My Essential Mac Apps - a concise list
I always see Top Mac Apps lists on Digg or any other site, but they’re all more general lists of the best apps in each category. Here’s my take of apps I use regularly and which I probably can’t live without.
Awaken - I actually used this for the first time this week. The obnoxious EH EH EH EH EH EH of my alarm clock is the equivalent of someone shoving their thumb up my ass every morning, whereas Awaken is like being spoon fed ice cream by Miss America.
Chax - Chax for Tiger was magic. It’s not quite as good for Leopard, but I still use it.
Handbrake - I make .. uh .. backups .. of my dvds regularly. There’s no better app to use than Handbrake.
Miro - I like this for the sheer fact that you can save YouTube videos.
Monolingual - I used this with Tiger, which freed up about 1.5gb worth of foreign languages. I’m pretty sure I’ll never need to display text in Bengali or Ukrainian.
Overflow - I prefer this quick launch app over placing the Applications folder into the Leopard dock because you can organize your apps into categories. Overflow doesn’t work as well in Leopard as it did in Tiger, but I think it has something to do with Spaces.
Senuti - I don’t use this that much, but it’s nice being able to pull material off of my ipod when I need to.
Time Machine - Sure this comes with Leopard, but I’m going to include it. I’m rather anal about my file backup because I’ve been burned one too many times during my Windows days. I keep all of my mp3s, photos and documents on an external 2.5” drive. On a 3.5” drive, I keep a backup of the 2.5” + movies. I keep an additional 3.5” as my Time Machine drive which does a back up of my MacBook’s drive.
Visual Hub - I’ll use this to convert videos I saved from Miro to put onto my iphone. iSquint, which is free, works just as well.
Wallet - You will agree that we have too many passwords to keep track of these days. I use Wallet to keep mine safe and secure. Ironically, you need a password to access the Wallet app, so don’t forget it like I did. (I figured it out eventually)
