Mac Users:Suggested Applications
This list are the applications that most use in CSE. We try to focus on applications that are free, inexpensive and open source. If such applications don't exist, we list the best piece of software in that category. If you want a specific piece of software, try MacUpdate and VersionTracker. You can also send your question to the mailing list.
Contents
Text
Coding
- TextMate is a brilliant general purpose text editor. It's good for coding, taking notes, managing repositories, latexing, etc. It's the hot new standard in OS X.
- BBEdit the old standard from the OS 9 days. Still very popular.
- TextWrangler is a free mini-BBEdit.
- SubEthaEdit is a novel collaborative text editor that some use.
- Vim in OS X.
- Carbon Emacs is good for those who want an OS X native Emacs.
IDE
- Xcode is the Obj-C standard, but is good for all flavors of C (and some Java). If you are building OS X native software, you should use this.
- Eclipse is the Java standard.
Tex
- TeXShop is TeX specific any editor is good.
- LaTeXiT is for embedding quotations in any document.
- BibDesk is a good bibliography manager.
Graphics
- OmniGraffle is great for creating posters, graphs and other vector based images.
- Inkscape is an Illustrator clone and is good for free form work.
Productivity
Office
- NeoOffice is a Mac friendly version of the free OpenOffice.
- Office 2004 is availabe from the department.
- Keynote is Apple's presentation software.
- Pages is Apple's wordprocessing software..
Note Taking
- Mori
- Yojimbo
- OmniOutliner
- Notepad Widget is good for quick notes
- Notational Velocity is an ultra-lightweight note-taking application.
Web
Browsing
- Camino is based on the Mozilla rendering engine, but unlike Firefox it is "Mac-y" in nature. It uses Keychain, OS X elements, etc. You can find optimized versions on MozillaZine and extensions at PimpMyCamino.
- Safari is the standard OS X browser. WebKit is Apple's open source (and often faster) browser engine. Find extensions at PimpMySafari.
- Firefox, is a cross-platform browser, but there are processor optimized versions available. Find extensions at Mozilla AddOns.
If you are using, Camino or Firefox, you'll note that you don't by default have the ability to render PDFs in the browser. If you're running on an Intel mac, you're up a creek without a paddle, switch to Safari if you really need it. If you're using a PowerPC mac then you can download PDF Browser, which basically puts Preview.app into the browsers
Creation
- CSSEdit is a modestly priced program that can really help out with CSS editing, which is one of the more tricky aspects of current web design.
- NVU seems reasonable and is open source.
Chat
AIM/MSN/YIM/Gtalk
- Adium (based on Gaim but pretty) because it's customizable and allows for all the chat protocols in one client. It has medicore file transfer support.
VoIP
- Skype is the VoIP standard.
- GizmoProject is an OSS version of Skype.
IRC
- Mail. Try SpamSieve or it's free counterpart JunkMatcher for better filtering. Use LetterBox to get three column layouts.
- Thunderbird
- Entourage
- GyazMail
- Eudora
Mail tends to be more popular because it's easy and simple. Entourage tends to be the reverse of Mail, and Thunderbird sits in the middle.
Calendar
iCal tends to be more popular because it's easy and simple. Entourage tends to be the reverse of iCal but has better Exchange server support.
RSS
- Vienna is an open-source client that works well.
- NetNewsWire (both pro and lite) are pretty good too.
- PDFView is vastly superior PDF Reader.
- Reader 8 is Adobe's offering.
- Preview.
- yep is like iPhoto for your PDFs.
- Skim lets you take (proprietary) notes on your PDFs.
File Transfer
FTP
- Cyberduck offers good FTP/SFTP support.
- Fugu are nice but getting old.
- Fetch works and is free for students.
- Transmit is nicest of all but not free.
Torrents
- BitTyrant an in-house developed mod to Azureus that's more strategic.
- Azureus if you need lots of functionality and plugs-ins.
- Tomato Torrent
- Transmission
- XTorrent.
General
- Speed Download is the most popular.
- iGetter is free.
Music
Listening
Managing
- Media Rage for doing managing artwork, tags, etc.
- IEatBrainz for automatic tag management, *Corripio *Amazon Album Art widget is widget for getting art.
- Libra helps manage multiple libraries..
- iScrobbler uploads what you listen to in iTunes to Last.fm. Annoying to download, it'll be one of the forum topics about a page down.
Making
- Garageband is pretty good if you don't want any "pro" apps. *Amadeus is a great sound editor.
- SoundStudio is good too.
- Audacity is an OSS editor.
Video
Watching
- QuickTime is great. Add Perian and Flip4Mac to make it better.
- VLC plays almost all formats.
- MPlayer is less popular but works as well.
Making
- iMovie HD, Final Cut Express HD, and Final Cut Studio. Which one you pick depends on what you want to do (and spend).
Burning Software
Photos
- iPhoto Simple and easy.
- Photoshop The legendary phototool.
- GraphicConverter Good for quick edits and batch processing.
- Gimp.app Not quite Photoshop, but close and free.
- LaunchBar gets you instant access to apps, documents, search engines, etc. It's extremely quick, stable and has limited features.
- Quicksilver is a similar to LaunchBar. It's open source, has a ton more features, but is less stable.
- Path Finder A replacement for the Finder
Notification
- Growl allows applications that support Growl to send you notifications. It's generally a useful thing to have installed.
Backup
- SuperDuper makes a bootable image of your hard drive.
- Chronosync makes versioned incremental backups of any folder you specify.
- rsync is the venerable command line tool. Useful options include -a -v -E and --delete.
Utilities
- OnyX helps you run system maintenance tasks and configure hidden parameters.
- AppleJack is a similar utility to OnyX but runs in single user mode.
- MenuMeters is a system monitoring, cpu, network throughput, disk, memory, etc.
- Pacifist Look into pkg, dmg, .tar, etc files and pull individual files out.
- UnArchiver A much more capable replacement the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X.
- Visor a systemwide terminal window accessible via a hotkey, much like the consoles found in games such as Quake.
- iTerm a full featured terminal emulation app written using Cocoa. Supports tabs.
Remote Desktop
- CoRD Cocoa OSS client for Intel.
- Microsoft RDC MS client for PPC.
- rdesktop in DarwinPorts
- rdesktop in Fink
- Chicken of the VNC Cocoa VNC client
- NX FreeNX client
- Remote Desktop from Apple
Windows
- Parallels Popular virtualization solution
- BootCamp Boot a native copy of Windows
- VMWare Currently in beta.
- CrossOver Provides a Win32 API for some apps
If you do a lot of hardware or graphics intensive work, use Bootcamp. If you need a full fledged Windows install try Parallels. If you only have one app and it's supported by Crossover, then use that. If you want know the differences, try this Guide for Choosing Boot Camp or Parallels to Run Windows on an Apple MacBook
AntiVirus
Hahaha! No seriously, any antivirus solution will slow down your machine with all the scanning. Seeing as there are no known Mac viruses, the only reason to install it is to prevent spread of Microsoft macro viruses. I strongly recommend not installing any antivirus software and just regularly updating your OS software.