Personal Favorite Mac OS X Freeware Applications

There are many things I like about being a Mac user. As Computerworld’s Scot Finnie explains it, unlike the PC the Mac simply does not draw attention to itself in the day-to-day. No malware, no registry corruption, no hassles whatsoever. It’s just “so much chrome wrapping the data I’m interacting with.” I picked up this Macbook Pro about a year ago primarily to get a hold of Final Cut Studio for college, and secondly to get as far away from Redmond’s colossal mistake of an OS as possible. All these reasons aside, what I like most about my Mac is the enormous amount of available OS X-exclusive freeware and the communities surrounding it. It’s ironic too – the age-old complaint about Mac OS X regards software compatibility. Most PC users never consider: maybe the software you’re anchoring yourself to is shit to begin with; try moving on entirely.

The great thing is that Mac freeware is often so well-designed. Starting from a UI standpoint, looks are streamlined and unified, thanks to some Quartz and Aqualicious goodness. A lot of them are incredibly innovative and elegantly simple. Best of all, they’re free because there is an ever-growing collective of individuals who believe that software shouldn’t cost a damn thing. It’s okay to feel that way, you know.

Enough of that. In this past year, I’ve come across a vast assortment of freeware. After some significant field-testing, my experience with these applications has rendered me a loyal Mac user. I’m not budging. There’s no reason: this software simplifies workflows and vastly improves quotidian computer use. Apple’s market share has been growing at a ridiculous rate recently, so it’s safe to say there are a lot of new users like myself. I’m hoping at least a few people will get something out of this list. Remember all of this is free.

Chat client:

Adium: If iChat isn’t cutting it and you can’t wait until Leopard to get some damn tabbed browsing already, Adium is the most popular alternative. Provides visually customizable contact list and chat window, and compatibility with AIM, MSN, Bonjour, Google Talk, ICQ and pretty much all others.

Chax: If you can’t live without Video conferencing (not yet available in Adium), you might consider Chax, which as its clever icon suggests, ties up iChat’s loose ends while retaining its essence. It does as good job making it as much like Adium as possible. More info after the break. Enjoy.

Notifiers:

Google Mail Notifier: Docks itself right on your menu bar. Lets you know how many messages you have in your Gmail inbox and when clicked opens a contextual menu allowing you to Go to Inbox, Compose New, Refresh, and view subject lines and snippets. I also recommend getting the widget.
[Gmail Widget]

If you don’t have Gmail, then I can’t help you. Moving on.

Growl Notifier: Nifty pref.pane app much like Quicksilver in terms of ubiquity and popularity. It notifies you of things you deem important. For example, I have it setup for Gmail (That means I have three mail notifiers if you’ve been keeping count at home), Adium chat (when a contact connects disconnects, and snippets for new messages), iGTD, iTunes, and several others. Growl also notifies me when downloads and installations are completed. A good application will usually offer compatibility with Growl. For iTunes, I have Growl slide up a dark gray translucent menu from the bottom of my screen, providing song name, artist, album, rating, and artwork. Like a music video. Heh. Okay go get it. (Be sure to install GrowTunes for iTunes compatibility)
[Gmail+Growl Notifier]

Project Management (This is where these freeware apps really shine):

iGTD: There are a hell of a lot of project management applications specific to the Mac platform to choose from. A lot of them come in boxes and have price tags. The best one I’ve come across that is absolutely free is iGTD. It’s short for iGetThingsDone. The amount of things this application can do is far too much to mention in this blurb. Fugget it. Well, I try. You can set up contexts, which are places you do things. You can also setup sub-contexts, like for the context “JHU,” I could have subcontext “Work,” which is the job I have at JHU. Then you can have tasks setup for these contexts, given a specific priority, due date (could be tomorrow, once a day, once a week, everyday whatever), etc. You can attach files to tasks, say if your task has something to do with editing or referencing the file. You can also assign a task to a project you’re working on, and place the project in a context, or – you know what, the application is amazing, okay? Just get it and fuck with it. The best part is, it’s a great hub for throwing down tasks when they occur to me. I could be reading RSS feeds or typing a document for class when I remember I have to fill out that student health insurance waiver before they put a hold on registration and ruin my life. I just summon QS (which has an iGTD plugin) hit the “.” key to enable text input, type:

