Photo courtesy of H.E.D.I

16 Killer Apps to Put On Your Brand New Christmas Mac

Editor’s note: This guest post by Glen Stansberry is a special expanded edition of a post originally published on LifeDev.net.

It’s Christmas day and you’ve just unwrapped your shiny new piece of Apple goodness from your new favorite family member. You’ve installed the beautiful Leopard operating system, and are ready to conquer the world.

But you soon realize you don’t know which programs to install to perform your everyday functions on your mac. Sure, there are lots of programs you could install, but there are a few that you need to install first. The bread-and-butter, the staples of any mac experience.

Here are 12 must-have applications for your new mac. Trust me, you’ll be glad you installed these first.

1. Quicksilver- The right arm of all that is productive on the mac. You’ll soon learn to have everything center around this awesome program launcher extraordinaire. You can literally do just about anything you can think of with this program. Send emails, browse your iTunes library, capture todo items, launch websites… all with a few keystrokes.

2. Firefox- Safari is a great web browser. Fast, sleek, sexy… but it doesn’t allow you to really customize your browsing experience. Firefox is a swiss-army’d version of Safari on steroids. We’re talking baseball in the late nineties steroids. Firefox allows you to add any array of extensions to add to the experience. Need a bit torrent client? Done. Don’t want to see ads? Done. Want to wrap your web-browsing in a winter wonderland? Done. Firefox can do virtually anything when it comes to surfing the web.

3. Adium- Now, iChat is no slouch of an instant messaging client. But Adium allows you to login and use multiple IM clients simultaneously. You can save chat transcripts, and do many of the other things that you can do with iChat.

4. iGTD- What mac isn’t complete with a kickin’ GTD system? iGTD is a great out-of-the-box organization capture tool that doesn’t require all the incessant fiddling that most GTD software requires. Just add some contexts (and projects if you’d like), and go.

Another cool thing about iGTD is that it integrates with Quicksilver. You can be in the middle of a task and suddenly remember you need to email Roy about carpooling tomorrow. Invoke Quicksilver, type your task, and go right back to what you were working on. It’s insanely useful and allows you to capture everything. (You can read more about iGTD + Quicksilver here and here)

5. Cyberduck- Almost everybody needs an FTP client, right? Cyberduck is a great mac-only FTP client. It may not be as fancy as the likes of Transmit, but it has a simple interface and works quite well.

6. Anti RSI- If you use the computer more than an hour a day, it’s imperative you install Anti-RSI. You know how staring at the monitor can make your eyes feel like somebody switched your contact solution with wood glue? Anti-RSI makes sure that you’re taking proper breaks when using your computer. By looking away from the computer at regular intervals and stretching, you can prevent other fairly severe conditions like Carpal Tunnel. Anti-RSI ensures that you’re getting the proper pauses needed for healthy computer usage.

7. DeskLickr- It may not be an essential item per se, but sometimes a girl just likes to look pretty. This nifty program will launch a high-quality wallpaper (that matches your screen resolution, mind you) every time you start your computer up. You can even set it to display a new wallpaper every X number of minutes. WARNING: This setting is not recommended for those of us with ADD. You’ve been warned.

8. Gimp- Weird name, great photo editing. Gimp is the open source version of Photoshop. Gimp may not sport all the bells and whistles that Photoshop has, but it gets the job does. And to the tune of Free, who can complain?

9. Open Office- The open source alternative to Microsoft Office, Open Office is a full-featured document editor. (If you don’t have x11 installed on your mac, you may want to try NeoOffice. It’s pretty much the same thing as Open Office.)

10. Skype- Skype is everyone’s favorite VOIP client. Essentially, Skype allows you to call other computers and talk (like a telephone conversation), for free. You can also do IM messaging with the client.

11. Mozy- The un-sung hero of your new mac. Mozy backs up all of the files on my computer (in the background) at regular intervals. If my hard drive ever crashes, I’ll just install mozy and hit “restore”, mirroring my drive pre-meltdown. Most times I don’t even know when the little bugger is working. It’s fast, quiet, and it just works. You can make backups up to 2GB before you’ll start needing a paid plan.

12. Text Expander- Text Expander requires you to pay for a $30 license. But once you try it out, it’s pretty hard to part with. We’re talking geeky productivity to the max, people.

Text Expander allows you to program in shortcuts that you use when typing all of the time. For example, you could configure a shortcut for your email signature. Instead of typing out my signature every single time I write an email, I could just punch “sigg” and up pops

“Yours Truly,

Glen Stansberry
LifeDev.net”

This is only scratching the surface. If you do a lot of HTML or CSS work, there’s already preset packages with shortcuts of commonly used HTML tags. For $30, I think it’s a steal.

