Inspired by the flood of people bying new Macs on Twitter (not. jealus. at. all.), here’s a list of some of the apps I enjoy (and I don’t have time to link up everything, so go Google it instead):
Adium – for IM
Aperture – better than iPhoto, but immensely expensive
Blogo – best blog tool I’ve ever seen
Coda – a bit expensive, but nice tool for web development
Desky – drag a picture onto the icon and you desktop picture changes
Dockless – get those icons out of my Dock!
Dropbox – amazing tool for sharing documents across computers
Evernote – I’ve started punking myself about not taking enough notes of great websites I encounter everyday. This is a way of changing that.
Flip4Mac – sometimes you need to play a video in a crazy format (combine it with Perian, and you can watch almost anything)
Fluid – perfect for creating apps out of websites (I use it for Gmail, Google Reader, zyb’s wiki etc.)
Google Notifier – yay! Email!
HandBrake – for converting my DVD’s into something I can take along with me. Combined with MacTheRipper, you’re good to go.
iDMG – you don’t know when you have to pack a bunch of files, but when you do, this is the tool to use.
Img2icns – I like to change icons of some of my apps. Just for fun.
Last.fm – for tracking my music listening habits.
Leech – I use it to drag links to files onto, not as a default file downloader. It messes up once in a while.
LittleSnapper – other people like Paparazzi and Skitch for screenshots, I enjoy LittleSnapper. Amazing tool.
MAMP – create a server on your Mac for testing websites.
Monolingual – remove all of the unnecessary languages (you can seriously remove several GBs of files with this tool!). It also strips your apps of code that makes it work with PowerPC if you have an Intel Mac (and if it’s less that 4 years old, it is).
Pipette – grab that color you like so much
Quicksilver – allegedly, Google Quick Search Box is just as good, but speed is of essence to me, and nothing beats this tool, even though development has seized.
RightZoom – a fairly new tool to me, but it fixes the one thing Windows does better than OS X; maximize window when clicking the “+”-sign.
Safari – don’t use Firefox. Please.
Skype – because then you can use it in Adium with a plugin. Nice.
SubEthaEdit – you think Google Docs is real-time collaboration? Think “Matrix”-style collaboration typing with this tool.
TextMate – I’m trying to force myself to use this, but without much luck so far.
The Unarchiver – works great with Safari’s “Open safe files” as it unzips and throws away the zip-file in one move.
Things – I don’t use this enough, but it’s nice (apart from the ridiculous “you-can-only-sync-over-WiFi” – fix. it. now. please.)
Transmission – for downloading legal torrent-files like Good Copy Bad Copy
Tweetie – best Twitter-client available. Period.
Twistory Desktop – create a very cool fullscreen Twitter-search with this
Background apps/.prefs:
Growl – I use it only for Safari, Leech, iTunes and a few other apps. You’ll go nuts if everything written in Adium pops up all the time.
Hazel – best tool for keeping your folders tidy. I use it for “Downloads” to seperate the filetypes, and for Desktop to be clean (I have one folder there for things I need to find in a split second – everything else is sweeped to “Downloads” in their appropriate folders).
iStat Menus – use it to keep an eye on that crazy CPU
Perian – play any file format out there (or use VLC for the rest if it’s not enough)
SizzlingKeys – control iTunes without the app being in the front. I know the keyboard has buttons for play, next, forward etc., but you can assign ratings with this tool as well.