There is a large number of excellent free or inexpensive tools for Mac OS X, and most long-time Mac users have a handful of “must-have” utilities. Indeed, it appears that the Mac platform’s community of good, small developers producing such software sets it apart; according to what I’ve read this isn’t the case in the Windows world, where “free” and “spyware” are often synonymous.

As more and more of my friends buy new Macs, I keep promising to create a list of tools I consider indispensable; at long last, here it is. Many of these apps are free; all of the others offer free trial periods.

Stuff You Have Already

A few things you already have but may not know about:

• Right-click: Just like Windows, Macs support a second (right) mouse click and a mouse scroll wheel. If you don’t have a second button you can just Control-click; or, plug in any two-button USB mouse. There is some support for additional buttons as well.
• Color calibration: You may notice that colors don’t look as vibrant or accurate as they should. Luckily, you can calibrate your computer’s display. Go to System Preferences > Displays, click on the Color tab, and click Calibrate.
• Font Book: This application allows you to manage fonts. You can organize them into sets; enable and disable them; and view samples.
• Mail: Apple’s own Mail program is my email application of choice. It provides a nice set of features, unusually good searching and browsing of messages, and connectivity with a variety of mail systems (including Microsoft Exchange/Outlook).
• iChat: In addition to AIM-compatible instant messaging, iChat provides audio chat and videoconferencing. If you don’t need audio or video, check out Adium (see below) for a more comprehensive, multi-service IM tool.
• iCal: Apple’s built-in calendaring program is nothing amazing, but it’s a competent calendar app that integrates with Mail, Google Calendar, and other online calendars. .Mac owners can use it to publish calendars on the Web; non-.Mac owners can publish iCal calendars using my iWebCal service. You can also check out Zoodo, my solution for quickly entering iCal tasks.

Navigating Your Computer

Apple’s Finder is fine (some would disagree), but not necessarily the most efficient way to navigate. Among other things I’m a keyboard junkie: I like to be able to get around without unnecessary mouse movement. While UNIX geeks may find the Terminal application sufficient for this purpose, I rely on a few core utilities.

Butler

Butler (free) gives you a myriad of ways to navigate your computer, by keyboard or mouse. Hit Control-Space, then type any abbreviation for an application you want to launch. If it doesn’t guess the right one, pick from a list and it’ll remember for next time. Create one or more menus with files, folders, iTunes controls, and useful commands and options; make them accessible at any time from your menu bar, a screen corner, or a keyboard shortcut. Drag files and folders to your new menu to copy, move, or open them. Assign all your function keys to applications. Set keyboard shortcuts for anything. Manage multiple clipboards, by mouse or from the keyboard. All in an efficient, minimal, attractive package. Configuring it can be a bit daunting but the effort is well worth it.

If Butler isn’t your thing, LaunchBar ($19.95 for home users; $39 business) does some of the same things, most notably abbreviation-based navigation of both applications and documents. I used to use LaunchBar but find Butler to be faster and appreciate some of its other features. QuickSilver is another popular application in this category. If you just want to assign keyboard shortcuts (including function keys) to applications and/or documents, HotApp ($15 USD) will do the trick.

Internet

Mail

As mentioned above, I prefer Apple’s own Mail application for email. If Mail doesn’t do it for you, other good options include Mozilla Thunderbird (free) and Microsoft Entourage (included with Microsoft Office; $399).

Email Helpers

• MailActOn (free) is a plug-in for Apple Mail that lets you create deferred mail filters and assign keyboard shortcuts to them. For example, suppose you want to put email from me in a Dave folder. Normally, such a filter would route new mail from me to the Dave folder as soon as it arrived. With MailActOn, new mail can go to your inbox, then be sorted into folders after you read it. To me, this plug-in is itself enough reason to use Apple Mail.
• SpamSieve ($25 USD) works with a number of email programs including Apple Mail and Microsoft Entourage to provide effective spam filtering (better, in my experience, than what Apple Mail provides on its own).

