Best/Most useful/Most diverting Mac software and tools?

[The Groke]

Ok,

So tonight I will be entering the strange and terrifying world of the Mac user and purchasing a duo-core Mac mini for the lounge.

I am so used to using Windows, that I don't even think twice about all the little tools and software I use, but now this is all about to change.

Can you lovely chaps give me some recommendations on funky/useful/fun/essential Mac software and apps/tools for everything and anything - things that I can look for on certain - ahem - evaluation software torrent sites?

 

[Lazy Llama]

Not that I've been waiting for this thread or anything but....

You HAVE to get Virtue Desktops. It changed my life. Okay so it removed my problem of never having enough screen space for the multiple things I do at once.

Now for some others:-

General

TextWrangler - Great free text editor
http://www.barebones.com

VideoLAN Client - DVD (region-free) and other video file player
http://www.videolan.org/

iCal Events - Upcoming iCal events widget
http://www.benkazez.com/icalevents/

Butler - Menubar access to your favourite links, apps etc
http://www.petermaurer.de/butler

Graphics Convertor - graphic file manipulator, great for batch re-sizing. (Shareware, bundled with Powerbook, PowerMac)
http://www.lemkesoft.com/

OmniOutliner & OmniGraffle - Outliner and chart-drawing tools. (Shareware, bundled with Powerbook, PowerMac)
http://www.omnigroup.com

SubEthaEdit - Bonjour-aware text editor
http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/

UnRarX - OS X Rar archive extractor
http://unrarx.sourceforge.net/

Chmox - OS X utility to read Windows Compiled HTML (.CHM) help files
http://chmox.sourceforge.net/

TinkerTool - User-Interface tweaker
http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html

UK TV Guide Widget
http://www.ponyfoam.com/tvwidget/

Internet

Firefox - The best web browser?
http://www.getfirefox.com

JunkMatcher - Spam filtering add-in for Apple Mail
http://junkmatcher.sourceforge.net/

Fugu - SFTP/SCP/SSH wrapper for OS X
http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu

Adium - All flavours of IM
http://www.adiumx.com/

Laptop (not needed for your mini but of use to other Mac users)

SlimBatteryMonitor - Better, customisable battery monitor for your laptop
http://www.orange-carb.org/SBM/

SilverKeeper - Backup, compare, synchronize or restore folders to CD/DVD/USB etc
http://www.silverkeeper.com

That'll do for now

 

[Lazy Llama]

Oh and most of those are free or shareware so no need to eat your bandwidth yet.

If you also have an XP machine you can use it from your Mac using Remote Desktop Client which is handy in conjunction with VirtueDesktops.

You'll be getting iLife '06 already. There are plugins for Flickr etc for iPhoto which are worth a look if you use that sort of thing.

Photoshop is non-Universal so will perform like a slightly dubious sea-elephant, ditto for MS Office, but you could try iWork '06 if you want a decent word processor and presentation package.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I was going to say that NeoOffice is the best OpenOffice version for OS X, but apparently they're not releasing the Intel version until July, not for free anyway. Still, worth getting then.

http://www.neooffice.org/

I use Camino as my main browser personally: http://www.caminobrowser.org/
For filesharing, I use Acquisition: http://www.acquisitionx.com/

 

[The Groke]

A million shiny Mac things!

Um gosh!

Thanks LL - I will begin to plow through those

 

[The Groke]

I was going to say that NeoOffice is the best OpenOffice version for OS X, but apparently they're not releasing the Intel version until July, not for free anyway. Still, worth getting then.

http://www.neooffice.org/

Hmm - OpenOffice eh - Is The Groke finally about to break free from the tyranny of MS Office!

I hope so.....

Thanks Fridgemagnet.



Oh BTW - I went to get my Mini last night, and they had run out of core Duo's

I will have to drive to the Apple Store tonight in order to get my new toy.

 

[mtbskalover]

make sure you set up Expose! its such a brilliant little feature in system preferences.

oh and launch bar (http://www.obdev.at/ - i think thats the website) for launching apps, opening files, etc. I have mine set up s when i press 'apple' key and space bar, type a word, say ical, hit enter then ical opens up, without even having to go my already crowded dock or searching through my applications folder.

 

[j26]

Delocalizer will save a couple of gigs on your hard drive as OS X can be a bit weighty. Unless you plan to use Garageband, get rid of it as it's a massive space hog (aparently). Very useful for lappies and minis as thy don't have massive hard drives.

AbiWord is a useful free word processing package, but I prefer NeoOffice. You should have a trial version of iWork whick looks quite nice to use.

Edit: A few more bits..
Handbrake and Mac The Ripper is an excellent combo for storing films from DVD - you can turn out a decent quality film at about 500MB rather than 5GB.

VLC covers more video formats than Quicktime and has a fullscreen mode without having to upgrade to a pro version (Boo Quicktime!!)

And all free.

 

[The Groke]

Cheers chaps...

Well the Mini has gone to the service centre to have the Airport fixed, so hopefully when it comes back, I will have a chance to use all this stuff!

 

[5T3R30TYP3]

Another vote for Acquisition here.

I miss my mac

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

My mac is many miles away and I want it too.

I like Salling Clicker for bluetooth access from your phone to control itunes, amongst other things. good for parties when idiots want to go through and mess up your playlist you lock the pc and control it all from your phone.

Mecury Messenger - gets msn working with isight.

Delicious Library - Turns your isight into a barcode scanner to scan all your records, books, dvds, games - basically any media with a barcode. Then collates a library by pullling information from the web. Useful for keeping track of stuff. Cos when friends want to borrow things, you give them an account, and check the items out to them. If they are not retured within a set period, it emails them to remind them.

Kismac - for hacking wireless networks.

SoulSeeX for music

 

[dennisr]

If you have any 'dodgy' software in use while online i'd recommend the shareware little snitch:
http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html

and easy access to programmes from one wee menu the free Himmelbar:
http://softbend.free.fr/himmelbar/download.html

the key free help programme for running maintainance and cleaning is Onyx:
http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs/english.html

need rapid copy and paste access to all those wierd typeface then get the shareware pop characters:
http://www.macility.com/downloads/

video player etc with all the latest codecs - the best one is VLC is free:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

added - ahh, VLC has already been mentioned... well take this as extra recommendation

 

[chio]

Not that I've been waiting for this thread or anything but....

You HAVE to get Virtue Desktops. It changed my life. Okay so it removed my problem of never having enough screen space for the multiple things I do at once.

Top tip cheers! Doesn't even seem to slow the computer down.

 

[Lazy Llama]

And if you have a recent Powerbook, MacBook Pro or MacBook you can even change screens by slapping the side of the screen using the SlapbookVirtue add-on.

Virtue is fab if you something like Remote Desktop, VirtualPC, X11 or Parallels Workstation so you can dedicate an entire desktop to each OS/session.

 

[chio]

Sadly, I have the cheapest Mini from a couple of years ago - still useful, though!