Mac OS X top software/utils

m_stan

Hi. Just got my first Mac (a mini and love it !) and would like to hear all you OS X experts views on what is the best software out there for the Mac. Like a top 5/10 list of the software/utils you use the most.

I've already installed Toast, Stuffit, DVDtoOneX, Azureus, MsOffice, Photoshop, and the iLife suite.

I know it depends on what you use your mac for, but what am I missing ?

Please note the name and what each piece of software does.

Thanks !

quon

VLC - Video player ---> http://www.videolan.org/

K.O.Kiki

I prefer Tomato Torrent to Azureus -- much less disk usage!

Other than that, I find Quicksilver can be handy for opening apps quickly. And get either Firefox or Camino for webbrowsing (Camino isn't fully developed yet, though).

Adium is nigh-on essential for MSN users.

And don't forget OnyX! Run weekly maintenance on your Mac, seriously.

halenger

Drop Azureus and Tomato. Azureus is just too slow to be used. If you want to download specific parts of a torrent (like specific files) it's your only option. Otherwise try something else. I'm not an Azureus hater but comparing it to its Windows incarnation it is far far slower (interface wise). I avoid it where possible now.

Bits on Wheels is very nice. Transmission is the other one I've heard people talk about but I haven't used it. I've been using Bits on Wheels for a while and find it clean, simple and snappy.

As you're talking torrents you might want to look at Peerguardian. They've now released an official version for OS-X. An updated version came out yesterday.

I don't have my Powerbook on front of me so I can't think of much else off hand. Have you any specific uses for you Mini or just general usage?

Ruaidhri

iPulse is pretty cool,not essential,but nice all the same (I *love* the UI on it).
SubEthaEdit is also a pretty cool editor,if you need an editor that is.

If you intend to use the BSD subsystem,get fink.

sturgo

Try Mac The Ripper for ripping DVDs
DVD2one for compressing DVDs
FFMPEGX for video format conversion
NMP3 Ripper for ripping Mp3s
Ableton Live and Peak 4 if you're into audio production
Mac Janitor for servicing your HD
Tinker Tool for messing around with your dashboard

...Also check out some of the Dashboards.

K.O.Kiki

Don't even start on Widgets; we'll be here all week:rolleyes:
As for Tomato, I endorse it cos it's very low on resources; might try BoW or PeerGuardian this week.

halenger

K.O.Kiki wrote:

might try BoW or PeerGuardian this week.

They're not mutually exclusive. You can use peerguardian with tomato if you like - peerguardian just blocks certain IPs from being accessed and accessing you. It uses block lists to block off known spyware sites or spam or even ads.

BoW isn't that resource intensive that I'm aware of. It's 3D display might be but I don't really use that. It's native Objective-C&Cocoa. That's why it runs so well.

babypink

LittleSnitch - block applications from accessing some/all internet addresses

m_stan

halenger wrote:

Drop Azureus and Tomato.

took your advice and installed Bits on Wheels. Very fast startup, very simple interface. Remains to be seen how effective it is at the main task.

halenger wrote:

Have you any specific uses for you Mini or just general usage?

General usage plus downloading apps, playing music, and some web development.


Overall some great posts here folks. Keep 'em coming.

halenger

Have a look at um... TextMate. It's not free but it's cheap. It looks like a great app for development stuff. That said I haven't done much development on my Powerbook yet. If you want to see it in action you can take a look at the 'Ruby on Rails' demo videos.

I haven't had any problems getting BoW to max out my connection. The only thing to make sure you don't do is delete the torrent files. Store them in a directory somewhere. If you delete them it will forget about them. It doesn't seem to mind them being moved, just not deleted. You wont lose data or anything, just your list of linux ISOs and old out-of-copyright films.

K.O.Kiki

TextWrangler is great for any files that I can't display with other programs. It apparently has other uses; I've just never found them;)
I also use TacoHTML for simplistic web dev (I suck at it).

Fenster

vim, for all your text-based needs. It even comes with OS X to boot! (I'm a Linux geek, you were expecting more?)

derekphonic

VLC (VideoLANClient) seems to be the best all-round video player right now. Quicktime player is pretty rubbish; you have to to pay for fullscreen, no playlist and it doesn't like DivX very much.

MPEG Streamclip, if that wasn't mentioned already, is useful. Great for ripping DVD segments.

I use a great little app called Disktracker for keeping track of all my DVD-ROMs. We have hundreds of DVD-ROM archives, and Disktracker allows me to find any file on them really quickly. It's shareware, and worth it.

Finally, DVDibbler allows direct from DVD to DivX encoding. Very handy.

Unfortunately you will need Windows Media Player 9 to play WMVs.

Welcome to the world of Macintosh!

Fenster

derekphonic wrote:

Unfortunately you will need Windows Media Player 9 to play WMVs.

mplayer

K.O.Kiki

MS released a WMV codec for QT: Flip4Mac

Oh, and the list keeps on growing...
MenuMeters -- because it's fun to know what your system's doing:D
ATiccelerator -- I use it for running the GPU at 50% core/mem. Should expand lifespan that tiny bit
X-Chat Aqua -- for IRC
ReNamer4Mac -- batch renaming tool
NeoOffice -- open-source alternative to MS Office...
Firefoxy -- makes Firefox even better;)

And a few games:
rRootage -- insane Japanese shoot-em-up
Porrasturvat -- because pushing a man down stairs is fun:D
Kiki the nanobot -- I swear I didn't create this!

*note* You should find most of these on the Apple.com Software section or with Google

Gordon

That TextWrangler is a great program. I was using it for grepping around one hundred html files - find and replacing complex strings - and it did the batch in milliseconds.

Fenster

My own suggestions and requests:

First off, I'm more shocked than suprised that on one has mentioned Fink. It's a port of apt-get for Darwin and its the most painless way to install excellent command-line programs such as the Imagemagick suite, wget, irssi and so on.

I mean, who needs fancy graphical IRC clients when you can just run irssi in an xterm?

For your FTP needs, I suggest ncftp

What I'm after myself is a wireless network utility. I used a fantastic little one, GPL'd, I think, if that helps, before my laptop died last August. Anyone know what it might be?

sturgo

Fenster wrote:

My own suggestions and requests:

First off, I'm more shocked than suprised that on one has mentioned Fink. It's a port of apt-get for Darwin and its the most painless way to install excellent command-line programs such as the Imagemagick suite, wget, irssi and so on.

??? Were not all Rainman / computer geeks on this thread.

Fenster

Unfortunate choice of words on my part, mayhap. But still, you're using Unix.

Sarunas

http://www.opensourcemac.org/

Easy Rider

A cool app (if you have tiger) is CoverFlow, check it out.....

m_stan

Easy Rider wrote:

A cool app (if you have tiger) is CoverFlow, check it out.....

nice. there's a konfabulator widget that does something similar on Windows but no Dashboard widget version.

All I need now is a replacement for iTunes. It messed up my mp3 folder structure and I aint happy, so I'm ditching it. Anyone any suggestions ? I tried Audion 3 and didnt like it. Something like WinAmp for OS X ?