Mac 360's Alexis Kayhill has posted a list of
her top ten free Mac software applications, which are:
- NeoOffice:
- Flip4Mac: (Windows Media Player alternative)
- TextWrangler (serious text editor)
- Firefox & Thunderbird
- CyberDuck (FTP and SFTP client)
- Adium: (multi-service chat client)
- ImageTricks (sue with OS X Tiger's Core Image filters)
- MAMP (server software)
- iBackup (free backup software)
- Vienna (RSS and Atom reader
Okaaaayy. I'm sure these are all excellent and useful applications -
but it's not the list I would pick for the cream of the crop in Mac
software freebies
NeoOffice -
No argument there, but I would also include OpenOffice.
TextWrangler
is great and has to be one of the most useful and powerful among the
several free text editors available - it really is the contemporary
BBEdit Lite, although I rely on the shareware Tex-Edit Plus for most of
my word-crunching, largely because of its speed, superb implementation
of AppleScript, and ability to handle styled text, but when I need a
true plain text editor, TextWrangler is the one I use.
Firefox - an
excellent browser, especially in version 3, which is currently out in
its Release Candidate 1 build with a much-improved interface for the
Mac version. However, My favorite free browser is Opera. FireFox-based Camino and SeaMonkey, and Safari
Webkit-based Shiira have their
devotees as well. iCab is nice too,
but the free version has an annoying nagware dialog.
Thunderbird - not my
favorite email client, but arguably the best of the currently developed
free alternatives to OS X Mail, although I anticipate the Open
Source Thunderbird-clone Eudora will be more to my liking when it's
ready. However, neither holds a candle to real
Eudora, the last version (6.2.4) of which can still be downloaded
for free. It's still so far superior to anything else in Mac email
clients that it remains my mainstay email app, although performance and
stability have been degraded by OS X 10.5 "Leopard".
I expect to migrate to the new Odysseus
email client, which is designed to offer a classic Eudora-like feature
set and user experience when it's ready, but it won't be free. Note
that Opera also has a pretty decent email client module in its free Web
browser, and SeaMonkey a serviceable one.
As for the rest of Alexis' picks, I haven't used any of them, so I
can't comment critically on those programs, However, my own list of top
ten favorite free Mac software applications would also include:
ToyViewer Image Viewer/Editor
ToyViewer
is one of the core tools in my production applications suite, and far
and away my most-used graphics program. On a typical workday, I
probably use ToyViewer a couple of dozen times - mostly for relatively
small and short-duration chores like resizing pictures and changing
file types, but also quick image correction, which it can do amazingly
well with a couple of mouse clicks. I don't know what I would do
without it.
ToyViewer also supports a slate of other surprisingly sophisticated
image editing functions converting filter services to other
applications. With ToyViewer is installed in your Mac, you can read and
display image files in tiff, gif, bmp, png, jpg, jbig(bie), pcx, pcd,
pict, pnm (ppm, pbm, or pgm), xbm, mag, SUN Rasterfile, JPEG2000(jp2,
jpc, j2k), and other formats supported by Mac OS X. Displayed
images can be saved in following formats: tiff, pdf, gif, bmp, png,
jpg, JPEG2000, jbig(bie), pnm, or xbm.
PTHPasteboard Multiple Clipboard Utility
PTHPasteboard
is another free Mac OS X utility that I wonder how I ever got along
without. It saves me from frustration and task-repetition several times
in a typical day and also can substantially enhance workflow
efficiency.
How often have you copied something only to find that you need it a
few minutes later but you've already copied another item over it on the
Mac Clipboard? PTHPasteboard watches you while you work and keeps a
copy of any items that you have copied to your Clipboard (you can
specify how many entries are cached) and also saves the clipboard
through restarts. I keep it configured as a default startup item.
SpotInside Spotlight Search Enhancer
SpotInside works the
way Spotlight ought to, and this little utility has grown on me to the
point that I find it almost indispensable. I can't say enough good
about it.
Most of the other third-party search utilities are impressively
powerful and offer much deeper feature sets than SpotInside, but it's
power and complexity that I don't really need very often. The beauty of
SpotInside is that it's speed and simplicity itself to use, so I find
myself using it as my first and usually only other resort if Spotlight
doesn't come up with the result I need on its first shot.
For some reason, I'm not sure exactly why, SpotInside also tends to
turn up the most useful collection of results for my purposes of any
search utility I've yet tried, and it displays them in a very
convenient fashion. Most of the time, I find it the most helpful tool
for the sort of content searching I do, and it does its thing using
minimal system resources.
Unfortunately, it's not perfect. It has some stability issues,
notably locking up when trying to preview the content of large files.
However, it's so good at what it does that I'm willing to cut it some
slack, especially since it restarts almost instantly.
OnyX System Maintenance and Cleaning Utility
Of the dozen or more OS X system maintenance utilities out there,
the one I use most often is OnyX, which has a
nice interface, is updated frequently, performs well, and is
freeware.
Aside from OS X system maintenance and optimization, including
verifying and repairing permissions, running chron maintenance scripts,
optimizing the system, dumping caches and updating databases, OnyX -
like Cocktail, Mac Pilot, MainMenu, and several others - also makes it
possible to configure certain hidden parameters of the Finder, the
Dock, and Safari. It allows you to customize scroll bar arrows, label
lines, toggle appearance between Aqua and Graphite, show hidden system
files, put a Quit menu item in the Finder menu, activate application
and window zooming, delete certain preferences, and force empty the
Trash, with or without destruction.
