Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?

84 pointsphn1x142 comments

Just purchased my first macbook and I'm already digging it. When it comes to Windows and Linux I have a standard set of apps for both programming and security auditing that I load up. I know what's available and where to get it.

With this new mac I've already loaded up some stuff but what else is available? What are some free, and even low cost "essential" mac apps I should look into?

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I'm recommending only free software here.

1. Adium for chat. It is just awesome.http://www.adiumx.com/

2. Quicksilver. if you just want an app launcher spotlight is already good at that. http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-alchemy/downloads/list [edit: updated link to point to the recent versions]

3. Caffeine is small program which puts an icon on menu bar on which you can click to prevent your Mac from going to sleep,dimming the screen etc. Very useful when watching long flash movies. http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/

4. MPlayer This is a video player which plays almost anything you can offer. Also comes with excellent keyboard shortcuts support making it the best video player on any platform. Most people prefer VLC though http://www.mplayerhq.hu/

5. Flip4Mac For those videos that MPlayer plays poorly, typically WMVs Flip4Mac provides a fee codec which integrates with your quicktime player. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcompo...

6. HandBrake For ripping your DVDs to MPEG4, there is no better tool. http://handbrake.fr/

7. Tweetie. if you use twitter, tweetie is the best mac twitter client by far. http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/

8. Virtualbox This virtualization product from Sun Microsystems totally eliminates the need for parallels or Vmware if you plan to use the VM sparingly. http://www.virtualbox.org/

9. Evernote http://evernote.com/

10. Eigenclock. I find the OS X, menu calendar extremely limted. Eigenclock is a good replacement http://www.twistedtheorysoftware.com/eigenclock/

11. Onyx for system tweaking http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs/english.html

12. Transmission - bittorrent client http://www.transmissionbt.com/

This list is great. Here's some more "FREE" software (some would appreciate a donation/purchase but are not crippled):

1. This may be obvious but as of the latest version, you don't gain much from a corporate email program like Entourage. I use Apple Mail, with IMAP and Google Apps for Your Domain. One account has 3.8GB of email and another has 4.1GB, according to Google. It scales fine and stays in sync across devices. Plus Address Book links to Google Contacts, and iCal links to Google Calendar.

2. I prefer MagiCal (http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/magical) rather than Eigenclock as it includes options to put "yyyy-mm-dd [day] hh:mm:ss" by the Spotlight icon, with [day] clickable for the calendar.

3. I like SpeakTime (http://www.mecanisme.net/software/speaktime/) for putting a row of glance-able analog clocks at the lower left of my screen (semi-transparent so they look like part of the background) to be aware of alternate time zones.

4. I use Skitch (http://www.skitch.com) for screengrabs with annotations to share with colleagues/clients.

5. I use Serverskine (http://www.serverskine.com/) to keep track of server logins.

6. I use Foxmarks (http://www.foxmarks.com/) to keep bookmarks in sync across all browsers and computers.

I don't use QuickSilver, Spotlight gets the job done.

I'd also recommend the following paid apps depending on your needs:

1. iWork '09 (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) for all office apps needs with MS Office 03-07 compatibility. It's worth the $79 for the polish and usability. The "free" alternative will cost more in the long run.

2. OmniGraffle Pro for diagramming with Visio (even Visio binary file) compatibility.

3. OmniPlan for MS Project compatibility.

4. Coda for text based web development. (Yes, TextMate is in my dock. But so is Coda.)

5. 1Password for credentials management across browsers and computers

6. Things for "GTD" methodology (or OmniFocus for more features)

OmniGraffle Pro + Keynote is a force to be reckoned with on the presentation front.

For major presentations, I'd also recommend looking at some of the commercial themes available. E.g. keynotepro

I find GrabUp (http://grabup.com/) better than Skitch, mainly because I never use the extra features that Skitch gives on top of just taking a screenshot and uploading it.

If all you're looking for is screen capture:

Apple-Shift-3 captures the entire screen.

Apple-Shift-4 lets you select an area to capture.

Apple-Shift-4 then Space captures a window that you select.

I don't personally use GrabUp or Skitch, so I can't comment on what they add.

> comment on what they add.

Skitch adds annotations and sharing with almost the same simplicity as the built-in keystrokes. I typically use "⌘-Shift-4, Space" as well, when using the screens in my own work, but not when annotating or sharing.

For quick annotations, pointing things out, highlighting things, and instantly pasting someone a viewable image URL (with one click to capture, and one click to share), Skitch is tough to beat.

I find a combination of the native key shortcuts with Dropbox works for me (you can also get a viewable image URL if you drop it in your Public folder.)

Transmission - bittorrent client http://www.transmissionbt.com/

I used to use transmission, but then I started using uTorrent, which I find has better performance. http://www.utorrent.com

I gave up both for Xtorrent, but YMMV.

