Top 100 Mac Apps

choose, Dad!’ (tags: talk storytelling ) Everyone wants to help ‘The Girl in the Window’ - St. Petersburg Times (tags: talk storytelling ) Hack Attack: A guide for switching to a Mac (tags: mac macbookpro app )Top 100 Mac Apps ~ Chris Pirillo(tags: macbookpro apps osx ) ~ by dave hess on 19 August, 2008. Posted in 2

dig it !

digg it

submitted to digg.

I dont own a Mac and never plan on owning a Mac but some of programs seems cool

i digg it !!!

Chris, sorry but I have to say this is a profoundly unhelpful post. In most cases the name and icon don’t even give me a clue what kind of app it is. So to learn about your whole list, I have to click 100 links. Some of those clicks take me to landing pages which in turn don’t offer me a clue. (e.g. ACP Suite. What does that landing page teach about what the software does? Or even that it’s software–I’m taking *your* word for that.)

This is one of those cases which demonstrate that the random-access web is a little over-sold, where taxonomies and organizing principles really help. The top-100 lists I’ve gotten a lot of benefit from have all been those that group their objects in some way. That way I can learn about a cool new backup utility by knowing I’m about to look at a backup utility, not by clicking 100 links which to me are random, in hopes I’ll find something of interest.

Still, my hat’s off to you, knowing how much work these lists are to compile.

Best,
Max

yeah

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Thanks, a nice list.

Is any of those a file manager like Midnight Commander for Linux or FAR Manager for Windows? Wikipedia Mac apps list misses this category altogether but I find it one of the most essential tools.

Tried a cross-platform muCommander, but seems like in this category a native application is preferable. It did freeze as soon as I tried to do file transfer via SCP. Not good.

Chris,

Wow! Nice list!
I should probably take another look at Butler; I’ve been using LaunchBar for years and grew used to it - I do think it’s excellent. I am a huge fan of Peter Maurer, and rely heavily on Witch and Desktop Curtain. Yesterday I moved from Cyberduck to FileZilla, which is more complex but gives you a broader navigation experience. BTW, Onyx - which is great - is not yet certified for Leopard. iStat menus looks awesome. I use iStat Pro. Looks like they’ve developed a lot of cool new apps.

Great job. Looks like a lot of new items to check out!

David

Thanks, this is definitely going to help me for when I get my MacBook :D.

haha kewl you use MacSaber too! The most useless application ever but yet so cool!

You should replace 7zX with BetterZip which also supposed 7-zip compression as well as many others.

This was a really great list of apps… Though some of these were PPC only, I found SEVERAL applications I didn’t know about and have been searching for as a solution to various annoyances. Thanks :D

I know that all lists like this are subjective, but I’ll offer my take in on a couple of apps. You include both Butler and Quicksilver, but omit LaunchBar. I know the first two are free, but after extensively time with all three, LaunchBar was clearly better for MY needs, and well worth the modest registration fee.

I am surprised at the omission of TextMate, one of the reasons I switch to the Mac from Linux.

ffmpegX has got to be one the most frustrating apps I’ve ever used. It works fine for awhile, then suddenly stops working. I uninstall all the pieces, re-install, and again it works for awhile, always with the same error message. Many other users report the same error, but no solution ever offered by the authors.

There are many apps on the list that are totally unfamiliar and I am looking forward to checking them out. Thanks for putting this list together!

Chris: Which apps did I miss - especially for Windows switchers? ;)

You missed Fugu, a free FTP client. I haven’t done that much with it, but it looks very well-designed and other people I know really like it.

You missed Intego VirusBarrier, which I think is the best antivirus software for OS X.

You missed Seashore, a simpler and more Mac-native version of the Gimp. It’s the best free graphics software available for OS X that I’ve seen. This is important for switchers because it seems to be really hard to find any free graphics-editing software for Macs—the OS doesn’t even ship with something like MacPaint or MSPaint.

You missed OmniGraffle, which I’ve only used once (at school) because it costs money, but which is a very nice mindmapping program (like Microsoft Visio). Freemind (cross-platform) is a free alternative, but it has the worst user interface of any program I’ve ever used, so it’s not much of an alternative.

Also, I won’t say you missed Vienna (RSS reader), because it probably doesn’t deserve to be on this list, but I like it. So there.

