Here’s an incomplete list of software I got running on my Mac. That’s about half of what I have installed, some of which comes by default with Leopard, so I didn’t bother listing it. And some, I have not made up my mind if I intend to keep it or not. So more precisely, this is the list of things I’m actually using and, if I had to do it again, will install on a fresh setup.
1Password For storing passwords and other sensitive data. So that’s one thing it does better than the browser’s own password saving. The other is sharing password between the assortment of browsers I use, mostly Firefox, Fluid (see below) and occasionally Safari. The UI is great, the form filling AI a bit nutty at times, but definitely worth the price.
Adium Better than iChat in just about every way that counts, but lately has been driving me crazy with bugs and inability to work with Spaces. For now, I’m back to iChat and missing Pidgin.
AppleJack Heard good things about it, fortunately haven’t had to use it (let’s keep it that way), installed as insurance policy.
AppZapper Yes, you do need an uninstaller for the Mac, regardless of what Apple thinks. There’s a few of them, I have a license for this one, but I heard the others are just as good.
Awaken An alarm clock, with egg timer, sleep timer. Mostly I just use the iPhone, but when I don’t, Awaken is a pleasure to use. Can also wake you up to the sounds of your iTune library, or your significant other bashing your shiny new Mac. I have not tested either of these modes.
Caffeine Prevents the Mac from falling asleep whenever you stop bashing the keyboard. Good for slideshows, easier than installing a robotic arm.
Chmox Because some of the best things in life come in CHM format. File under necessary evil.
DropBox Promises to be the killer backup/file sharing/photo sharing app. Not there yet, missing a few features, but they’re all on the short-term roadmap. What it does right now, it does brilliantly.
Firefox Doh. And yes, I tried Safari, and pimped it up, FF just works better.
FLIQLO My screensaver of choice has two great features: a) it shows the time, and b) it uses big fonts.
Fluid Single-site browser, great for GMail, GCal and Pandora. The other one is Prism. Prism works better for the browser part, Fluid works better as an OS/X app. For now, I’m sticking with Fluid.
Growl Yes.
iTerm Leopard actually has (finally!) a great terminal application that’s worth its salt, but iTerm is still a notch above, costs nothing and works on Tiger (I do have a couple of those around).
MacFusion SSH to remote places, from the comfort of your own Finder.
MacPorts apt-get’s half retarded brother, doesn’t have all the Unix tools, always behind on latest releases, but you don’t get to choose your relatives. Damn, I miss Linux.
MacVim Best. Vim. Evar.
MegaZoomer Full screen your application, my favorite way for reading PDF, wish it would work with Firefox.
MenuMeters Why is this not a feature of ActivityMonitor?
MultiClutch Adds touch pad gestures to any application. Three-finger swipe and zoom/pan in Firefox, Vim and iTerm.
NeoOffice Because OpenOffice is not a native app. Yet. NeoOffice seems to work better, though it suffers from all the same problems as OpenOffice: unnecessary bloat, lousy UI, and bugginess.
NewsFire Used as a secondary feed reader, for feeds I don’t want to read every single day, or simply can’t access from Google Reader. As a secondary reader, I like it better than NetNewsWire.
Parallels I went parallels before VMWare had good UI integration, both cost money, so I’m sticking with the one I already paid for. Number one cause for Grey Screen of Death crashes and pig slow performance. Looking forward to the day when I won’t have to use Windows.
QuickLook Zip Again something that should have come pre-installed in Leopard.
Quicksilver I don’t use a tenth of what it does, still can’t live without it.
Secrets More customization.
Transmission My all time favorite BitTorrent client. I’ve used a bunch of clients, some of which didn’t do as much, some of which did too much, Transmission does exactly what I need and nothing more.
TubeTV Flash to iPhone. Killer feature is downloading Google Tech presentations and listening to them on the iPhone while folding laundry.
Twitterrific Fun.
Unison I setup the other Mac as a ready-to-use backup, keep the documented synchronized with Unison, means I can pick up either one and carry on with work. Haven’t found a way to keep Firefox synchronized (yet), and might some day get replaced with DropBox.
WriteRoom Because writing doesn’t tolerate distractio
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