@Computer Fill out health insurance waiver!!!:check inbox for link to form #thursday

…then hit the TAB button, type out iGTD and hit enter. iGTD receives this information, understands the context is Computer, the task is “Fill out health insurance waiver,” the priority is 5 (!!! means 5 priority or high), the task note is “check inbox for link to form,” and the due date is Thursday. iGTD syncs with iCal, which syncs with my iPhone. Which means I know. I really know. And I won’t forget. After I type that, I’m back to working, and I never even had to mess with the app itself. Fucking. Best. Program. Ever. Looks great, too. Don’t miss it.
[iGTD Overview]
[iGTD QS Tutorial]

Task List: Think of Task List iGTD, but specifically for students. Task List has improved so much within the past year. A remarkably well-written application. Like iGTD, Task List provides integration with iCal, as well as Email. If you were one of those kids in high school who wrote down every assignment in your agenda and every grade you received on every test, quiz, and homework to make sure your teacher calculated your grade correctly at the end of the semester, this is it. You will love this. You begin by inputting your courses, the days and times you attend the classes, teacher and TA names and contact information. Then you can create tasks for each course, label them as assignments, projects, or tests, indicate their priority level and due date on a calendar. After the task is completed, you can check it off and input the grade (percent or otherwise). Task List archives this information and begins to generate evaluative charts and graphs, and can even give you your current GPA based on the data. My favorite feature reminds me so much of high school. It’s called Finals, and it has three fields: Enter your current grade (which the application can give you), Enter the grade you want, and Enter the weight of your final. I remember everyone in class the day teachers would give out the grades before finals calculating what they needed to get on the final to get the grade they wanted. Task List does it for you. Widget provided.

Office Applications (Word Processors, Slide Presentations, Spreadsheets):

NeoOffice: For the life of me, I still can’t understand why people insist on charging a premium for word processors. Microsoft Word is still the most widely used word processor out there, but it’s time to rid yourself of that, no? Maybe you don’t own Office 2004 and don’t want to pay for/pirate it. Whatever your reason, you don’t have to get it. I used to use OpenOffice, but NeoOffice rids me of having to work through the X11 windowing system, which was crazy beans. NeoOffice gets the job done. Cool feature fills out words as you type if it can guess them. Speeds up typing if you’re slow. Slide presentation seems kind of run of the mill, though. Until I buy iWork ’08, which now has a spreadsheet program, I’ll be using NeoOffice. That’s pretty much it. Oh! Google docs/spreadsheets is ajax paradise, and it runs right off the web! That’s good to know. Use NeoOffice if you don’t have Microsoft Office and don’t have a means of getting it. Office 2008 for Mac is delayed because Microsoft is silly, so fuck them. If you want to buy something great, buy iWork ’08. It looks phenomenal. (Warning: fugly icon)

Browsers:

Opera: I’ve tried them all, and there are dozens. Safari, Firefox, Camino, Shiira, Omniweb, etc. Opera’s the one to get. The downside is its launch time, but Opera’s features are so invaluable that it’s worth the extra five damn seconds. You’ve got the usual conveniences, like tabbed browsing and page preview (hover over a tab for a thumbnail preview), but that aside Opera makes it easy to parse a page’s links, access closed tabs (including history of that tab), and save multi-tab sessions. What finally won me over was a little thing I learned from my friend Eddy: Mouse gestures. ‘Nuff said. (If you want a more thorough rundown of the features I’ve come across let me know. There’s plenty more to talk about.)
[Info on Opera Mouse Gestures]

Shiira: Cocoa-delicious. Still working out the kinks, but this will soon be an amazing browser. Give it a try. I gave it up because the beta was having some issues. Great hud-like menus that fit perfectly with the Aqua UI scheme. Permanent thumbnail tabs. Mini-browser widget. Good stuff brewing.

