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.