Instead of using Teleport, I prefer Synergy because it works with Windows as well. So I from my Macbook, I can control my Mac Mini and my PC with only one keyboard and one mouse.
That’s probably one of the most amazing softwares I’ve ever found.

Without any explanation it’s hard to find this list useful. A one-liner detailing what the program does would transform it to useful.

I really think DOT.TUNES should be added to this list.

It’s FREE and very handy for streaming your iTunes tracks to any other computer - even your iPhone or iPod Touch

http://www.dottunes.net

Love
Lou

excellent list.

the one app I felt missing was notebook:
http://www.circusponies.com/
very useful for project based work.

great list…can you set aside another list of freeware/shareware for mac? i know, another project for another time, but a worthy one, at least for me.

Wow beautiful collection..

I am new to this Mac thing, bought a MacBook couple of months ago and still don’t know most of the things in it.
This list will help me doing some good stuff and work!

Thanks

G’day. Connect360 is worth mentioning too… it allows your mac to share files with an Xbox 360 on the network.. that being everything in your iTunes (podcasts, music, purchased tunes (except DRM tracks..) iPhoto and Movie folder. Very neat software… worked well until I upgraded to Leopard. I’m waiting for an update now :-P

TextMate is a definite requirement for this list. As far as web-developers go, I don’t think there is any one single app other than TextMate that has caused users to switch from Windows. (blog.macromates.com/2007/buy-a-mac-get-textmate/)

Two apps that were not mentioned:

1) Xslimmer
2) Yojimbo

Nice, but– where’s the picture viewer?

Serious Mac users shell out for Graphic Converter.

For free is Toy Viewer.

Not sure how you missed PopCopy2 (indispensable tool for me) and Cha-Ching for financial management ;) Others in my dock that you don’t have include Transmit, Cocoalicious, ecto, and NetNewsWire.

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Flip4Mac (flip4mac.com) - translates .wmv files so that they will play in QuickTime.

Great list, but no Uno :(((((((

Missed one that’s awesome. Specifically FOR people switching from windows!

http://www.itsabouttimeproducts.com/switch_to_mac/

Pacifist (opens Mac OS X .pkg package files)
Transmit (cool ftp client)
Hex Fiend (hex editor)
Media Rage (MP3 manager/tag editor/etc.)
TextMate (ultimate text editor for OS X)
NetNewsWire (best RSS editor on platform)
HoudahGeo (add geo-information to EXIF data in JPEGs)
Mellel (wp program with some interesting capabilities)

Hi. Check out xtorrent torrent client. I miss this one in your great list.

What about a simple paint program?

I’m yet to find something comparable to MS paint.

That’s a very nice list of apps, there are some of them I haven’t heard about before, I’ll have to take a look at them. Thnx, nice work !

What about Pixel? It’s the most cheapest alternative to Photoshp on Mac, Linux and Windows. http://www.kanzelsberger.com

Nice helpful post. I’ll be investigating ones of interest.

For me one glaring omission typeit4me saves keystrokes and time humunguously.

Peter

You might want to add Flip4Mac, for converting wmv movies to Quicktime.

Hi,

Great list. But you missed my two faves…
Himmelbar - for accessing the full applications directory in list form
Desktopple - for hiding all the wretched desktop icons

What about Disco?

Thanks Chris! this is awesome!
Digg it!

Two of my faves aren’t here:

– WiFind, from Tasty Apps. Puts more info about Wi-Fi access points in the AirPort menu. Currently doesn’t work with Leopard, though. http://www.tastyapps.com/

– Menu Meters from Raging Menace put system status in the menubar. Macs don’t have disk access lights, so I use it for that. http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/

Ooops, Menu Meters IS on your list, sorry. Just WiFind then….

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I used to need screen grabs all the time when developing websites and no app does it better than Paparazzi: grabs the entire page, no matter how far you need to vertically or horizontally scroll to view.

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You also missed Peel, get it from getpeel.com

Is this supposed to be a list of the best cheap or free apps? I’m a little put off by any “top” Mac application list that omits everything from Omni (for at least OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle) or Panic (Coda, Transmit). Maybe if you “did [your] best to avoid overly popular titles” it’d be better titled as a “top 100 lesser known” mac apps list?