one inch frame

The occasion of David Potts getting his brand-spankin’ new 17” Apple Powerbook G4 gives me the chance to document some of my favorite pieces of Mac software. These pieces of software at least have a free timed demo, with freeware or Open Source software preferred. And they have to be pieces of software that I actually use.

• There is nothing like Quicksilver. It looks like a way to quickly launch apps, but there’s so much more under the surface. If you run Mac OS X and you don’t use Quicksilver, you’re not using much of your computer at all. In fact, computers without Quicksilver (even Macs, as nice as they are) just seem like little toys now. Yes, I’m talking to you, KDE freak. There’s a GNOME project underway to try to match the functionality of Quicksilver; good luck guys, it’s wonderful stuff.
• The thing I missed the most from my Linux desktop days were virtual desktops. Being able to organize the programs I used into different screens really helped me keep tabs on things. As nice as Exposé is, it’s not a replacement for virtual desktops. Enter Desktop Manager. It’s Open Source and it does a great job of managing desktops like I used to do with WindowMaker.
• Firefox. I do like Safari, but it’s not quite ready yet. Firefox handles tabs much better, and has more options that I need, and it’s nice to be using the same browser as most of my (Windows PC) users. Good Mac themes are pretty sparse, and the default one is ugly (I get around that by switching to text instead of icons). There are nice extensions for Bloglines, web developing, and del.icio.us. Yummy. They’ve promised that version 1.1 will actually be version 1.0 for the Mac, in that it’ll be much more Mac-like (Services, please!?), and I’m eager to see it.
• SSHKeychain is an excellent way for me to keep my ssh keys cached so that I don’t need to enter a password for each host I visit (I have about 12 machines that I regularly need remote shells to), and that lets me turn off password authentication, making ssh even more secure. And since SSHKeychain is integrated into the OSX keychain, my keys are unlocked for me when I login. It’s also fairly easy to set up tunnels with it. Nice.
• I’m using the excellent app MacJournal to type this. While version 3.0 is no longer free, and I can’t blame the author for going that route, version 2.6 is still free. Even though it’s missing some killer features, it’s good enough for me, given that I don’t have $30 to spend on an app like this. It’s excellent, and if you have the money, the author certainly deserves it.
• iTunesAlarm. I have an easier time falling asleep when I can do it to music, and iTunesAlarm is how I do it. Up to five alarms, any of which could be sleep and wake alarms. I have it set to start playing when I should turn off the games or the TV, and have it set to sleep my Powerbook long after I should be snoozing.
• MPlayer OS X is my movie player of choice. I loved mplayer on Linux, and the Mac OS X port is every bit as good. It handles most any file you throw at it, and (compiled from source) mencoder works the other way, taking any source (umm, like DVDs) and turning it into a good movie file.
• Life Balance. At $80 for both the Mac OS X and Palm versions, it’s not free by any means. But it has changed my life. I could go on and on about this app. At first glance it’s a glorified todo list manager, but the more you use it the more you realize it’s actually a second brain for everything you need to do and remember, except you don’t have to remember anything. It tries to help you to achieve the balance between life goals that you desire (hence the name) by sorting the todo list to show you the tasks that you think are the most important, rather than the most urgent. A touchy-feely kind of software experience.
• SlimBatteryMonitor is a replacement for the battery monitor that Mac OS X puts in the menubar. I’m a sucker for menubar apps. Right now the following are to the right of the MacJournal menubar: Desktop Manager, SlimBatteryMonitor, SSHKeyChain, VPN, Bluetooth, AppleScript, Airport, Volume, and MenuCalendarClock iCal. With all those applets, it’s nice that SlimBatteryMonitor saves some of that precious screen real estate.
• Adium X. A multi-protocol instant messaging app, with lots of skins and plugins. It works fine; its jabber protocol (which, of course, is the one I use most often) support isn’t as good as perhaps it could be, but any quirks are easily worked around.
• FFView isn’t the best image viewer I’ve ever used, but it’s the best one I’ve found for Mac OS X. It’s got voice support (though I’m not sure why), decent thumbnail generation, and a good full-screen mode.
• Firestarter FX is a nice addition to the built-in Mac OS X Disk Utility, which can be used to mount and burn images, and erase CDRWs. FireStarter erases much faster than Disk Utility, and also allows the creation of an ISO from the SuperDrive.
• MenuCalendarClock iCal. A replacement for the built-in clock on the menubar, This shareware app (which can be operated for free sans some features) shows a pop-down calendar when you click on the clock (Apple: why couldn’t you have thought of this), and it will highlight days that iCal has activity on. A good idea, implemented well.
• Delicious Library. Ok, I admit, like Life Balance, Delicious Library is not free by any means, but I think it’s one of the coolest apps I’ve seen in a while (at least since Quicksilver, which wins hands down). The Library is a full-featured library software for personal connections. Basically, it’s an excellent interface to amazon.com, because it looks up cover art and bibliographic information from the internet superstore. Delicious Library allows you to keep track of who borrowed what (by hooking in to Mac OS X’s Address Book), when it’s due (by hooking into iCal), and can read barcodes for things like ISBN numbers from an iSight camera. schweet.
• Growl is catching on, and I think that’s great. How long before Apple includes a good-looking universal notification mechanism in Mac OS X? Well, until then there’s Growl. Growl exposes a way to provide notification from other apps. Adium announces when people are online, QuickSilver shows me when iTunes songs change, and a command-line growlnotify utility can announce when scripts are finished running, or any other sort of thing. It’d be cool to see more apps support Growl. Thunderbird when there’s new mail, Firefox when downloads are finished. Bonus points if Firefox could expose that through JavaScript and Gmail and Bloglines could notify via growl when new mail comes in or when RSS feeds are updated. Not that I need or even want the added distractions, but it’d still be cool.