Top Free Mac OS X Applications

Posted by admin

June 8, 2008

One of the best aspects of being a Mac user is the amount of quality software available for OS X. While many of these applications are worth their typically small costs, there are a bevy of free alternatives that can certainly hold their own alongside their shareware counterparts. Here’s a run down of some of my favorite freeware Mac applications.

Adium: While Adium doesn’t offer the video chatting features that Apple’s own iChat does (yet), it’s an extremely customizable alternative that has been a favorite among Mac users for quite a few OS X releases already. There’s a huge assortment of Adiumy add-ons available online, including buddy list/message window styles, icons, and sound sets, among others.

Caffeine: A simple application that runs in the menu bar and allows you to keep your computer from going to sleep with a mere click. The latest version of Caffeine even allows you to turn it on for a set period of time only. This prevents you from having to mess around with system preferences every time you want to keep your Mac from getting tired.

Camino: While Safari is the best Mac browser in my opinion, it’s never a bad idea to have a backup option laying around. My choice of secondary browser is Camino — built on the same Mozilla engine as Firefox, but with a native Aqua GUI that feels much more at home on OS X.

Cyberduck: A lightweight FTP client that integrates seamlessly with most popular text editors, allowing for easy on-the-fly editing. Although two-paned interfaces are pretty standard for FTP clients, Cyberduck’s simple layout makes it feels less clunky than many of the shareware alternatives.

Growl: An unheralded Mac OS X gem, Growl is a global notification system utilized by a ton of freeware and shareware applications. Since OS X is known for system-wide consistency, having all your programs use the same type of notifications is simply icing on the cake. Growl is extremely customizable as well.

Handbrake: Must have DVD-ripping software. Handbrake has built-in presets for a number of video compression schemes and formats, delivering high quality video output that can be watched back on your computer or brought on the road via iPod. The possibilities are endless.

Inquisitor: A Safari plug-in that adds Spotlight-like functionality to Safari’s search box. Inquisitor auto-completes your searches and instantly yields the most popular results, cutting down search time dramatically, all in a slick and aesthetic manner.

Keywurl: Another Safari plug-in, this one adding keyword search to the browser’s address bar (functionality that currently exists in Firefox). I use this more often than I could possibly convey, something I didn’t expect when first installing it.

NetNewsWire: “The most popular Mac RSS reader”, NetNewsWire syncs with NewsGator.com, allowing you to tap right into your feeds anytime you’ve got an Internet connection. NetNewsWire offers a couple of different UI options and makes it easy to keep large amounts of feed subscriptions organized.

Quicksilver: The king of Mac application launchers, Quicksilver does far more than start programs via keystrokes. Undoubtedly the one Mac application I rely on on a daily basis.

Smultron: A sleek text editor featuring a simple tabbed interface and syntax highlighting for a large number of programming languages.

Transmission: A clean and minimalist FTP client. Transmission displays download and upload rates within its dock icon and lets you drill down within a downloading torrent to choose only the files you actually want.

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