Safari: Safari 3 (Public Beta) is getting better. I used to use Safari until the extra features of other browsers pulled me away, but I will tell you this: if you want to stick with Safari you must know about its best available add-on, Inquisitor. It does to the Internet what Spotlight does to Finder. That should be enough. Try it for yourself and be amazed. The fact that I gave up Inquisitor for Opera definitely says a lot about Opera, come to think of it.
[Inquisitor Safari Plugin]

Firefox: I haven’t quit on Firefox just yet. It’s always advisable to have several browsers, just in case you come across some issues with a site that has support issues. Firefox usually gets the job done in these instances. Plus with the add-ons available for Firefox 2 I may be doing some revisiting. I don’t really see the advantage to Camino yet. Convince me otherwise.

Pathway: Solves a problem I’ve always had on Wikipedia. When I need to look something up on the wiki, I eventually find myself three hours later sitting in the same place on the same site reading about something completely different, not knowing how the hell I got there. Pathway facilitates backtracking so perfectly by “presenting you with a graphical ‘network’ representation of your visited article pages.” A built-in web browser cuts down on the work. It automatically parses a page’s links, which sit ready as graphical network bubbles to be clicked on and accessed. You can save your pathway to continue with later. Nifty Spotlight integration included. Funny story, has nothing to do with anything: I used to play this game with my roommate where we would start on the same Wiki page and see who could get to a randomly predetermined subject in the least amount of clicks. Like from Frida Kahlo to Goat Cheese. The results were usually surprising. Try it; it’s fun. Pathway makes the game better, if you can imagine.

The Wonderful World of RSS:

NetNewsWire Lite: Checking RSS feeds within your browser became the stuff of old folks very quickly. NetNewsWire Lite is a standalone application that is quite simple. It checks the RSS-enabled sites of your choosing for news automatically at intervals of your choosing (as fast as 30 minutes or you can manually refresh) and most notably allows you to directly post to del.icio.us. Other than that, it’s no frills. A few visual templates and a sliding menubar for browsing and adding feeds included. No atom support. It definitely reminds you that the full version is better, though. I almost pulled out the credit card, until I ran into Vienna. (Warning: Fugly icon heading your way)

Vienna: My latest bit of freeware goods. The search/flag functions and atom support did me in. Significantly better UI than NNWLite, so I’m sticking to it. Three separate layouts means you actually have a choice, unlike the other dude. Built in tabbed browser means less navigation between windows. Smart folders make me feel like it’s just an extension of the Finder. This is what “unified” is all about. Check it out.

Miro: This is an open-source Internet TV application. Very much like RSS readers, it allows you to browse over 2,000 video sources in a provided channel guide. Additionally it serves as an all-around video player for the media on your system, offering support for even the most obscure formats. Neat feature allows users to download YouTube videos without any workaround. Keeping video free baby.

Fudge with your iPhone:

iFuntastic: Safely navigate your directory, reorder home screen icons, change the carrier logo, and best of all add ringtones. Support for .m4p and .mpa means you can use iTunes Music Store song samples. Way to go!

Back It Up:

TimeDrawer: Not many people back up their files. It’s kind of important. Many people don’t do it I guess because they think it’s a difficult thing to do. Well, it’s not. If you don’t have .Mac’s Backup 3, and you don’t want to wait for Leopard’s Time Machine, get TimeDrawer. Excellent and once again, elegantly simple interface makes it easy to go back however many days to find that word document you accidentally deleted however many days ago. A pref.pane menu lets you put a limit on the space dedicated to backing up and other things as well. It’s pretty stupid-person-proof, and it’s less cheesy-looking than Time Machine. I’ll probably still be using it when Leopard rolls around. Allows you to preview files before restoring them.

