Cool Mac OS X software

This is a collection of some of the coolest (and hard-to-find) Macintosh OS X software that I have found. Most of it is shareware or free; the culture of the Mac seems to be to pay a small token amount of $10 to $25 for software that you really like, and in the four months that I've owned a Mac, it's really worth it. For $15 you get *much* higher quality software on the Mac than you'd ever find for equivallent $15 Windows shareware. Or GNU Public License freeware, in some cases. I like the Mac interface. It's encouraging to see developers really take advantage of it. Plus I feel compelled to support Apple software developers because Apple has such a tiny marketshare, yet their computers are incredible, cool, fun and friendly and easy to use. The Unix undercore for BSD Unix people like me is an unbelievable bonus, as I can mirror my server/development environment on my laptop at will. That means Apache/MySQL/PHP/Python/X-Windows, Bash scripts and Perl that turn ON/OFF in less than five seconds (when I fold down the screen). Anyway, the developers of these OS X gooey(GUI) programs need your support, they make cool stuff too.

PhotoGrid

PhotoGrid is the fastest image viewer for the Mac, bar none. It is most similar to ACDsee Classic on the Windows platform, but fortunately it's much less expensive than that. Basically, you point it at a directory with a few thousand images and it creates thumbnails for you extremely quickly, which you can browse in full-size. There is a great slideshow feature as well, and it can manage, copy, and delete files. Costs only $15. The second Mac program I'd purchased.

jEdit

jEdit is the coolest free editor I've ever come across. It is a GNU open-sourced JAVA application that runs on practically everything. In my opinion, it beats BBEdit on the Mac hands-down (and plus, it's free! BBEdit costs nearly $200). jEdit is a programmer's editor for almost any language, it is skinnable and there are many different styles of colors to display your code syntax. It supports sftp to remote Unix servers through a simple plugin, and it has a very extensive set of other third-party plugins to allow you to do just about anything. Plus, because it's Java it will run on Windows too. On a 12" Powerbook G4 (867) with 640Mbytes of memory it runs very fast and you would never know it's Java. Free software that kicks ass.

Acquisition

Acquisition for Apple's OS X is a peer-to-peer file sharing program like Kazaa, but with a very refined interface just for Macintosh. It's an excellent implementatition of file sharing, it interacts with other file sharing networks, and downloaded music can automatically be imported into iTunes upon completion. It's only $15 for the environment. Haven't bought it yet but maybe soon. Uses a lot of CPU resources.

Mighty Mouse

Mighty Mouse offers enhancements to your mouse pointer in OS X. I use a semi-transparent, lime green triangle as my pointer... and it's possible to scale the pointer larger or smaller as desired, as well. It adds character to my Mac, and it's only $10. It's the first shareware application that I purchased for my Mac.

RadioLover

RadioLover is the Mac OS X version of the popular Streamripper application for Windows and Linux. It allows you to rip streams of MP3 music, such as those available in iTunes and Shoutcast, and store the individual songs on your computer. It interfaces directly with iTunes, very cool. Too bad they couldn't come up with a better name, like iRadio or something. Anyway, it's only $15 and it's worth it for the interface alone.

Firefox browser

Firefox is an excellent web browser for Windows and Linux computers, and it's highly recommended for the Apple Macintosh running OS X as well. I still prefer Safari as my main browser, because it's cooler, but Firefox is updated more frequently, it's more standards-compliant, and there are an extensive set of third-party extensions and themes (skins) that make it an excellent choice for web developers and power users. It has tabbed browsing, of course, as well as optional things like mouse gestures, web developer extensions, and much more. Firefox runs on almost anything, from Windows to Mac to Linux and the BSDs. Free under the GNU public license.

other stuff

In addition to the above, I also enjoy using several commercial programs for the Mac, such as Microsoft Office for OS X which is still a must-have application suite, and then the entire Macromedia Studio MX design suite, another must-have for all kinds of developers. And I appreciate the many built-in applications that come standard with Apple's OS X. Especially iTunes, iPhoto, the DVD player, iMovie, and one day I'll play around with GarageBand to mix and make psychadelic trance music for the beaches of Goa, India.