows you an image or text or even plays the movie from the popout clearly revealing what you are looking for without having to open it. Also there is the preference pane called Sticky Windows which is very useful except it does not recall tabs through restarts.

    Comment By John Gil on August 24th, at 12:27 pm

  89. 89

    I suggest you add:
    http://www.sbook5.com
    Creator:
    Simson L. Garfinkel
    MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab

    Very useful, easy to use telephone, etc. database. AI
    Free

    Comment By Tere on October 1st, at 1:49 pm

  90. 90

    “The Unarchiver” is much better than UnRarX.

    Comment By kL on October 11th, at 3:45 pm

  91. 91

    there are good software. I also want to share a good mac freeware.
    http://www.moviesmac.com/mac-free-video-downloader/index.html#121

    Comment By share a free video downloader for mac on October 16th, at 10:52 am

  92. 92

    So many amazing apps.
    Awesome! It’s definitely awesome for Mac users.
    Thanks for sharing.

    And there are some Mac Multimedia Apps.
    Glad to share.

    Comment By Mac Multimedia Apps on October 22nd, at 3:24 am

  93. 93

    Wallsaver appears twice. For sure its great, but it could appear once and allow Onyx in the list – Onyx is a great utility that gives you access to many hidden features and lets you start maintenance routines. Some may argue that MacPilot is already in the list and does the same… But Onyx is free!

    Comment By Pierrox on October 28th, at 10:47 am

  94. 94

    Thanks James, this is a very useful list. I appreciate your effort.

    Comment By Dan on November 9th, at 1:21 am

  95. 95

    great list mate! very helpful.. ive got a macbook hopefully arriving tomorrow & this had been a big help as im ‘converting’ from pc.
    cheers!

    Comment By Dave W on November 9th, at 11:04 am

  96. 96

    Awesome collection.
    I find some free Mac resources on this mac multimedia conversion tool site.

    Comment By Matt on November 11th, at 9:01 am

  97. 97

    I’d also prefer this Mac YouTube downloader, it can help you download and convert youtube video on Mac, that’s cool.

    Comment By maccolar on November 13th, at 4:37 pm

  98. 98

    I definitely found a lot of good stuff in this list, but there are definitely more than a few apps that I disagree with. In any case, I went about creating my own list, but I wanted to try and focus on just the FREE mac-only apps out there (since while few will deny that PS3 is amazing, it is also quite expensive).

    I haven’t checked, but I’m sure everything on my list must be contained somewhere in yours. Kudos on the 100!

    http://macnuggets.ca/2008111389/The-Top-10-FREE-mac-only-apps.html

    Comment By Joe Zingaro on November 17th, at 7:54 am

  99. 99

    I have download the EarthDesk but I do not know how to display on PC MAC.

    Could you advise ?

    Comment By Matthew Chai on November 19th, at 10:18 pm

  100. 100

    useful list — thanks for sharing! note that delicious library, #33, links to the same site as the previous application on the list, blender.

    Comment By tevan on November 28th, at 1:03 am

  101. 101

    I’d prefer this all-in-one mac media pack, it can help you rip dvd, convert video, edit video and burn DVD on mac, it’s easy to use and powerful
    http://www.mac-dvd.com/ultimate-dvd-video-converter-for-mac.html

    Comment By maccolar on December 4th, at 10:16 am

  102. 102

    Thank you for this wonderful compilation.

    Comment By NARAYAN on December 15th, at 5:27 am

  103. 103

    Thank you for this great homepage! You helped me so much!

    Comment By Babs on January 3rd, at 11:13 pm

  104. 104

    [...] lange Liste von 100 Applikationen aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen für Mac OS [...]

    Comment By Die 100 wichtigsten Programme für den Mac - Tom Schimana on January 6th, at 12:35 pm

  105. 105

    http://handbrake.fr/ Dvd ripping.. easy… check it out.. I’m sure you will agree.. a must have.