13. Think- It’s much easier to concentrate while working on the Mac when I’ve only got one application opened. Think is an elegant piece of software that gives you the ability to have one application illuminated, while the rest are blacked out behind it. This keeps you from spending any attention elsewhere, so you can give your full attention to only thing at a time. It’s a godsend for individuals with short attention spans, and a multi-tasker’s worst nightmare ;)

14. Mailtags- If you use Apple Mail and need a little more organization built into your mail, you might consider MailTags. MailTags allows you to add keywords, projects, priority and notes to your mail. While I don’t personally recommend using email as your task capture system, MailTags can help you sift and archive your mail more effectively in Apple Mail. Cost: $30.

15. ClamXav- One of the the best things about Macs is that they don’t have to worry about spyware and viruses nearly as much as Windows users. But, unfortunately viruses do exist for the Mac. It dosen’t hurt to run a virus sweep every now again, does it? Use ClamXav for a free virus checker and rest easy tonight.

16. Textmate- Sure, you could go ahead and use TextEdit (the Mac’s built-in text editor) and get along just fine. But if you’re craving a geekier flavor for editing text, look no further than TextMate. TextMate makes it incredibly easy for anyone working in code (html, css, etc.) and a text editor. It packs many powerful features like tabbed browsing, search and replace in project (not just single files), clipboard history, support for subversion, and plenty of other cool features. One drawback: you have to pay $58. But I think it’s well worth the money.

So there you have it. Install these 16 programs on your brand new mac, and you’ll have the ability to be a power user in no time, without breaking the bank.

Glen Stansberry has an enthusiasm for mac software and all things productivity. You can read more about his thoughts on GTD, productivity, and productivity software at LifeDev.net (feed).

If you liked this post, please vote for it on delicious or Digg! I’d appreciate it. :)

16 Killer Apps to Put On Your Brand New Christmas Mac

Editor’s note: This guest post by Glen Stansberry is a special expanded edition of a post originally published on LifeDev.net.

Here are 12 must-have applications for your new mac. Trust me, you’ll be glad you installed these first.

12. Text Expander- Text Expander requires you to pay for a $30 license. But once you try it out, it’s pretty hard to part with. We’re talking geeky productivity to the max, people.

“Yours Truly,

Glen Stansberry
LifeDev.net”

This is only scratching the surface. If you do a lot of HTML or CSS work, there’s already preset packages with shortcuts of commonly used HTML tags. For $30, I think it’s a steal.

So there you have it. Install these 16 programs on your brand new mac, and you’ll have the ability to be a power user in no time, without breaking the bank.

Glen Stansberry has an enthusiasm for mac software and all things productivity. You can read more about his thoughts on GTD, productivity, and productivity software at LifeDev.net (feed).

If you liked this post, please vote for it on delicious or Digg! I’d appreciate it. :)

Posted on 23 December 2007 in Productivity & Organization, Technology |
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Comments (36)

dan Says:

December 23rd, 2007, 20:29 pm

i’ll admit, the picture caught my attention (very lovely), but the list was very cool. i have heard of a few of these but not really looked into it, i may do more research this week since i’m off work.

James Says:

December 23rd, 2007, 20:40 pm

Great list, but have a couple comments.
With any new Mac, you’re going to be running Leopard (10.5):
1. Mozy is irrelevant with Leopard’s Time Machine.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html

2. ClamXav has NOT been blessed for 10.5.
http://www.markallan.co.uk/BB/viewtopic.php?t=1050

3. QuickSilver has some very minor issues with 10.5. (It’s hanging onto my previous iCal calendars. More here:
http://theappleblog.com/2007/12/07/calling-gifted-devs-quicksilver-needs-your-help/

I’d also like to put in a nod for xPad as a stickies/textedit replacement.
http://getxpad.com/

Cheers!

James Says:

December 23rd, 2007, 20:46 pm

Almost forgot:
OnyX is a must, but it’s only in it’s first 10.5 compatible version:
http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/onyx_leopard.html

Dale Cruse Says:

December 23rd, 2007, 21:32 pm

Why use Mozy when new Macs come with TimeMachine built in?

nXqd Says:

December 23rd, 2007, 22:01 pm

We should list Windows apps which have the do the same great things like these.
Thanks for great post :)

Sean Hodge Says:

December 23rd, 2007, 22:13 pm

Good list of mostly inexpesive or free apps.

I have to give a recommendation for Coda. Its about $80, but I use it all day long doing web design. It works really well for opening html pages and editing it quickly. Its easy to use and really intuitive for http://ftp. I use Transmit by the same comany for larger http://ftp. I had transmit before Coda was released. If you buy coda it should cover all your ftp needs.

https://www.panic.com/coda

Some freebies below:

Vienna is a great freeware RSS reader.

http://www.opencommunity.co.uk/vienna2.php

Journaler is a really good program also: http://journler.com/index.php

Thanks

Mary Says:

December 23rd, 2007, 22:20 pm

Honestly, I think more than half of all these applications complicate the Mac experience rather than simplify it. And Mac is all about simplifying, right?