You can customize Dock position, alignment, and minimization
options, and activate hidden and system files, transparent icons for
hidden applications, animate opening applications put a menu item Quit
Finder in the Dock, and relaunch the Dock to remove a certain number of
files and logs, preview the different logs and CrashReporter, and
more.
TigerLaunch Application Launcher
There is a fairly broad selection of OS X program launcher utilities
out there, and I've tried a lot of them, but the one that I like best,
and have stuck with since OS 10.1 days, is Ranchero Software's TigerLaunch.
Being a very small and simple application, TigerLaunch doesn't get
updated very often, and doesn't need to. It just works.
Seashore Cocoa Open Source Graphics Program for OS X
Seashore is a capable
Open Source bitmap graphics program in Cocoa for OS X by Mark
Pazolli that for many users could be a viable free alternative to
Adobe's Photoshop applications.
Seashore features gradients, textures, and anti-aliasing for both
text and brush strokes. It also supports multiple layers and alpha
channel editing. It is based around the
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program - and another excellent
freeware pick for doing high-end graphics) advanced open source bitmap
imaging program's technology and uses the same native file format.
Seashore's features include:
- Full support for the GIMP's native XCF file format
- Read and write support for the TIFF, PNG, JPEG, and JP2000 file
formats
- Read-only support for the BMP, PICT, PDF, XBM, and GIF file
formats
- Layers with over 20 merging effects
- Individual primary and alpha channel editing
- Thorough transparency effects including semitransparent
gradients
- Arbitrary selection regions
- Anti-aliased brush strokes
- 6 basic gradient effects with 16 variations
- Tablet support
- ColorSync support (including embedded profiles in TIFFs and CMYK
previewing)
- Plug-in filters
Seashore is sleek and a lot better-documented than most of today's
commercial software, with a thorough and detailed user's manual in PDF
format. It also integrates tightly with the Mac operating system and is
thoroughly object-oriented. It is intended serve the basic image
editing needs of most computer users, rather than to provide a
replacement for Adobe Photoshop which is more the GIMP's role.
EasyFind Search Utility
Devon Technologies' EasyFind
is positioned as an alternative to or supplement of Spotlight/Sherlock
that finds files, folders, or contents in any file without the need for
indexing. Indexed searches are faster, of course, but the indexing
process in the background tends to slow down slower machines.
Befitting its name, EasyFind is fast and easy to use with easily
configurable search criteria. EasyFind also offers a lot of
functionality that Spotlight doesn't (at least conveniently), such as
case sensitive or insensitive search, Boolean operators, wildcards, or
searching for phrases. In addition, EasyFind uses multithreading and is
therefore very responsive even with multiple search processes running,
provides contextual menus and Mac OS X Services, and displays the
location of each item in a separate column for a better overview.
Finally, EasyFind uses little memory, supports drag-and-drop and the
clipboard, and optionally finds invisible items or items within
packages (which Spotlight doesn't search). Consequently, even if you're
running Tiger, EasyFind can be a very useful enhancement to your search
capability.
Adobe Reader
When Apple vastly improved OS X's Preview app, with the OS X 10.3
"Panther" release and later OS versions, Adobe
Reader remains the mothership PDF application, now with an
interface that lets you choose the reading mode to fit more content on
the screen or the two-up mode to view page spreads without excess space
in the middle. Zoom in, pan over, or leverage the loupe feature in
Reader 8 to take a closer look.
With Adobe Reader, you can instantly collaborate with virtually
anyone, anywhere, at any time using the Start Meeting button in to
access Adobe Acrobat Connect software and deliver online training and
support or communicate with remote audiences in real time.
Reader supports digital signing of Adobe PDF documents, allowing
recipients to more confidently view and verify the authenticity of PDF
files.
For large volumes of information, such as technical manuals, Reader
8 can condense any type of PDF file into a single booklet for printing.
Print only the desired pages on two sides of paper or in a smaller type
size to save time and paper.
Adobe Reader lets you find and retrieve any PDF document or a phrase
in a document within seconds. Search for words in page content,
annotations, bookmarks, form fields, or document metadata within any
PDF file on a local machine.
MacSword Bible Reference Software
For Christian Mac users, MacSword is a free, open source
application for research and study of the Bible developed specifically
for Macintosh computers running Mac OS X.
MacSword allows you to read and browse many different Bible
translations in different languages from Hebrew to Albanian. As well as
reading devotionals, commentaries, dictionaries, and lexicons, it also
supports searching and advanced features such as services so that you
can access the Bible in any program.
MacSword uses the Sword
project. This is an open source project whose purpose is to "to
create an ever expanding software package for research and study of God
and His Word". This provides the backend functionality to handle the
Bible texts and provide features such as searching.
So there are a bunch of my favorite Mac freeware applications -
there are more than ten if you count the various browsers. However,
even if you combine Alexis' list and mine, it barely scratches the
surface of what's available. For example, neither of us got into
Dashboard widgets. For more Mac freeware, check out the Mac listing of
all freeware at
VersionTracker. 
Bookmark in del.icio.us