Why does anyone recommend Quickisilver? It's suffering from massive bitrot these days. Most users report frequent crashes, hangs, problems waking from sleep, and general slowness compared to Spotlight and LaunchBar?

I really wish it wasn't the case, but Quicksilver seems to have had its run and no one is stepping up to the plate to preserve it.

Most everything else you list is awesome though (although I think Evernote is far from essential and I'm not sure "free" is the right word for it ;)

QuickSilver is quicker than Spotlight. I don't want to have to wait a few seconds for Spotlight to find stuff... QuickSilver is usually instantaneous or very near it. Also, it doesn't depend on the spotlight indexing, so this means I can disable the spotlight indexing jobs which have a nasty habit of using up 100% of my CPU at random times while I'm doing something.

Also, I haven't had any problems with crashes or anything like that... works great here.

Spotlight is, generally, only slow the first time you search.

Usually it's as fast as LaunchBar except for the very first time it is used. It has a reputation of being slow from 10.4 that is no longer justified.

I've found that it is consistently a few seconds slower. It's not slow as such, just slower than QuickSilver. And when it come to app launching, these few seconds kill, imho.

How do you disable spotlight indexing?

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=200711022159128...

It is still under development though. http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-alchemy/downloads/list

The original author has been hired by google and is working on google quicksearch box http://qsb-mac.googlecode.com

Quicksilver crashes on me a couple of times a week. But when it's working, it's glorious and wonderful. I think people stick with QS due to momentum and familiarity (muscle memory). I tried LaunchBar 5 for a few days and it's pretty good, very close to QS in terms of functionality, but there are slight differences in usage and plugins (social bookmarking plugin - access delicious links and tags) which keep me sticking with QS.

I don't know about LaunchBar, but Spotlight doesn't offer the same things that Quicksilver does. Sure it does application launching, but Quicksilver does more, not to mention Quicksilver's recommendation algorithm is, in my opinion, better.

I'm a fairly recent Quicksilver convert (6 mos or so) and love it. I don't suffer from any of the problems you've listed and it's great for my needs.

I'm surprised people can speak ill of Quicksilver, it is one of the things I just can't be without, I'm running an out of the box QS with just a couple plugins installed and have no complaints at all.

I only use it because it lets me define app-starting hot keys Command-F1, F2, etc. Mac OS X doesn't, as far as I can tell. Is there any other freeware app that will let me do that?

I've heard good things about Global Hotkey: http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/Freeware/GlobalHotkey.shtm...

Why, Dave Fayram (http://www.google.com/profiles/dfayram), does anyone use Windows anymore? "It's suffering from massive bitrot these days. Most users report frequent crashes, hangs, problems waking from sleep, and general slowness."

Hmm. Sounds familiar. Or it would if I were still eating your company's dog food.

Quicksilver doesn't crash for me but it does leak memory (currently using 103.30 MB).

Perian - All of the codecs supported by vlc made available for use by quicktime (and any apps that use quicktime, like iMovie).

I would use uTorrent for a bitorrent client now. I find it's just more effective as a BT client. NetNewsWire is a good RSS client. And I would use VMWare Fusion as a virutalization software vs. Parallels.

There's a new effort to make a native OSX interface for mplayer incidentally; seems fairly active so far, and includes apple remote integration, etc: http://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/

> 1. Adium

Doesn't do IRC. In fact I've been unable to find any osX chat client that does IRC and IM.

Anyone found a solution?

Colloquy [http://colloquy.info/] works well for IRC. Doesn't do IM though.

As one of the colloquy devs, I must step in with the more useful nightlies link: http://colloquy.info/downloads/nightlies/ :)

I believe the adium team is hard at work on IRC for either the 1.4 or 1.5 release. Not helpful right now, but just a heads up.

Mibbit. If you need a desktop solution, then use Fluid to turn it into an SSB.

We're forced to regularly ban Mibbit users on Freenode technical channels due to abuse masked by Mibbit's proxying, and for that reason I must say I'm not a fan.

That's the double edge that comes from any ease of access. Mibbit makes IRC very simple and very easy, and so more people use it, and with people come trolls.

That said, if you're looking to access IRC easily, that's the way to go.

It would be quite easy for axod to pass along user's IP to the server instead of masking it through Mibbit. Having the user's IP as their realname isn't a real fix..

No offense, but mibbit is for idiots.

Use irssi or xchat.

Give me a fucking break. It's a method of connecting to IRC. To the best of my knowledge, the various programs don't bestow special powers on people. They let you type lines of text and post them to a live room. Occasionally they let you format messages.

