My Software
A handy list of the software I use. To be updated as needed.
Last modified October 18, 2006.
? Text Editing / Writing / Development
? Life / Organization
? Graphics
? Internet / Network
? Video
? GUI
? Screen Savers
? Games
? Comics and Reading
? Utilities
? Currently checking out
? Software I want to try
? Notes for fresh installs
Text Editing / Writing / Development:
Sidenote - Free, Donations Accepted - Unobtrusive, very handy notepad app.
ecto - US$17.95 - Blog posting app. Rocks, and should be in everyone’s toolbox.
Smultron - Free, Donations Accepted - Great text editor with file view column.
Nvu - Free - Although the name stands for Not Very Useful, this simple WYSIWYG HTML editor has helped me out in times when Dreamweaver wasn’t handy.
TextWrangler - Free - Decent text editor with some text conversion abilities.
Life / Organization:
VoodooPad Lite - Free - Personal wiki app.
Notational Velocity - Free - Fast little secure note-taker.
Delicious Library - US$40 - Media cataloguing app. Very pretty, not very useful.
CDFinder - US$30 - Catalogs data, audio, and video CDs, DVDs, and drives. Very useful, not very pretty.
Linotype FontExplorer X - Free - Finally, decent font management for OS X.
iTaf - Free, Open Source - Free alarm clock program, with iTunes support.
AlarmClockPro - US$19.95 - A more powerful alarm clock manager, also with iTunes support.
Logorrhea - Free, Open Source - iChat log viewing, searching and sorting.
The Missing Sync - US$39.95 - Enables proper Palm syncing with iCal, Address Book and other apps.
Graphics
Pixen - Free - Pixel art editor. Pretty great for editing in ‘FatBits’.
GraphicConverter - US$30 - Reads and writes many image formats.
ImageWell - Free - Combination image editor/FTP program.
Goldberg - Free - Image and movie viewer and editor.
FFView - Free, Open Source - Comic book and image viewer.
Internet / Network:
Utilities:
OSXvnc
Chicken of the VNC, PageSucker
URLwell
1001 - Free - A Flickr management app by Ado, the author of Ecto.
SharingMenu is a menu item that gives access to your sharing preferences. Free.
Wireless Discovery:
MacSniffer - Free.
iStumbler - Free.
FTP:
Interarchy - US$39 - The best commercial FTP client.
Cyberduck - Free, Open Source - Decent FTP and SFTP client.
Fugu - Free - FTP and SFTP client.
RBrowser - I was disappointed when they pulled their Lite version, now it’s nagware or nothing. Works fine for FTP, but there’s much better choices listed above.
Browsers and Browser Add-Ons:
Camino, Flock, Firefox, Safari, SeaMonkey, Shiira, Opera, iCab - All free.
SafariStand - Free - Brings keyword searching and an OmniWeb-style sidebar to Safari.
PithHelmet - US$10 - Mike Solomon - Solid ad-blocking features for Safari.
Email / RSS Readers:
Mail Scripts - Andreas Amann - Free - A set of AppleScripts to enhance Mail.app.
Thunderbird - Free - Open source email client.
Vienna - Free - RSS reader.
NetNewsWire Lite - RSS reader, replaced by Vienna.
IM / VOIP / IRC:
Adium for its open source goodness, compatibility, customization and stability.
The only MSN client for Macintosh that allows webcam sessions with Windows MSN users, amsn.
Gizmo Project
Conversation
Bluetooth:
Romeo - Free, Donations Accepted - Bluetooth remote control for the system and some applications.
extra Romeo plugins
a few more Romeo plugins
Salling Clicker - US$23.95 - Bluetooth remote control app.
Ericsson Client - Free - Simple Bluetooth picture transfers to most Ericsson phones.
Video:
Players / Browsers:
VLC, MPlayer - Free - Either will play almost any video file, including DVDs set to non-local region codes.
The BBC Radio Player - Free - Ad-free version of RealPlayer.
CenterStage / BackStage- Free, Open Source - Front Row clone that looks to turn into something even better.
Democracy Player - Free - A good start to RSS-enabled television shows, with many popular video podcasts built-in.
NicePlayer - Free - QuickTime player with a better control scheme.
Codecs / Converters:
Handbrake - Free, Donations Accepted - Once you have the VIDEO_TS folder on your hard drive, use this to convert it to regular video formats.
XiphQT - Free - Ogg Vorbis QuickTime component.
DiVA
ffmpegX - US$15 with Eternal Trial - Convert video to other formats.
3ivx - Free - 3ivx QuickTime component.
DivX - Free for playback - DivX QuickTime component.
Capture:
Evocam - US$25 - Decent webcam app.
Metadata:
Metadata Hootenanny - Free - Edit most metadata fields available in audio and video files.
GUI:
Windowshade X - US$17 - Double-click a window’s title bar and it disappears into the title bar. I’m very happy to have this old OS 9 feature back, and enjoy the new features and control it offers.
FontCard - US$17 - Offers better control of font menus in apps.
ClearDock (requires Application Enhancer)
Shadowkiller for slower machines
Mighty Mouse - US$10 - Change your mouse cursor.