Larry Wright Says:

December 24th, 2007, 0:00 am

@Dale: The number one reason to use Mozy over Time Machine, is that Time Machine doesn’t take your backup offsite. If you lose the mac, and the hard drive, you are up a creek. With Mozy, even if your house burned down with your Mac and your external hard drive, you can still access your data online through Mozy.

Dominic Says:

December 24th, 2007, 0:35 am

Great list. I’ve had my mac for about two years now i think. Although, i’ve heard and used most of these apps, there’s actually a few i wasn’t even aware of. I agree with Mary about more apps can “complicate rather than simplify the experience.” I sometimes get carried away with downloading like mad too many apps, only to find i end up not using half of them.

Warren Says:

December 24th, 2007, 2:11 am

These are some good suggestions. I find using the already built in apps on macs is more than sufficient for me though.

By the way. The advertisement within this post is interesting. When you click to the site in your safari browser (don’t ask me why I did) a message will come up saying it does not support this browser. Kind of weird being in a post about macs.

Allan Says:

December 24th, 2007, 2:41 am

Viruses exist on the Mac? Where? What is one of them called? I scour Mac news daily, and have yet to read of an actual virus for OS X.
If you’re talking about one of the various *worms* that are out there that require a user to enter their admin passwords and actually install the thing, then I’d ask you to change your semantics and talk about worms, not viruses.
:-)

Allan Says:

December 24th, 2007, 2:48 am

Written a while back, but it basically proves my point:

http://www.macobserver.com/editorial/2003/08/29.1.shtml

:-)

Allan Says:

December 24th, 2007, 2:55 am

From the first sentence of the ClamX AV site that you link to:

“Back in the days before OS X, the number of viruses which attacked Macintosh users totalled somewhere between about 60 and 80. Today, the number of viruses actively attacking OS X users is…NONE! ”

Please edit your text to remove the inaccurate info. If you want to edit it to mentioning that MS Office Macro Viruses exist, and that if you run Office . . .

Stef Says:

December 24th, 2007, 3:05 am

Nice list. Everybody talks about Quicksilver. Gush, need to try it out these days.

One of my Top 5 or so is actually Journler (http://www.journler.com). Wonderful, great, incredible, beautiful (etc…) Information Management Software (or however you name it). Fantastic tool to manage everything (docs, pdfs, jpegs, emails, websites…) you somehow don’t want to loose. And find it easily one day.

Jay, writer MemberSpeed.com Says:

December 24th, 2007, 4:30 am

With Mac, anyone can get carried away installing all sorts of fun applications. Sometimes, these are more than what we really need. It’s great to have a set of applications one is sure to be able to maximize. As an alternative to Firefox or Safari, how about taking the Opera for a spin? I heard it works great.

CK Says:

December 24th, 2007, 5:45 am

I recommend Eclipse or development. It is OpenSource and free for use and with some PHP-Plugins, you even can develop websites.
A must-have is the VLC-Player, since it has all codes included and can read many (and I really mean “many”) video formats. So you even don’t need divx/xvid or some wmv-codecs for your Mac.

Acheman Says:

December 24th, 2007, 10:43 am

Many good selections, but if you’re just starting on a new mac, don’t go over to Firefox automatically without giving Safari a good spin first. Otherwise you may find yourself wondering why macs browse so slooooowly…

J.F.H. Says:

December 24th, 2007, 11:25 am

Nice list. I think I found a new one with iGTD.

Check out the list I just compiled for some other good apps:
http://scribblesandwords.com/top-mac-os-x-applications-for-bringing-in-2008-with-productive-style/

Tim Says:

December 24th, 2007, 12:12 pm

It should also be mentioned that mailtags is still in beta for leopard. The tiger version won’t work on leopard.

me Says:

December 24th, 2007, 14:02 pm

filezilla is a much better FTP client and its free.

qqqq Says:

December 24th, 2007, 14:20 pm

http://www.google.com

http://www.tim.it

Van Says:

December 24th, 2007, 14:23 pm

Good girls…

Mojowrkn Says:

December 24th, 2007, 17:04 pm

Add VMWare fusion and Windows XP to that list and your really getting productive. I love my mac for its design and vmares fusion allows me (an IT Consultant) to switch back and forth between both worlds fluidly.

Looking forward to the next gen of macbook pros, hopefully Apple will be ahead of the curve with the new processors coming out in January.

Merry Christmas All!

Paul Says:

December 24th, 2007, 17:12 pm

Actually, I’d regard 1Password (1passwd.com) as more essential than many of these. It does a fantastic job of simplifying memberships and online transactions, as well as making them more secure.

Nice list, BTW… and happy holidays to all!