How is Mibbit for idiots? It lets me give URLs to people who want to join chat rooms, so if I want to invite somebody to a channel I don't have to say "Download this, then fill out this and this and this in the boxes," I can just link them and they click it and they're in. I can style it to my heart's desire. It's customizable as anything. It supports tabs for multiple rooms at once.

I use mibbit all the time when I'm behind a firewall that blocks IRC traffic. I don't consider myself an idiot. It's probably also a great option for thin clients.

I do use Colloquy or irssi when at home, though.

Others mentioned here are great. In addition, check these out:

http://perian.org/ - adds native support to QuickTime for many video formats

http://www.fluidapp.com/ - Fluid, SSB (site specific browsers)

http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/ - LittleSnitch, Monitor and block outgoing internet connections

http://www.skitch.com/ - Skitch, screen capture and sharing

http://derailer.org/paparazzi/ - Paparazzi, Full screenshots of websites

http://www.sequelpro.com/ - SequelPro, MySQL gui (I like Querious, but that's a paid app)

http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html - The Unarchiver, unpacker program handles almost every format

http://freeverse.com/apps/app/?id=7013 - Think, helps you focus on a single app

http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/ - MercuryMover, resize, move windows with keystrokes (If you're OCD about window sizes like me)

Other honorable mentions: Coda, Transmit, TwoUp, Typinator, UnRarX, CSSEdit

Thumbs up for Fluid. I use it for Google Reader and BBC iPlayer. Reader in particular works well as Fluid has built in support for it: it tags the Dock icon with the number of unread entries (à la Mail.app).

Dont’t use Transmit. It’s slow and they haven’t released an update for months (years?).

Yummy FTP ist the fastest and feature-richest FTP-client for the Mac. It’s synchronization feature is really good. (I bought both)

Transmit is every bit as fast as Yummy downloading and uploading a 10Mb file (S3 and SFTP), so I'm not sure what your impression is based on.

The last release was 11/24/08. It's always updated to take advantage of/fix bugs introduced by new OSes. There hasn't been a release in a whopping 5 months (?) because Leopard's been out for a while and there aren't any outstanding bugs.

http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com - SizeUp also moves windows with keystrokes - you pay what you like

http://glimmerblocker.org to get rid of the annoying ads (by default keeps the Google text ads).

+1 Perian

+1 Fluid

+1 Unarchiver

Gitx is a native OS X GUI for git. It comes with a nice command line tool, gitx, that works like gitk. http://gitx.frim.nl/

Cyberduck (ftp - http://cyberduck.ch/) Adium (IM - http://adium.im/)

I used Cyberduck for several years but some of the later versions became so buggy that I switched to Transmit. Haven't looked back since then. (Don't know if Cyberduck's stability has improved since.)

Cyberduck is a great ftp/ftp-over-ssh client.

1.) SteerMouse - tweak the mouse acceleration curve. If you're coming from a PC and you feel like your mouse doesn't move right, this will help.

2.) SizeUp - size and and position windows with hotkeys. For example, quickly set two windows to use exactly one-half of the screen each.

3.) Expandrive - mount S3 buckets, ftp sites, sftp sites as network drives. (Works great with textmate)

4.) Miro - excellent video player and torrent client with rss built in. Sort of like a torrent TIVO.

5.) Warp (http://www.ksuther.com/warp/) - adds some new methods for switching spaces. I have mine set to switch if I drag the mouse to a screen border while holding command.

6.) Also, if QuickSilver doesn't suit your tastes, give LaunchBar a try. Getting used to using one of those two apps pays huge dividends.

Another +1 for SizeUp, since I bought a display for my MacBook I love it. I also like if for "name your price".

boundlessdreamz covered a lot, here's a few more (mostly commercial but still awesome):

1. Things - Awesome task management - http://www.culturedcode.com/

2. Mailplane - If you use GMail this is a must. - http://mailplaneapp.com/

3. AppZapper - Remove everything about an app - http://www.appzapper.com/

4. LittleSnitch - Filters and prompts on outbound ip connections - http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html

5. Undercover - Stolen Laptop Recovery app - http://www.orbicule.com/undercover/

6. Fugu - SCP/SFTP App - http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/

7. On The Job - Time and Expense Tracking - http://stuntsoftware.com/OnTheJob/

8. Versions - Awesome SVN client - http://versionsapp.com/

I'll add my vote for Things! I was designing my own app to do this then Things came out. If you've ever been inspired by GTD - Getting Things Done, by David Allen, Things is an indispensable app, My third most used app next to Mail and Safari. It also has great support for syncing with the iPhone so you can take your lists on the road and store your tasks or ideas wherever you are.

Mailplane is great, especially if you have multiple gmail and google mail accounts.

Things' lack of reliable, convenient syncing killed it for me. OmniFocus, while not as sexy and certainly more complicated than Things, has rock solid syncing to your iPhone or Mac via MobileMe or any other webdav server you choose. And its robust configurability means you can set up a very Things-like workflow if that's your bag. And the iPhone version is sweet!