    Comment By Tommy on January 16th, at 12:50 am

  106. 106

    EXCELLENT ! Thanks for the “Little Apps”
    ..Some are very entertaining

    Comment By Nik on January 19th, at 1:01 am

  107. 107

    you only have 99…you have Wallsaver down twice. :)

    Comment By anna on January 26th, at 2:11 am

  108. 108

    Thanks for this great page. The transition from PC to Mac has been painless and sites like yours make it even easier. Great job!

    Comment By shamelessnoob on January 29th, at 9:14 pm

  109. 109

    Mac DVD Software:
    http://www.macdvdconverter.com

    Comment By foonloyeatcomonly on January 31st, at 9:54 am

  110. 110

    Not just excellent,
    it’s fantastic, fabulous, marvelous, any these kind of words you can think of!
    nice job

    Comment By AnnChi on February 11th, at 3:04 pm

  111. 111

    I disagree with putting Parallels over VMware Fusion and I definitely disagree with having Boot Camp so far up in this list.

    Comment By Chromandi on February 15th, at 2:17 am

  112. 112

    I prefer utorrent for any torrent!!
    anyway good site i like!
    thankssss

    Comment By Tarik on February 26th, at 2:17 am

  113. 113

    It’s not exactly 100 apps. You put the Wallsaver twice :)

    Comment By ramster on March 4th, at 6:50 am

  114. 114

    Thanks! This is my first MacBook Pro, first Apple in my life, and this applications are really helpful.
    Robert, Croatia.

    Comment By Robert on March 6th, at 9:54 pm

  115. 115

    I would also recommend Jumpcut:Minimalist Buffering for OS X.
    This a pretty cool clipboard extension and it’s free. It should be on the list!

    http://jumpcut.sourceforge.net/

    Comment By ZO on March 27th, at 8:29 pm

  116. 116

    Excelent, site

    Comment By Rigoberto Solano on March 31st, at 3:39 pm

  117. 117

    Awesome list but instead of 2 programs that are so similar (Grand Perspective and Disk Inventory X) You should consider Omni Disk Sweeper, http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/ It allows you to drill down through folders finding large collections of smaller files whereas the others just look for large single files. This let’s you find a forgotten folder of mp3s or a temp or download folder. I love it.

    Comment By tjk176 on April 9th, at 6:57 pm

  118. 118

    looking for apps to exporting my mp3 to audio CD. any idea what’s best?

    Thanks

    Comment By netster on April 22nd, at 5:43 pm

  119. 119

    BowTie!!
    FREE!
    MUSIC MANAGER!

    Comment By dpasker on April 23rd, at 3:43 am

  120. 120

    Just a little comment to let you know that 33) Delicious Library link directs to http://www.blender.org

    Comment By Someone on April 25th, at 9:41 pm

  121. 121

    Blender: Create Great 3D Content, Animation, Movies, Models, Graphics Free…

    Blender is a very good 3D animation tool to perform different 3D operations and create 3D content, graphics, games, videos, animations, movies etc.
    ……

    Comment By Great Hype on April 28th, at 12:27 pm

  122. 122

    great list, thanks!

    Comment By Stephen on May 18th, at 4:33 am

  123. 123

    Link to 31) goes to wrong URL.

    Comment By Mark on May 23rd, at 1:39 pm

  124. 124

    -Together
    -Skitch
    -iClock Pro
    -Butler
    -Netnewswire
    -Appcleaner
    -Overflow
    -SpotInside
    -Spark
    -Dropbox
    -Mplayer

    Comment By Dave on May 23rd, at 2:10 pm

  125. 125

    Thanks for the nice listing.

    Delicious Library linked to blender.org. Please have a look.

    Bage.

    Comment By bage on May 30th, at 3:20 am

  126. 126

    Hey, I like this list, check out mine:

    http://magmactips.webs.com/sugerenciaprogramas.htm

    It is in Spanish, but anyway you can translate it with the google translation tool.

    Comment By Fernando on June 7th, at 12:30 am

  127. 127

    Home Mortgage Loan Refinance…

    Make Success Measurable: A Mindbook- Workbook for Managing Performance Douglas K….

    Comment By Home Mortgage Loan Refinance on June 26th, at 4:29 am

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