Todos displays a window containing the icon of every application on your system. It’s nice to look at.
I don’t use many Widgets. My Dashboard (other than the built-in Thesaurus and Weather ones) usually runs Shiira mini Widget, SunClock, ShowOff (uptime), Easy Envelopes, Audio Calculator, and Email Cloaker.
Screen Savers:
Hydromancy - Phillip Nguyen - Open source colourful OpenGL blobs.
O’ Canada - Free - Waving Canadian flag, although it only seems to support a single monitor, and there are no configuration options.
Emulation
MacMAME
Boycott Advance
VisualBoyAdvance - All free.
SolarWolf - Free, Open Source - Fun space-based action/arcade game.
Frozen Bubble - Free, Open Source - Fun puzzle game loosely based on Bust-A-Move.
Comics and Reading:
Jomic - Free - Thomas Aglassinger - Java comic archive reader.
FFView - Another comic reader.
Utilities:
General:
Butler - Free, Donations Accepted - Peter Maurer - Amazing, incredibly useful programs for today’s power user.
Witch - Free, Donations Accepted - Peter Maurer - Shows all open windows in an attractive list. I set it to Control-Tab so as not to conflict with Opera’s default Alt-Tab tab switcher.
Default Folder - US$34.95 - Very handy addition to the save dialog, letting you save favorite paths, set key commands and more.
TinkerTool - Marcel Bresink - Allows you to change a few hidden OS X settings. I use it to
DragThing - James Thomson - Very handy launch utility.
MenuMeters - Raging Menace - Great set of CPU/Network/Memory/Disk meters for your menu bar.
SideNote - Free - Handy, unobtrusive notepad program.
DesktopManager - Virtual desktop software. Skins
Boinx Mouseposé - Free with email registration - Identifies your cursor, handy for presentations or finding your cursor on multiple monitors.
Preferential Treatment - Checks preference files for corruption.
XBench - Benchmarking app.
Mactracker - Comprehensive list of Macs in an app.
Pacifist - Lets you look inside .pkg files.
BatChmod - Will force-empty the Trash when the Finder refuses.
Dragon Burn
Free Ruler - On-screen ruler for measuring pixels.
Locator - A regular ‘Find’ program.
OnMyCommand - Highly customizable contextual menu plugin.
iPulse - Graphical info utility, replaced by MenuMeters.
coconutIdentityCard is a small app that reads out where and when your Mac and your iPod were built by Apple.
Audio:
Audio Hijack Pro
Audio Recorder
Clutter - Free - Grabs album art from Amazon.
iScrobbler - Free with Last.fm account - iTunes plugin for Last.fm.
iTunes-BPM Inspector - Helps you set the beats per minute of songs in iTunes.
LineIn - Sometimes you just need a simple line in.
Ogg Drop - Free - Convert audio to .ogg format.
OnDeck - Free - Uploads album artwork and track listing to your web site.
Perfect Pitch
Reason - CA$499 - The ultimate compositional tool.
SoundFlower - Free - A system extension that allows applications to pass audio to other applications.
Disk / Backup / iPod:
Book2Pod - Splits text files into iPod notes.
Disk Inventory X - Treemap style disk usage utility.
DV Backup - Back up files to DV tape.
Carbon Copy CLoner - Mike Bombich
DiskWarrior - CA$139 - Longstanding emergency hard drive recovery tool, mainly rebuilds catalogue files.
TechTool Pro - CA$139 - Another drive recovery program, offers many useful features.
Hardware Control:
iRedLite - Free - Use the Apple Remote to control much more.
Conversion / Migration:
URL Manager Pro - US$25, Eternal Trial - Essential for keeping bookmarks up to date between many browsers.
DeliciWeb - Converts your Delicious Library into a web page.
AB-FOAF - Converts your Address Book into a FOAF document.
Firefox Extensions
Colorful Tabs
IE View
OpenBook
Password Exporter
ScrapBook
Searchbar Autosizer
SessionSaver
Slashdotter
Tab Mix Plus
Viamatic foXpose
VideoDownloader
Web Developer
Stylish
With styles available here
Relevant LifeHacker post
- Mozilla Browser (Camino, Firefox, Flock, SeaMonkey) about:config settings
Master about:config List (not all are available in Camino)
My Changes:
accessibility.browsewithcaret true
accessibility.tabfocus 7
accessibility.typeaheadfind true
accessibility.typeaheadfind.autostart true
accessibility.typeaheadfind.enablesound false
accessibility.typeaheadfind.enabletimeout false
accessibility.typeaheadfind.timeout 6000 (redundant if above is set to false)
Defaults Changes:
Finder
Add a “Quit” item to the Finder File menu
defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -bool yes
Show hidden files in the Finder
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool yes
Dock
Force the Dock to expand from its beginning or end
defaults write com.apple.Dock pinning start
defaults write com.apple.Dock pinning end
Force the Dock to show hidden applications as grayed-out icons
defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool yes
Disk Utility
For added disk formatting options
defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility advanced-image-options 1
Window
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSWindowResizeTime 0.001
defaults delete NSGlobalDomain NSWindowResizeTime
/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background