If you want to have todos available in more than one place, Things will bring you nothing but tears.

Cornerstone is a good alternative SVN client. Cyberduck is a pretty good general purpose SFTP/FTP/S3/etc client. I like billings better than on the job personally.

I find cornerstone a lot better than versions. Although moved to Git now and feel like an idiot for buying a subversion client!! :P

+1 Things: This app has changed my day-to-day to-dos

macports (http://www.macports.org) for installing unix utilities that are not already included in OS X.

one of the guys I follow on twitter just recommended this:

http://osx.iusethis.com/

I was about to suggest that as well. It is tied to a very cool app called AppFresh. Recommended.

Here are some of my favs:

1) Quicksilver. (free) http://blacktree.com/?quicksilver

2) VLC Media Player. (free) It plays pretty much every type of video file. http://videolan.org/vlc

3) Skitch. (free) Essential for quick screenshots, and quick annotations of screenshots. http://plasq.com/skitch

4) Tweetie. (free - ad supported - or $20) The best native Mac app for Twitterring. http://atebits.com/tweetie-mac

5) TextMate. (~$54) It's handling of projects, bundles, etc. is excellent. http://macromates.com

6) HTTP Client. (free) http://ditchnet.org/httpclient/

7) OmniGraffle. ($100-$200) Excellent for constructing user flow diagrams. http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/OmniGraffle/

8) The Hit List. ($50) It's one of the best GTD apps for the Mac. http://www.potionfactory.com/thehitlist/

9) TinkerTool. (free) For customizing OS X. http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html

10) Secrets. (free) For easy access to hidden application preferences. http://secrets.blacktree.com/

11) Sequel Pro. (free) For accessing MySQL databases in a nice GUI. http://www.sequelpro.com/

12) Fluid. (free) If you have a commonly accessed site, Fluid is great to create a SSB (site-specific browser) for it. I have a Fluid SSB created for railsapi.com, which allows me to easily launch it with Quicksilver and start searching the Rails docs right away. http://fluidapp.com/

Here's a related thread from last year:

- Ask YC: Mac virgin wants to know, what would you install? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=131241

My earlier list http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=131263 hasn't really changed but I do find the recently posted Black Tree Visor http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465334 to be very useful.

Lots of excellent pointers from others...I'll add a few I haven't seen posted:

- InstantShot: nice little screenshot utility (I use it daily)

- VueScan: swiss-army knife of mac scanning apps if you need to hook up a scanner. Costs a little, but you get lifetime upgrades. Well worth it.

- LittleSnitch: network monitor. tracks what kind of network activity your apps are up to. Costs a little, but also worth it if you value your privacy.

- JollysFastVNC: fast and free VNC client (I've been using it over Chicken of the VNC).

- OmniDiskSweeper: Disk utility shows you which files are hogging up the most hard disk space. Free. I also recommend many of Omni's other products. Omnigraffle (not free) is also excellent for diagramming.

Also, not mac specific, but the sqlite manager plugin for Firefox is also very helpful.

I don't know where others go to find different Mac apps, I usually hit macupdate.com (and sometimes versiontracker) these days, mostly out of habit, but would love to hear other recs for this.

MacFUSE w/ sshfs, and MacVIM.

Or ExpanDrive. It's alot cleaner than MacFuse + sshfs.

Agreed - sshfs has some squirrely edge-cases that ExpanDrive handles very gracefully.

no way. Never had more issues with a software (v1) - Now they tried to charge again for v2. And it was still unreliable :/

textmate

or, macvim (http://code.google.com/p/macvim/)

Aquamacs (http://aquamacs.org/)

Cocoa Nightly :)

http://atomized.org/wp-content/cocoa-emacs-nightly/

komodo edit

http://www.activestate.com/komodo_edit/

free and open source.

Nothing compares to textmate, fantastic price, unbelievably awesome editor.

I just found Smultron, and I love it.

http://tuppis.com/smultron/

BBEdit. But the two hit different crowds, it seems.

Coda

To back up raquo here, Coda (http://www.panic.com/coda/) is my current editor of choice for most things. It's got great collaborative editing, a very nice UI, good syntax highlighting and plugin support.

Coda is expensive ($99) but the convenience of working on remote files via SFTP within the program is unmatched. If your session gets disconnected in the midst of editing a file, nothing to worry about, Coda will automatically log back in for you and update the file you were working on when you save.

VIM does the same for free. $99 saved is $99 earned.

You're right, but then I could also argue that any of these programs can be replaced by installing a linux port via fink and a combination of shell scripts.

My point was mainly comparing Coda to other GUI text editors for the mac. It has other useful features such as one-window editing, integrated terminal, ability to preview CSS/HTML changes side by side with code, etc.

