Top 12 FREE software for Mac
First of all, let’s get the best of Windows apps that are also available on the Mac.
1 – VLC Media Player – http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
THE media player for any platform. Handles anything you throw at it, including DVD media, and it’s fast. I’ve personally been using it for a year plus and nothing even comes close to competing with it. Screw those codec packs, here’s the world famous VLC.
2 – Firefox – http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
Firefox may not be as necessary as it was on Windows because we are now on Mac, without IE, Mac users are a lot less likely to get spyware and trouble. Still, Firefox is a lot more compatible than Safari, not to mention the tons of useful plug-ins you can addon to Firefox. So, it’s a must have.
3 – utorrent – http://download.utorrent.com/
YES! The best bit torrent client on Windows has no match on the Mac. You may opt to download the latest version by going to utorrent.com.
4 – YamiPod – http://www.yamipod.com/main/modules/home/
Free your music from your iPods… directly access your music with YamiPod! YamiPod is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod under Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation. mp3 and AAC files can be copied to/from iPod.
5 – Audicity – http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds.
6 – Miro – http://www.getmiro.com/
The power of Miro lies with its RSS feed subscriber, which allows it to automatically download your favorite shows without you having to search for it every day/week. It’s especially good if the shows you follow are US / UK shows, as you can find their RSS feeds on tvrss.net http://www.tvrss.net/shows/
7 – QuickSilver – http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/
Quicksilver is a computer utility software program for Mac OS X, made by Blacktree Software and distributed freely. It allows users to use the keyboard to rapidly perform tasks such as launching applications, manipulating files and data, running scripts or sending e-mail. Try it out! Once you get used to it, you CAN’T use your Mac without it!
8 – Xee – http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/xee.html
Xee is the best image viewer on the mac. Replacing ComicViewer on Windows, it will open your comic / manga / rar or zip files directly for viewing if you have The Unarchiver installed. Extremely convenient… and both are FREE!
9 – The Unarchiver – http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html
The Unarchiver is a much more capable replacement for “BOMArchiveHelper.app”, the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X. The Unarchiver is designed to handle many more formats than BOMArchiveHelper, and to better fit in with the design of the Finder. It can also handle filenames in foreign character sets, created with non-English versions of other operating systems. I personally find it useful for opening Japanese archives, but it should handle many other languages just as well.
10 – NeoOffice – http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php
Screwing paying for MS Office, use the better free open source office! Based on OpenOffice, made specifically for Mac. I personally have very good experience with this free software!
11- Paparazzi! – http://www.derailer.org/paparazzi/
Paparazzi! is a small utility for Mac OS X that makes screenshots of webpages. Put in the URL address, and it will make a full page jpg for you!
12 – Burn – http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/
Damn! Had to go above 10 titles… but a CD/DVD burning program is a must have, so here’s the one I use. Burn. It’s open sourced and burns all kinds of discs.