Hiro's MacBook Pro

Got a new mac? You should check this list to brew your own lovely Mac. I’m trying tons of apps day by day and my favorites are here. Enjoy!

Utilities

Quicksilver

App launcher. Cant’ live without this. You should get this first.

Growl

Notification tool. Many apps use this

Caffeine

Prevent auto sleep while watching YouTube or Nicovideo.

Witch [Not Free]

Window switcher.

Sidenote

Tiny note app. Useful for temporally memo.

GeekTool

Display system logs or output messages from some commands on a desktop. Looks cool.

delimport

Spotlight plug-in to search Delicious bookmarks.

iStat menus

Easy way to check your Mac’s status. CPU, RAM, temperature, etc.

Clyppan

Clipboard history app.

Clean Achiever

Do you work with Windows users? You need this to remove extra files only for Mac when you archive files.

Stuffit

To unpack password protected archives for Mac.

SimplyRAR

Use rar format on your Mac.

File Name Encoding Repair

To repair garbled file or folder name.

TrueCrypt

To encrypt files if you use some confidential files.

Transmission

As a BitTorrent client. Get this before you will get OpenOffice. This one helps you to download large files.

OnyX

Find and modify hidden configurations of your Mac.

SetAlphaValue

Set transparency of Cocoa based apps.

Toast [Not Free]

DVD-R and CD-R writer.

Mousepose [Not Free]

Highlight your mouse pointer while your presentation.

DarwiinRemote

Use your Nintendo Wii remote as an input device. You can do cool presentations like Steve Jobs.

Evernote

Official client of Evernote. Online note.

Carbon Copy Cloner

For in case you need to backup entire your HDD.

DiDi Dictionary Viewer

To use English dictionary Eijiro.

Browsers

Firefox

Best browser of all time if you know some neat extensions.

Opera

If you’re on the Opera’s side :P

Safari Stand

Adds some new features in Safari. Must one for all Mac users.

Fluid

Make web apps into individual apps.

dolipo

Caching web proxy. Make your browsing faster.

1Password [Not Free]

Password manager for browsers on your Mac and iPhone. Must item for me.

Paparazzi

Screen capture app.

Office Work

TextWrangler

There are tons of alternatives to TextEdit but I prefer this one.

OpenOffice

Free office suit.

iWork [Not Free]

Office suit by Apple. Default templates are so nice.

ATOK [Not Free]

More productive way to input Japanese. Less typing, word correction.

VMWare Fusion [Not Free]

To use Windows. Windows is a nice software sometimes.

VirtualBox

Free vitalization app.

FreeMind

Mind mapping app.

Multimedia

Quicktime Pro [Not Free]

Upgrade to pro to use a recording feature if you have a build in iSight :)

iShowU [Not Free]

My favorite screen capture app.

VLC

Video player. Most of video formats are supported.

DivX Player

To watch DivX encoded videos.

Flip4Mac

To watch WMV encoded videos.

Perian

To add many popular file formats to Quicktime.

Miro

Subscribe HD video podcasts with this.

TubeTV

Download YouTube videos and put it into your iPod.

HandBrake

Open source DVD ripping app. Watch your favorite DVD on your TV or Mac without discs.

Extract Movie Soundtrack

The name says it all. Make a movie file to an audio file.

Last.fm

Last.fm official client.

SweetFM

Useful client for Last.fm.

DockArt

Shows you artwork of a current song on your dock.

Flickr Uploadr

Do you like to share your photos or upload it for your blog? This one helps you well.

Skich

The best image editor. You should try.

Seashore

Photoshop alternative. Mac version of GIMP.

Simplify Media

To access to your iTunes library from anywhere.

Stanza

Book reader.

Communication

Adium

Multi-protocol IM client. Really fun to customize how it looks and how it works. One of the most important app for me.

Skype

You already know what it is.

CamTwist

Real time video effect app. Change how you look on video chat.

LimeChat

IRC client. Only for someone who is an IRC addict.

Twitterrific

Twitter client. Looks cute.

TweetDeck

Twitter client. Multi-accounts supported. Adobe AIR app.

twhirl

Client app for Twitter, FriendFeed, laconi.ca. Adobe AIR app.

MoodBlast

Update your status on IM services and Twitter at a time.

Software Development

Carbon Emacs

Yes the best app of all time. My main text editor and development environment. I spend most of my life on Emacs.

Eclipse

Yet another IDE.

Sequel Pro

GUI MySQL front-end.

PGnJ

GUI front-end for PostgreSQL plus more.

DiffMerge

GUI friendly diff tool.

Cyberduck

FTP client. In fact, I don’t use this now cos I use lftp as a FTP client.

Fink

One of the famous package management tool for Mac. Bring Unix tools into your Mac.

MacPorts

Another choice of the package management tool for Mac. Both of these are useful if you’re Unix friendly.

HTTP Client

HTTP messages viewer.

Reggy

Regular expression validator.

Balsamiq Mockups [Not Free]

To draw UI mock-up images. Adobe AIR app.

Git

Git client.

For developers, maybe you should get these manually or via Fink or MacPort. Maybe much more tools you should get.

• MySQL
• lftp
• wget
• And any other tools you need…

Fortunately many developer’s tools are already installed on your Mac. If you can’t find these, you have to install by yourself from install discs.

• gcc
• Java
• Perl
• Ruby
• PHP
• Python
• Apache
• Ruby on Rails
• Ant
• Maven
• Subversion
• ssh-agent
• screen
• zsh

ETC

DropBox

Online storage to share files.

DropSend

Send large files with this.

Google Earth

If you like it :)

Adobe AIR

Runtime for some rich internet applications.

Noise

Plays “Pink Noise” to shut out distracting sounds around you.

Added at September 17th, 2009

KeyRemap4MacBook

Change key bindings like Emacs.

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Tags: apple, mac, techtips
This entry was posted on September 16th, 2009 at 2:36 pm and is filed under techtips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.