Thanks! I was looking for a free alternative to Coda that did editing over sftp just yesterday!

agreed. but many will use more than $99 worth of their time to figure out how to use it. If you've already paid the price for learning VIM, its an easy choice.

emacs with TRAMP does too

I just mount everything via sshfs, and keep trucking with textmate.

BBedit is the best editor on the mac, by far. (ok, I am a cheapo and use emacs)

Some of the things I use:

- DragThing; you will never miss Apple's Dock, this is an absolutely essential desktop enhancement, e.g. to create multiple tabbed docks anywhere you want, with themes.

- OmniWeb (now free); I've tried many web browsers, and I like this best. Safari engine.

- MacTelnet (tabbed terminal). It now works for local programs and not just servers, so I use it instead of Terminal.

- SnapzPro X (or alternatives), useful for doing more intelligent screenshots or video captures.

- DesktopCalendar (by Takashi Hamada), a really nice use of space and very configurable. Also has a menu option.

- Growl, for pretty and unobtrusive notification windows. This is actually really well supported by 3rd party applications.

- SCPlugin, if you're a Subversion user; nice Finder integration.

I second OmniWeb. It's the best browser there is. The tab implementation is second to none, in particular the ability to discontiguously select multiple tabs. Site-specific preferences are also incredibly useful.

1password. A must that makes your life much easier.

1Password's nice, but I've found Sxipper [1] to be better if all I need to use is Firefox. Sxipper has a really nice way of handling password changes, multiple accounts, and comment forms.

[1] - http://www.sxipper.com/

If your file system ever gets corrupted, DiskWarrior.

DiskWarrior will reliably maintain and rebuild your FS. It will work when fsck fails and is better than the other paid alternatives. It looks like (and is) a Mac OS 9 port, but it's the same filesystem so no worries.

If your filesystem is ever, ever fucked, DW will save it if anything can.

It costs $100, so don't buy until when you end up needing it. But at that moment, buy it (unless your data is worth less than $100, I guess).

Some stuff I use that I didn't see mentioned:

MenuMeters: http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/

Hyperspaces: http://hyperspacesapp.com/

Yojimbo: http://barebones.com/products/yojimbo/

Leap: http://www.ironicsoftware.com/leap/

I've got my Macbook pro 6 months ago. The best thing I ever buy. I'm programming and I use to use a Windows and a FreeBSD box before. Here, some free and commercial softwares I use everyday:

1. Terminal: Visor - Quake-style terminal http://visor.binaryage.com

2. Uninstaller: AppTrap http://konstochvanligasaker.se/apptrap/

3. SFTP: http://www.expandrive.com/mac

4. Quick remote filesharing: http://www.getdropbox.com

5. IDEA: NetBeans or ZendStudio

6. Virtual machine: Parallels - http://www.parallels.com

7. Text editor: TextEdit or TextWrangler - http://www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/

8. VPN: The native OSX thing does the job

9. Mobile sync/Addressbook: iSync does the job (Use http://www.feisar.com/ to find your mobile plugin if iSync doesn't have it natively)

10. SIP softphone: Telephone (works with Googlevoice+Gizmo5 and my local UK SIP provider) - http://code.google.com/p/telephone/

11. Notifier: Growl - http://growl.info/

12. Movie player: VLC or Quicktime+Perian codecs - http://perian.org/

13. Chat: Adium

14: Desktop display: GeekTool - http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/

QuickSilver: http://quicksilver.en.softonic.com/mac - app launcher. Essential to a smooth OS X experience.

Adium: http://adium.im/ - general-purpose chat client

Cog: http://cogx.org/ - For those of us who don't like iTunes, or want to play FLACs.

WriteRoom or Scrivener: http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom | http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html - if you like to write (those are not for code)

Textmate: http://macromates.com/ - if you're a coder.

Transmission: http://www.transmissionbt.com/ - for your torrenting needs.

Editors: MacVim, Emacs.app (build from source `./configure --with-ns` -- f Aquamacs and last resort TextMate

Torrent: uTorrent

RSS: NetNewsWire

PDF, Document Reader: Skim

+1 NetNewsWire

Everyone is linking to Quicksilver. I am a former Quicksilver user, but I find it unbearably slow and bloated. Instead, I use Google Quick Search box, which does most of what Quicksilver does with much less bloat.

http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/

Controllermate (http://www.orderedbytes.com/controllermate/) - This is an outstanding program that allows you to customize almost any USB keyboard / mouse / controller / joystick to do exactly what you want, with a very clever and powerful graphical scripting environment. I have a Logitech Dual Action (with NO Logitech drivers instaled) wired up to switch spaces on the D-pad, volume on one joystick, screen brightness on the other. One button plays and pauses iTunes. I use it to add volume buttons to my Das Keyboard. No more crappy HID drivers. You can also create custom acceleration curves for mice.

