Some OS X Applications and Utilities

Leon just joined the Jaguar set, so here’s a list of handy stuff he, and you, might want to down­load and install. In no par­tic­u­lar order:

1. BBEdit - obvi­ously. You need this.
2. Net­NewsWire - the head­line reader/weblog editor of choice
3. Trans­mit - best FTP client I’ve come across
4. Launch­Bar - light­ning quick files/applications/URLs launcher thingy. Effec­tively allows you to set custom com­mand keys for every­thing on your com­puter on the fly
5. Silk - enables Quartz ren­der­ing in Carbon apps (ie, makes things prettier)
6. Audio HiJack - record audio from any appli­ca­tion. Handy for record­ing streams from online radio stations
7. Search Google Ser­vice - allows you to search Google for high­lighted text in pretty much any applictaion
8. DragTh­ing - too ugly for my liking, but the mul­ti­ple Dock func­tion­al­ity can be handy
9. Menu­Me­ters - a set of mon­i­tor­ing tools for net­work activ­ity, memory use, etc.
10. CroniX - an Aqua fron­tend for cron (in Eng­lish: lets you sched­ule tasks with­out get­ting Unix under your fingernails)
11. LiteSwitch X - I nearly forgot this one, which is a sign of its bril­liance: it’s a key­board appli­ca­tion switcher, and should be part of the OS itself.
12. Ittec - a con­tex­tual menu plugin that… does a bunch of cool stuff. As with LiteSwitch X, I’d almost for­got­ten that it’s not part of the OS
13. SafariNo­Time­out - does what it says on the tin. Very handy.

Right, that should get you started Len! There are, of course, about a mil­lion and one other things I could men­tion, so I might add a few more later. I’d also sug­gest sub­scrib­ing to MacUpdate’s RSS feed to keep tabs on all the use­less crap/exciting new tools out there, as well as Apple’s own down­loads feed. If I’ve missed any­thing essen­tial, do add a comment.

Posted at 3pm on 07/05/03 by Jack Mottram to the mac category.
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