Mac Application Secrets of the Nerds

In honor of the Nerdgirl's recent jealousy-inducing purchase of a MacBook Air, I promised a list of things that every mac user should have. There were a couple that I meant to include, but I couldn't remember them in the morning haze of post-gig recovery. (As a side note, don't trust the Klinic's taps to correctly indicate the dispensed beverage. I ordered a spotted cow, and I'm pretty sure they gave me a bud light. Curse them.) And so, without further ado...

The Essential and Silly List of Mostly-Free Mac Applications

Adium (free)

http://www.adiumx.com/

Probably the best multi-service text chat client available. Supports just about every service. Highly customizable (appearance, sounds).

Caveat: No video support (yet)

SoundSource (free)

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/freebies/

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/freebies/download/SoundSource.dmg (Direct download)

Menubar add-on that allows you to quickly change sound input/output sources and volumes.

MoodBlast (free)

http://blog.circlesixdesign.com/download/moodswing#downloads

http://blog.circlesixdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/MoodBlast_3.1.zip (less confusing direct download link)

The king of status updates. With one keystroke you may update Skype, iChat, Adium, Twitter, Tumblr, Pownce, Jaiku & Facebook. Update all at once, or just the ones you want. Read the user manual to see all of the arcane shortcuts for the different services and features.

Quicksilver (free)

http://www.blacktree.com/

The ultimate shortcut application. With it, I'm able to launch any application or document with just a few keystrokes (like, three to five, usually.) It has a high learning curve, mostly because of all the installable features and settings. A power-user essential app.

Fluid (free)

http://fluidapp.com/

This app seems quite silly at first, because it's only job is to create a mini web browser using Apple's WebKit. The purpose is to open a site-specifc web browser. Why would you want to do this? Well, because each app runs as a discrete application, it won't take down all of your other browsers if something crashes (it happens.) Also, you can cmd-tab (apple-tab) to each different browser. Or use quicksilver to launch the site-specific browser in a few keystrokes. Oh, and you can make your own sweet icons for each browser. It's fun and functional. I have about 38 different browsers for sites like: Facebook, Good Reads, Google Reader, Twitter, Pownce, Rhapsody, Tumblr Dashboard,  LastFM, Wikipedia, Weatherunderground, Vox, and so on.

tofu (free)

http://amarsagoo.info/tofu/

This is a silly little app, but it serves what I think is a useful purpose: making long text articles easier to read. Basically, copy any text into the clipboard, launch tofu, and paste. It will take that long text and convert it into columns for easier reading. The columns are user-configurable. If you read ebooks or even long internet articles, this is a great application.

Skitch (free for now?)

http://plasq.com/skitch

As a graphics nerd, I didn't think I had a use for Skitch. I was wrong. At it's core, this is a handy little screenshot app. But it does much much more, like: Integrated graphics tools, online private graphics sharing, and integration with sites like flickr. I'm starting to think of it as quick-and-dirty photoshop. Especially handy for bloggers.

growl (free)

http://growl.info/

Even windows users are starting to see floating notification windows these days, thanks to Adobe's AIR. But Growl is responsible for this growing trend. Many many OS X applications can now use growl as a standard notification method, and growl is highly customizable in how it displays those notifications. I especially recommend the Nano method, as it shows a tiny little drawer that drops down from the menu bar for a second or two and then disappears.

perian (free)

http://perian.org/

They call it the swiss-army knife of quicktime codecs. It has almost everything you could want, except for windows media. (see flip4mac)

flip4mac (not free)

http://flip4mac.com

flip4mac unlocks windows media playback in quicktime. Essential. I've been getting away with the free version for a long time, and can't speak to the value of the paid version.

desktop2login (free)

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/icons_screensavers/desktop2login.html

All this program does is change the background screen for the login window from the standard apple blue to whatever your current desktop is. I can't leave a desktop unchanged for more than a few days, so I use this one a lot.

wallsaver (free)

http://www.nwwnetwork.net/software.php?app=wallsaver

Wallsaver takes your current screensaver and makes it run as your desktop background. The results vary by the complexity of the screensaver and the horsepower of your mac. Doesn't work so great with my favorite screensaver (Fenêtres Volantes, below) but is fun nonetheless.

Fenêtres Volantes (free)

http://www.objective-cocoa.org/fenetresvolantes/en/download.html

If you ever want to blow your windows-coworkers minds, install this screensaver. Nicely displays the power of the mac graphics architecture.

senuti (free)

http://www.fadingred.org/senuti/

This is another essential application for mac users with ipods. It allows what itunes will not: the ability to copy tracks FROM the ipod to itunes. Perfect for when you download an album at home, put it on the ipod, and then want to copy it to your work computer. The useful interface looks at the ipod tracklist and the current itunes library and then marks all of the ipod tracks that aren't in itunes. The built-in transfer utility will copy any select track into iTunes. Quick, simple and free.

BBedit (expensive)

http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/

I've been using it for over 10 years, and it's a must have for me. If you work with text files a lot, especially html, php, or any other plaintext coding, this is an expensive, but essential text editor. Perhaps the most powerful text editor available outside of the command line. It can, for example, search the entire contents of a directory for text (useful when combing through log files.) grep, search and replace, code coloring, damn near everything a busy coder would need. The downside is the expense. I'll put it this way, if you're a hard-core jEdit user, this isn't for you. But if you need to fix and edit a lot of plaintext files, this is a must.