This post might be useful:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/110065/must-have-tools-fo...

It listed all the userful tools that would be relevant to a programmer.

Thanks for that... I was just looking for a syntax highlighter for Quicklook!

http://code.google.com/p/qlcolorcode/

(not free, but cheap)

taskpaper http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper

scrivener http://www.literatureandlatte.com/trial.html

curio + small pen tablet http://www.zengobi.com/products/curio/, http://www.wacom.com/bambootablet/bamboofun.php

TextWrangler (free text editor), Gimp and Inkscape (free graphics) or Photoshop Elements ($90), OpenOffice (free) or iWork (office like from Apple $90), or MS Office ($150) depending on what you know and who you communicate with, Firefox browser (free), Xcode for Mac or iPhone development (free), Skype (free), Tweetie, no virus scanner needed for now, and an external hard Disk so you can use TimeMachine for backups are what I have added in the first 2 months with my first intel mac.

I like Smultron over TextWrangler (and I say this as someone who paid for TextWrangler years ago, before they made it free). Also, Adium is very nice if you use any IM other than Skype.

There are lots of great suggestions here, one I haven't seen yet is Spirited Away. (http://drikin.com/spiritedaway/)

This app hides app you haven't used for a little while so the app you are using currently is the most prominent thing on the screen. I find it really helpful to declutter my screen in a non-invasive way.

You can also exclude things like video players and the like from being hidden.

Developer: Coda, Cornerstone, TextWrangler or BBEdit, iTerm, ForkLift, Querious, Changes, iChm

Web Designer: CSSEdit, Flux, Dreamweaver, xScope, Xyle Scope, Picturesque

Researcher: Evernote, DevonThink Pro, ConceptDraw MindMap

User: LaunchBar, Overflow, Little Snitch, Super Duper

Web Junkie: 1password, Firefox, Tweetie, NetNewsWire, ClamXav, DoorStop Firewall, Net Monitor

Freelancer: TimeLog & GrandCentral

Photographer: Photoshop CSx, Portrait Professional, Aperture 2, GraphicConverter, PhotoReview

I actively use firefox (and camino + safari to have multiple sessions for the same site), iWork, tweetdeck, birdshot, itunes, last.fm, VLC, uTorrent, Quicktime pro, snaps x pro, skype, textmate, parallels (though switching to VMware), RescueTime, DropBox, and QuickBooks.

About 40% are paid apps.

I see a lot of people recommending virtual pc but does anyone have anything to say about vm fusion? A buddy of mine was going to hook me up with a copy. I've used virtual PC on linux quite a bit but I was always frustrated with the lack of ability to bridge the networking.

I think it's great (trouble-free for me). No problems with networking and almost seamless. Though, I rarely use it for more than a few minutes each week. Just to test web pages out in IE. Which MultipleIE is great for:

http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

Fusion works, but its full-screen mode is rather unfortunate—this is putting it kindly. While running full-screen, when you drag the mouse to the top of the screen, the Mac menubar appears. There's no way to turn this behavior off (please prove me wrong!). I honestly can't imagine a case where anybody could prefer this, and to have no option at all to disable it is a real disappointment. When my license expires, I'll take another hard look at Parallels.

Fusion is awesome, especially their "Unity" feature.

Fusion's really easy to use. I've got Windows 7 installed on it, using the 'Vista' install option, and it's working great. It makes it so easy to get it working on the network, and to create a shared folder between the VM and your Mac (if you ask it to).

Fusion works great for my needs.

Fusion's good for everything but gaming. I use it for Linux but for Windows I stick to Boot Camp.

Home and End Key Fixer. I found my machine to be nearly unusable without it.

Quicksilver, to avoid the terrible GUI as much as humanly possible.

(I have my MacBook because it is the only non-Windows notebook with fully working suspend mode and peripherals. Why did you buy yours?)

DoubleCommand works great for this as well, even in Firefox 3, and includes a lot of other handy key-remapping.

DoubleCommand can cause kernel panics.

KeyRemap4MacBook will give you a lot more options.

http://www.pqrs.org/tekezo/macosx/keyremap4macbook/

Terminal.app + Visor is a great combination for me since I use the command line so much.

carbon emacs

Quicksilver.

Nambu Twitter client. I like it much more than Tweetdeck.

There is a good list of free (as in beer) Mac apps at http://www.freeapps.co.uk/mac

Just adding in LittleSnapper for keeping screenshots of sites / designs I like and also Wallet for keeping track of my passwords.

