This is my list of indispensable Mac OS X software. This is the stuff I use daily, so a lot of these recommendations are specific to the geek and academic crowd. In addition to these gems, there's lots of other great Mac software. Check out these sites for more software.
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OmniWeb Price: $15 |
Using the same web engine as Safari, Omniweb offers many excellent features including site-specific preferences, ad blocking, full-text search of history, graphical tabs, and much more. |
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NetNewsWire Price: Free–$25 |
RSS Web news reader. Indispensible for tracking news online and also for subscribing to podcasts. |
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Adium Price: Free |
a multi-protocol instant messenging application. Features tabbed chats and slick but usable interface. |
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WeatherPop Price: Free–$8 |
A weather monitor and forcaster for your menu bar. |
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Comictastic Price: $15 |
Comic Reader for web comics. You can start off with my comic list. |
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TextWrangler Price: Free |
An extremely powerful, yet Mac-like, text editor. TextWrangler would be a bargin at $50. I use it for everything from plain text, to HTML, to TeX, to coding Python and Java. It's integration with the unix command line is phenomenal. |
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TeXShop Price: Free |
An excellent front end and editor for the TeX typesetting system. |
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Font Explorer X Price: Free |
An unbelievably good app for managing, previewing, and purchasing fonts. What Font Book wishes it could be. |
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Equation Editor Price: Free |
typesets TeX equations to PDF for figures and presentations. Should work with Omnigraffle and Keynote, via LinkBack. |
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GraphicConverter Price: $35 |
An excellent image editing application. Understands dozens of formats. |
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Perian Price: Free |
A quicktime component for playing all sorts of MPEG variants, including AVI-based formats like DIVX. |
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Flip4Mac Windows Media Components Price: Free |
A quicktime component for playing all sorts of Windows Media files. |
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OmniGraffle Price: $60 |
An excellent diagramming tool. |
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PhotoReviewer Price: $15 |
A "Photo triage" app designed to speed up the task of deciding which of the photos on your camera you actually want to keep. I use this between taking pictures and organizing in iPhoto. |
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CanCombineIcons Price: $10 |
Takes a pair of icons or images and converts them into a single MacOS X icon. Great for creating custom folder or dock icons. |
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OSXVNC Price: Free |
Server for remote graphical logins via VNC. |
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Chicken of the VNC Price: Free |
Client for remote graphical logins via VNC. |
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Remote Desktop Client Price: Free |
Client for remote graphical logins to Windows XP Pro machines. |
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LiteSwitch X Price: $15 |
It looks pretty much like the app switcher of 10.3 and beyond, but has a number of nice features that aren't available with the built-in switcher. |
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TinkerTool Price: Free |
Exposes many useful, but hidden, system settings. |
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SuperDuper! Price: $28 |
A functional and reliable disk cloning tool |
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HotService Price: Free |
Makes the keyboard shortcuts of services immediately available after launching applications. |
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QuickSilver Price:Free |
It would take pages to describe everything that QuickSilver can do. I use it primarily as an app launcher. |
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OmniOutliner Price:$40 |
A very powerful outlining tool. I use it to organize thoughts, keep track of tasks, and write papers. |
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Consistency Price:$25 |
An interesting and useful approach to repetitive task management. |
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AntiRSI Price:Free |
A wrist break reminder that doesn't suck. Knows when you're typing, for starters. |
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MacPorts/Darwinports Price: Free |
A package manager for open-source UNIX software |
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CronniX Price: Free |
A GUI front end for cron. |
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Fugu Price: Free |
A GUI front end for scp and ssh tunnelling. |
| Mac OS X Apps |
An easy to navigate site with a comprehensive listing. |
| Emulation.net |
For when you need to run some software from one of the other platforms. |
| Versiontracker |
The standard for software updates. |
Please send comments or questions to Nick Matsakis