System Apps (Applications designed to simplify or improve aspects of the OS):

Quicksilver: The god-app. No joke. Takes a while to wrap your head around, and would take equally longer for me to explain. First off, it’s an application launcher. Get rid of that dock and clean up your desktop; Quicksilver does it all. Summon QS with your own shortcut, and begin typing out an application. With the speed of spotlight, QS will search for results in realtime and literally before you can type “Opera” you have it open. Pretty soon you’ll be typing and sending emails, selecting iTunes songs, opening bookmarks, and saving tasks to iGTD all in just a few keystrokes. It’s brilliant, and many applications provide plugins for Quicksilver. Honestly, this application alone justifies buying a Mac. Be sure to check out Shelf and Clipboard, pictured above.

AppTrap: Simple application activated in the preference pane. The cool thing about OSX, as many cite, is the fact that you can drag an application into the Trash when you want to get rid of it. That is true in some cases. Some applications however leave files in different areas of your computer, such as Library > Preferences (give it a looksee, I dare ya). To ensure anything having to do with an application you no longer want goes in the trash as well, make sure AppTrap is running when you do so. A definite recommendation.

Onyx & Maintenance: A very good system maintenance application. You can verify and repair permissions on your own, but it’s nicer to do it in Onyx, in my opinion. Plus it lets you mess a bit with OSX parameters. Safely of course. Actually the site explains it better – “It allows you to run misc tasks of system maintenance, to configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, Login window and of some of Apple’s own applications, to delete caches, to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome, to see the detailed info of your configuration, to preview various logs and CrashReporter-reports, to check the Preferences files and more.”

Application Enhancer – Cleardock: Make your dock background clear. You have to. You’ll understand soon enough. Message me if you want some nice dividers, too.

VirtueDesktops – Everyone at VirtueDesktops (which means that one guy who wrote it) seems kinda depressed as of late. Probably because Leopard’s Spaces feature is essentially going to kill off their great little application. Oh well. VirtueDesktops allows you to run multiple virtual monitors. For example, if my desktop is a bit cluttered, I can move this text document to a second virtual desktop I can access via quick keyboard shortcut. Works wonders when I’m editing in FCP. The application provides several neat animated transitions. If Spaces limits users to only four virtual desktops, I’ll probably stick with VirtueDesktops because there’s pretty much no limit in site.

Kinkless Desktop – Now, okay I lied. This isn’t really an application, but it’s still free! It’s actually a link to a site. On this site, this guy created a couple of videos explaining a little method he devised that manages the flow of downloads and files running through one’s computer on a day-to-day basis. As a commercial photographer, he has many. But it works for every kind of person. I’ve been using it for the past month, and I run through a lot of downloads and create a lot of new files daily. My desktop and key folders have never been more organized. Give it a look. It’s worth it.

The Spaces In Between:

xPad – Glorified pad and pencil. Gives TextEdit a run for its money.

Azureus – Preferred torrent application. Forgot who recommended this to me over Bittorrent. Reveal yourself! Oh yeah, Eddy.

iSquint – A bit dated, but it worked when I first got it and it still works today. Convert Video files to iPod size. Skimpy lite version of something better, but it’s good enough. I’ll be looking around.

Since you’ve read this far you get a free Indie game!

Adanaxis: Fight other strange looking wireframe spaceships in 4 dimensions?…! Get confused! Have fun! Waste time! Music is funny!

Well, that’s it for now. I’ll update this periodically when I find new stuff. I may do a shareware version of this soon, including info on NetNewsWire and Yojimbo. I also may do one on Web 2.0. Let me know if you like any of the apps I’ve talked about or if you use them already. I’m curious. Now that I’ve entertained this impulse, it’s time for bed.