I just reinstalled my mac today. Here is what i installed so far :

1-quicksilver

2-iTerm (terminal. with tabs)

3-Photoshop CS3 (cs4 is slow on my macbook)

4-Transmit

5-DropBox client

6-Textmate

7-Git

8-The Hit List (best osx app for lists)

9-LimeChat (irc client)

As of Leopard, Terminal.app has tabs.

Didn't know, thanks!

Quicksilver (App launcher)

Onyx (Maintenance scripts)

Apple Developer Tools (Terminal/GCC/XCode)

SubEthaEdit (Collaborative Editing)

Textmate (Defacto standard editor)

Cyberduck (SFTP Client)

Perian (Codecs)

I'm going to be a fuddy-duddy and say: most of these apps are not essential for the Mac. Lots of them are nice, but you can skip them entirely when you're just getting started.

Here are the ones I consider absolute essentials for my daily work:

MegaZoomer - http://ianhenderson.org/megazoomer.html - lets you full-screen zoom any application. That mixed with TextEdit gives you the best word processor you'll ever need.

Quicksiler - linked all over - this will fill in every hole you have in your computer usage. I use it to fix a lot of shortcomings in iTunes, for instance, and while I don't use it as insanely as some people do, even light usage makes your life a lot easier. It's also a full-featured file browser, which is excellent.

Perian - http://perian.org/ - makes your life a lot easier when you're watching videos or listening to music, without forcing a reliance on the ugly VLC.

GlimmerBlocker - http://glimmerblocker.org/ - Unless you use Firefox, this adds every feature you'll need to every browser you've got. (Firefox is an awful browser that rebuilds a lot of Mac features from the ground up, and so it isn't affected by this.) It blocks ads (selectively, so you can allow the ads you don't mind), blocks entire sites, and adds retroactive functionality to sites. The big one for me is the Youtube downloader.

Growl - http://growl.info/ - This one's really easy to abuse, but if you set it to notify you of all the really important things - FTP file uploads and long processes and so on - then you get a very nice way of keeping yourself informed of all your computer's goings-on.

Those are the ones that I absolutely need for my Mac. Here are the ones that are obscure-ish and rarely recommended and yet are terrific:

Max - http://sbooth.org/Max/ - converts every format but wma, so your library stays neat and organized without any complaints about iTunes.

Freedom - http://macfreedom.com/ - disables the Internet, so you can't procrastinate at all.

FuzzyClock - http://www.objectpark.org/FuzzyClock.html - makes your clock much more humane.

Chax - http://ksuther.com/chax/ - Fixes a few things in iChat to make it an acceptable chat system (I really dislike Adium for a number of reasons).

gcc (not installed by default)

I just went through the same thing.

Follow me on twitter as I explore the world of OSX and my adventures with all things "Hackintosh": @cericsmith

Here's my list:

1Password -- Perhaps the greatest piece of Mac OSX software. You must try to believe it. Password storage/sync/creation/ID management at its finest.

http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password

Unison -- If Windows newsreaders hadn't stopped evolving around 1998, they might have come up with something like Unison in... 2150.

http://www.panic.com/unison/

MusicBrainz Picard -- For fixing the "Unknown Artist/Album" issues.

http://musicbrainz.org/doc/PicardDownload

BluePhone Elite -- Neat Smartphone/iPhone tricks with Bluetooth. Ever wanted to have your machine wake up or sleep when you were just out of range? This is an app for you.

http://mirasoftware.com/BPE2/

Toast Titanium 10 -- Sure, Leopard can burn discs... but Toast is much more than that, and it's elegance exceeds anything on Windows.

http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/toast/titanium/overview.ht...

iLife 09 -- iPhoto's face rec. is just cool, and iMovie beats the snot out of Movie Maker.

http://www.apple.com/ilife/

Stuffit Deluxe 2009 -- Not as necessary as it used to be, but still nice to have available.

http://my.smithmicro.com/mac/stuffit.html

Parallels 4 -- Many people like VMWare Fusion, but Parallels 4 has support for a lot more configuration of the VM -- support for up to 8 processors, the ability to have VM's start off of CD and/or Disk Image/ISO, is killer.

http://www.parallels.com/

Little Snitch -- knowing when your applications are "phoning home" is important.

http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html

DiskWarrior -- HFS+ disk maintanance package and more. Fix disk errors...