Michael Says:

December 24th, 2007, 17:22 pm

Excellent list. I use almost all of those on a regular basis. I would make one suggestion for a change though - Smultron instead of TextMate. I agree that TextMate is good, but Smultron is just as good or better for me, and it is free and OpenSource. I have no affiliation at all, just think it is a great product. http://smultron.sourceforge.net/

Oh, and the picture is beautiful. Caught me off guard too!

Ryan Roper Says:

December 24th, 2007, 18:15 pm

Don’t forget cross platform and web-based applications.. 3 of my favorites:

http://meebo.com/ - web based messenger that handles all major service providers… allows you to embed a messenger on your site to communicate with people through the meebo servers

http://www.videolan.org/ - makes it simple to play music and movies without having to scour the interwebs for codecs.

http://transmission.m0k.org/ - get your torrent download on with this client… i hate java virtual machine’s heavy footprint so I am not a fan of azureus… this is the only worthy competition for utorrent imho.

Take care and Happy Holidays.

Howard West Says:

December 24th, 2007, 18:17 pm

Also check out the Camino browser at http://caminobrowser.org. Its based on the Gecko rendering engine, like Firefox, but built on the Mac native Cocoa libraries. You don’t get all the Firefox functionality, like add-ons, but you do get access to Mac-native functionality, like Services, that Mac Firefox doesn’t support.

gaston monescu Says:

December 24th, 2007, 20:13 pm

who is this tart in the photo?
whats that got to do with mac?
kinda put me off….

Jason Palmer Says:

December 25th, 2007, 2:32 am

Well, she is holding a Mac.. and she’s hot. Are any further validations necessary?

hapepo Says:

December 25th, 2007, 6:34 am

TextWrangler (instead of TextMate)
Butler
NeoOffice
ImageWell
SuperDuper
GraphicConverter (instead of Gimp)

JS Says:

December 25th, 2007, 11:45 am

Why Firefox? It’s ugly and slow.

Sam Elowitch Says:

December 25th, 2007, 16:43 pm

Indeed the woman in the picture is smokin’ hot. A comment: TextMate may be great, but why not give TextWrangler a go? It’s free and it’s excellent.

thedude Says:

December 25th, 2007, 17:17 pm

Being a former LinuxHead myself, I have the Fink and MacPorts installed on my MBP, which comes in handy if I’m grasping for a quick commandline utility such as unrar or zip or par2 etc,..
My list of essentials for any MAC would include the following:

AudioHijackPro - Great for capturing streaming audio or system audio to MP3 files.

Audacity - Handy freeware for editing mp3’s

Azureus - easy to use Bittorrent Client.

Crossover - an alternative for Windows apps if you dont want to fire up VMWare Fusion

EyeTV - Add a usb tv tuner and you can watch/capture TV on your MAC!

LittleSnitch - Handy little daemon that informs you when a program is initiating network activity such as calling home.

Max - nice little freeware for ripping CD’s to mp3 files, which you can later load unto your iPod.

MondoMouse - one of the drawbacks of OSX is that you can only resize a window by clicking on the bottom right hand corner, but if due to a glitch the window opens larger than your desktop you cant resize it, enter MondoMouse.

MplayerOSX - some users prefer VLC, this is another app for playing divx’s, avi’s, wmv’s, mp3’s etc.

NeoOffice - A port of openoffice to the MAC, in case you need to open/edit any Microsoft Office files.

Toast Titanium - Great CD/DVD authoring tool, when “disk utility” alone wont cut it.

VisualHub - An easy to use, easy way to convert your videos to DVD or iPod. Definitely worth the $23.

VLC - Not only will this play video files and DVD’s, but it can stream files in multicast format acros the LAN.

WordPress SEO Says:

December 26th, 2007, 21:42 pm

I would suggest Typinator instead of TextExpander. I’ve had some serious CPU cycle snarling from TextExpander, along with duplicate pasting. Since I moved to Typinator (it’s cheaper too, at 19 euros), all those issues have stopped.

But the idea of a text expander is a great one for your list. Originally I used TypeIt4Me but the OS X early editions were too dire.

AJ Says:

December 29th, 2007, 2:40 am

I personally like Yojimbo (product of Barebones). I use it to store passwords, archive online receipts, important bookmarks, notes… etc. It’s a very good organizer. It’s worth it.

Damien Guard Says:

January 4th, 2008, 8:45 am

These apps don’t necessarily complicate the experience but can further simplify things.

Adium for example lets you talk to all your online chat buddies from a single unified interface - not just those that are using iChat/AIM but MSN Messenger and ICQ too without separate applications running.

I tried iGTD but found the interface to be too clumsy and ugly. I am currently using OmniFocus which is slim and refined.

With the same philosophy I went with Pixelmator over Gimp. Sure it might cost $58 but it is well integrated using CoreImage effects, incredibly fast and slick.

[)amien