Web Browser: Camino

Apple’s own Safari is a great browser, but my browser of choice is Mozilla’s Camino (free). It uses the same engine as the more well-known Firefox, but is more Mac-friendly in appearance and integration with the rest of the system. The result is faster, more attractive, and more pleasant than Firefox. Arguably its biggest advantage over Safari is search-as-you-type, which finds words in the current Web page as you type them. If you’re looking for something more powerful or configurable, try Firefox (free), which has additional features and lots of downloadable extensions and themes.

Instant Messaging: Adium

Adium (free) is a great, unified instant messaging client. It supports a number of services including AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, Jabber, and Novell Groupwise in a single buddy list. It’s fairly configurable and can be set up to use screen space effectively.

Blogging: ecto

If you have a blog, you may find it inconvenient to do all your editing in a Web browser. If so, consider ecto ($17.95 USD), which lets you write your blog posts in an environment resembling a simple Word processor. (If you do your blogging via .Mac, you can just use Apple’s iWeb.)

News: NetNewsWire

Call them blogs, newsletters, articles, whatever you want: Much of the Web’s content is published in the form of periodic posts or updates. If you read a lot of these sites it can be a pain to visit them all individually, only to discover (in many cases) that nothing new is available.

Enter RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a way for sites to syndicate their content in a form easily understood by newsreader sites and programs. So, instead of visiting 20 sites to see what’s new, you open your newsreader and can tell at a glance where the new content lies. What’s more, you can read it without leaving the newsreader. And RSS goes beyond news, allowing syndication of photo albums and podcasts as well. An RSS newsreader is either a great way to consolidate your Web browsing, or a dangerous waste of time.

NetNewsWire ($29.95 USD) is a good newsreader for the Mac. It works a little like an email program: Your newsfeeds appear in a list. Selecting one shows you all the recent items; click one to read it. You can also organize feeds into folders. Selecting a folder shows you the recent items in all its feeds.

Productivity

Presentations: Keynote

While Microsoft Office is a great product overall, PowerPoint leaves something to be desired in the creation of attractive presentations. Apple’s Keynote (part of the iWork suite; $70 USD) does PowerPoint one better. Actually, several better.

Note-Taking: Circus Ponies NoteBook

Mac OS X comes with Stickies, but I’ve never been a big fan. Too messy, and I take notes in outline form. Circus Ponies NoteBook ($49.95 USD; $29.95 academic) is an outliner’s dream, and includes a number of other nice features. For example, it’s easy to use NoteBook as a scrapbook or extended clipboard, quickly capturing portions of Web pages, text, pictures, and other media. Or, turn on voice recording and keep an audio record of a meeting as you take notes; the audio will automatically be synchronized with the notes.

Charts and Diagrams: OmniGraffle

OmniGraffle ($79.95; pro version, $149.95) makes it easy to create beautiful diagrams, org charts, flow charts, etc. Windows users will (I think) find it a relief after Visio. It plays well with other applications, importing and exporting a variety of formats; provides a decent collection of graphical tools; and can automate the creation and layout of many types of charts. Indeed, those looking for a “lite” version of Adobe Illustrator may find OmniGraffle up to the task. The Pro version adds a number of features, most notably support for Visio files.

Other Utilities

Mac OS X can unpack, unzip, or unarchive a number of standard formats on its own. But if you’re faced with a file it can’t handle, turn to StuffIt Expander (free). If you need greater control over screen capture than Apple’s built-in Command-Shift-3 shortcut gives you, take a look at Snapz Pro ($29 USD; $69 with movie capture). If you need to transfer files over FTP, I recommend Transmit ($29.95 USD). If you need to keep files on two Macs in sync, I recommend my own Duover ($20 USD; doesn’t work properly on Intel Macs, but can sync an Intel Mac while running on a PowerPC Mac).

Last but certainly not least, you should back up your computer. The gold standard is Retrospect ($119 $USD; Express edition available free with some backup hardware) but other, less expensive options are available that will satisfy many home users. Take Control of Mac OS X Backups ($10 USD) provides an excellent overview of your options.

Where to Go from Here

I rely on the apps listed here, but in many ways they’re the tip of the iceberg in terms of high-quality Mac utilities. If you’re looking for something else, it may very well exist. Poke around on Version Tracker and see what you can find.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 27th, 2006 at 12:53 pm and is filed under computer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.