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html

AppZapper -- Yes, theoretically uninstalling apps on the Mac is straight forward, but AppZaper gets all the flotsom and jetsom that would otherwise be left behind. Great for nuking preference files, etc.

http://www.appzapper.com/

ClamXav -- Ok, we know that Mac's don't get virii, per se... but this cross-platform, donation-ware AV tool gives peace of mind when running random software you download from the Net.

http://www.clamxav.com/

FileSpot -- Spotlight is nice, but FileSpot takes it to another level.

http://mac.synthesisstudios.com/mac/filespot/about

GimmeSomeTune -- integrates with iTunes and pulls/updates album art and lyrics, and works with Growl. Updates iChat status and images based on what you're listening to. Sweet.

http://www.eternalstorms.at/gimmesometune/

HighLight -- Instantly add file(s) or folders to your Spotlight search index.

http://homepage.mac.com/superpixel/highlight/

SimpleComic -- a great comic PDF viewer.

http://dancingtortoise.com/simplecomic/

TED -- This program scours the usual suspects for new TV episodes and integrates with your favorite Torrent program to automatically download them!

http://www.ted.nu/

DropBox -- 2GB of free, sync'ed cloud storage for your Mac (or PC/Linux box). Incredible in conjunction with 1Password.

http://www.getdropbox.com/install?os=lnx

The Unarchiver -- Ok, so you don't like Stuffit? This will pull apart almost anything.

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

Movist -- A media player based on ffmpeg/VNC that has a more polished UI than VNC.

http://code.google.com/p/movist/ VNC -- open and play anything.

Perian -- Add the ability to open and play most media formats that ffmpeg can handle inside of QuickTime.

http://perian.org/

Pixelmator -- who needs Photoshop? This $50 application is the bees knees. Cool UI, great features.

http://www.pixelmator.com/

doubleTwist -- Part media manager, part file conversion utility. If you need those TV shows on your PSP, this can handle it. Notably, doesn't support iPhone (yet).

http://www.doubletwist.com/dt/Home/Index.dt

MPlayer OSX Extended -- the benefits of Mplayer on OSX. More polished than VNC, more stable (at this point) than Movist.

http://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/

FreeDMG -- The ability to create Disk Images/.dmg files.

http://www.kelleycomputing.net/freedmg/

Tweetie -- The newest and most controversial OSX Twitter program.

http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/

Boxee -- a "10 foot interface" for managing your media and Internet content sources such as Hulu.

http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/

SuperDuper -- quickly and easily clone your HFS drives.

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription...

iWork 09 -- Pages is what Powerpoint will never be -- Fun.

http://www.apple.com/iwork/

Argh. Encouraging people to use Stuffit is nearly criminal. Bloated, packed with adware, greedy with filetypes - it's a menace. If you're unfortunate enough to be given a .sitx file you may be forced to use their fairly awful free Expander, but paying for the full version would surely be grounds for a psychological review. If you really need to compress things that tiny bit more than normal .zip, there's always 7zip.

Textmate - Best text editor hands down. Cyberduck - FTP client.

What about... games? :P

World of Goo is a must-have, even for non-gamers. It's makes for a nice break from doing actual work. ;) http://www.worldofgoo.com/

Multiwinia - RTS stick man slaughter. Somewhat heavy for a Mac Mini or the latest MacBook Air. Fast and fun. Not much resource management, you can get down to the fighting straight away. And for $19 you can't really go wrong.

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/multiwinia/

iTerm http://iterm.sourceforge.net/

VLC Player http://www.videolan.org/

Carbon Emacs

* OmniFocus * CSSEdit

Stuffit Expander.

I prefer The Unarchiver http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html

I've seen many time Unarchiver saying a archive was corrupted or was unable to decrypt with the right password. Now I use unrar in command line. (imported from macport) . Much better!

1. Quicksilver - There are already explanations on this and I don't like Spotlight that much.

2. MacPorts - If you are a developer or you're just an open-source lover, this is a must have app for you. It has 5811 open-source programs ready to install, easy and... open-source! ( which is good... )

3. TexMate - My every day editor, I don't use another one besides this one.

4. Adium - For chatting.

5. pgAdmin - For PostgreSQL administration. I don't use MySQL that much.

6. Growl - Another must have for system notifications, I don't realy know why Apple hasn't put one in OS X yet.

7. OmniGraffle - For Visio projects and such.

8. Things - For task managing.

9. Tweetie - The best Twitter client I've ever found.

10. Transmission - For P2P file transfers. I don't like uTorrent very much.

11. AppZapper - To uninstall programs. When you delete an app some configuration files are left behind, with this program all the files related are also deleted.

12. Evernote - Well... to take notes! Even better if you have an iPhone.

13. VMWare Fusion - For virtualization

14. Scribbles - For those moments when you get inspired and just want to make some draws :)

15. Adobe - Photoshop and Dreamweaver between others are a must.

16. Teeworlds - Best game ever and... Open-Source!!!!

17. Toast Titanium - For recording CD's and DVD's.

18. ScreenFlow - To record your screen and make nice video editing

These are not by "like" order, they're by the order I remembered them. I wouldn't recomend installing iTerm because Terminal.app does the job nicely and it has tabs as well. I'll had more if I remember some.

Cyberduck for FTP. Colloquy for IRC. VLC for video. Growl for notifications.

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