Recommended Software for Mac

A good friend of mine, who just bought an iMac, asked what Mac software I use regularly and recommend. Instead of emailing a reply to him, I decided to post my list of recommended software here for all to see.

<ul>
<li>VMware Fusion - Although I spend less time in Windows these days, I still have to use it for various development projects. So when I need to use Windows, I rely on VMware Fusion, which allows me to run an instance of Windows from within OS X.</li>
<li>Mail.app - This is the email program that comes with OS X. I use it to manage all my emails.</li>
<li>iCal - This also comes with OS X and I use it daily.</li>
<li>Spanning Sync - I used this gem to synch my iCal calendars to Google calendars. I currently synch 5 different calendars, a birthday calendar that I share with my wife, my personal calendar, my wife’s calendar, a calendar for trips, and my work calendar.</li>
<li>YAI (You Are Invited) - This is a Mail.app plug-in that translates and transfers calendar invites from Outlook, Google, and others to iCal.</li>
<li>Address Book - Another piece of software that comes with OS X.</li>
<li>TextMate - Damn fine text editor.</li>
<li>Evernote - For tracking various notes.</li>
<li>Open Office - For word processing, spreadsheet, etc. I’m using the beta for version 3.0, which support the Aqua interface and does not require X11.</li>
<li>Adium - My IM client of choice. Adium supports different IM services including Messenger, Yahoo!, AIM, and Google Talk.</li>
<li>iPhoto - From the iLife suite. I store all my photos in iPhoto libraries.</li>
<li>Aperture - While I store all my master images in iPhoto, I do all my editing, rating, etc in Aperture.</li>
<li>iMoive - From the iLife suite. iMovie makes publishing to YouTube a snap.</li>
<li>iDVD - From the iLife suite. Easy way to record movies for family members who can’t view my movies online.</li>
<li>GarageBand - From the iLife suite. I don’t use this much. Typically I only use it to lay down background sound tracks to movies I create.</li>
<li>VLC - For view various media files.</li>
<li>Unison - For reading newsgroups.</li>
<li>NetNewsWire - For reading RSS feeds.</li>
<li>SuperDuper! - For making back ups of my MBP.</li>
<li>Skitch - For capturing screen shots and sharing images with others.</li>
<li>FireFox - Safari is nice, but I prefer FireFox. I use it the majority of the time, and Safari only once in a while.</li>
<li>CoRD - Enables me to remote desktop into my various Windows servers.</li>
</ul>That’s my list of Mac software that I use regularly.

Posted in personal. Tagged in os x.

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