I love the smell of a new Mac product. There is something distinctly satisfying about opening the box of a new Macbook or any Mac accessory and smelling whatever it is they use to neatly seal them up. I think Pavlov’s dogs might relate to what I’m talking about here.
But between the times when I get to open new toys, while I’m letting the credit card cool down from all that swiping, I go on the hunt for new applications that make me happy. And at those times, nothing makes me happier than free. So here is a list of my top picks in free applications–the ones that always make their way onto my new machines. Those of you who have been around the Mac block a time or two will know these well, but for those of you new PC defectors, this list is for you.
Top Picks in Free Mac OS X Applications
Adium
I don’t know about you, but the second thing (after obsessively checking my email) I do when I get to my computer is fire up the chat programs.
There’s no easier way to keep track of friends, family and co-workers. But all my people are scattered among several different chat programs and keeping all those running is kind of a memory hog. Enter Adium.
Adium is an all-in-one chat client that lets you chat with everyone on your list. It even supports Gtalk and Facebook chat. And when you have Facebook enabled, it will show you the person’s latest status update when they log in.
It has a very cute, very customizable interface, and don’t miss the Adium Xtras, which has tons of goodies like new emoticons, and will let you dress up your dock icon in about 1000 different ways. It will also let you just change it completely if you don’t think your duck is adorable as he is. Adium is definitely a must have for all you Mac OS X users.
Evernote
Ok, so I threw in a couple of cross-platform apps for you PC fans out there too, and Evernote is one of them. Basically Evernote is an uber note taker. If you need to remember it, put it in Evernote. You just go in, take notes, even clip web pages to it, and then you can go back and get your notes and clippings from practically anywhere.
Evernote autosaves as you type, so you don’t have to worry about losing anything, and there are so many different ways to access your account–there’s a desktop app, an online app, even phone apps (I love the app for iPhone).
So let Evernote keep and organize everything you need to remember and stop carrying around those spiral notebooks! There’s a premium edition but the free version has plenty of power and storage.
Smultron
The next three entries in my list are admittedly more geeky but bear with me here. Smultron is a very simple, very free html editor. It highlights the pieces of code, you can preview your work, and it will deal with multiple files at once.
It’s a great little editor for saving snippets to and making quick html edits. If you are a geek like me, you’ll find this one very handy.
Cyberduck
If you FTP at all, Cyberduck is a joy. It’s a very user-friendly FTP client that even uploads simply to Amazon S3. It has drag and drop file ability, so all you really have to do is set up a bookmark for a location, open it up, navigate to where you want to drop your file and drag them to it.
And having the little yellow duck in my dock makes me happy, I’m not gonna lie!
Firebug
Firebug is one of those cross-platform goodies, and technically it’s not really an app. But it’s so can’t live without for html that I had to include it. Firebug is a Firefox plugin that sits quietly in your browser waiting to be helpful. It basically is a very powerful tool for troubleshooting web design and code.
You can open up any page in Firebug and use Inspect to find the code and CSS that relates to any item on the page. Better than that, you can edit that code and see how the browser interprets the changes. It makes updating web pages so much quicker–I heart Firebug.
The one caution I have is it can get a little unruly if you leave it open all the time. Only open it when you’re actively using it, and you’ll love Firebug too.
Caffeine
Does your Mac get sleepy when you need it to stay awake? Maybe it nods off during presentations, while you’re watching a movie…it just needs a good cup of coffee.
Caffeine does exactly what you’d think it would–it wakes up your Mac. When you start it, you’ll see a little empty coffee cup appear in the top menu bar on the right.
If you need your screen to stay awake while you’re not typing or mousing, just hit the cup and it fills up with coffee. Your Mac will stay wide awake until you take its coffee away. I use this one a lot more than I thought I would; it’s really handy.
Handbrake
If I only downloaded this one for the cute icon, would you judge me? I wouldn’t care, though this one is a lot more than a fruity tropical drink. Handbrake is a DVD (and now other media source) ripper. It doesn’t do decryption anymore, but we know about another goody that’s a fine Handbrake companion–stay tuned.
It’s a quick and easy way to transfer DVD files to your computer and pass them through to your iTunes to watch on your phone. I love Handbrake because it’s hard to find easy video conversion software that’s good AND free. Cheers Handbrake!
Tweetdeck
The last in my cross-platform gems, Tweetdeck fuels your Twitter obsession. Tweetdeck sits on your desktop all day whistling at you when the people you follow have something new to say. It keeps a column for your main stream, @s that are pointed at you, and DMs. You can customize it to watch pretty much whatever you want.
Tweetdeck does for Twitter what Mail does for email–you can’t look away even if you want to. So use with caution, or you might find yourself tweeting 50 times a day and Twitterstalking everyone you can think of.
Do you have an app you can’t live without and want to share it with the world? Tell me about it. I’ll be happy to include it in a future article and give you all the credit. I’d love to clutter up my applications folder with a few more goodies!
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