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The Apps on my top list includes:

Adium

AppZapper ($)

Aurora

CronniX

EasyFind

Monolingual

Quicksilver

Skype

Vienna

VirtueDesktops

Did I mention most of them are actually FREE? Well, I did donated money to some of the developers.

Paid software that I love includes:

OmniOutliner Profession

SuperDuper!

Unison

Microsoft Office 2004 (though it's still not Universal yet.)

Parallels

  • 2 months later...

Here is my top ten...

1) Quicksilver (...best...app...launcher...ever)

2) BBEdit 8.5 (...the definitive text editor, seriously)

3) NetNewsWire (...makes it effortless to read 100+ feeds)

4) Firefox 2 (...I can't stand Safari, love me some extensions)

5) Wallet 2 (...holds all my CCs and passwords with encryption)

6) Office 2004 (...Microsoft Word and Excel, it's the standard)

7) iTunes 7 (...I listen to quite a few podcasts, and of course music)

8) Adobe Acrobat 8 (...I'm a PDF junkie, and this is always open)

9) Photoshop CS3 Beta (...it's Photoshop, native for Intel...woot)

10) Minuteur (...a must have when you need to keep focused)

And other programs I use daily: Aperture, Pathway, InDesign, Songbird, Colloquy, Adium X, smcFancontrol, PocketMac (for the BlackBerry), Audio Hijack Pro, FileMaker, Flip4Mac, ecto, Transmit, Xtorrent, VLC, The Unarchiver...etc.

  • 1 month later...

My 3rd party top 10:

1. Quicksilver (the only thing I miss is a HUD panel-style primer window, that would be amazing)

2. Microsoft Messenger

3. Toast 8 Titanium

4. Transmit

5. Unison

5. Xtorrent

6. Acquisition

7. NewsFire (it's brushed interface could need an update, but a great RSS viewer nonetheless)

8. AppZapper

9. iClip

10. CandyBar

I saw this meme hit blogs recently and thought it would be interesting to see what Mac users here consider their 10 indespensible apps. Forget the Microsoft Office or any of the applications that are bundled with an Apple. Instead, focus on small freeware and shareware applications. I have also been wanting to update the Essential OS X Apps thread, so this will help do that.

Try to keep the list to 10 or less. Here are mine, in no particular order.

Quicksilver - with QS and Spotlight, I rarely use the dock anymore.

VLC - all-world video player

Sidenote - multi-document drawer that hides in the side of your screen. Great for making or accessing notes quickly.

Witch - command-tab on roids

Tinkertool - It doesn't slice bread, but it can do just about anything else

OmniWeb - yeah a little slower, but unmatched for features

skEdit - tried a few text editors and stuck with this one

Seashore - a nice, light image editor based on Gimp

Salling Clicker - almost a necessity if you have a bluetooth-capable phone

CandyBar - I HATE the folder icons in OS X.

Thanks for pointing me to TinkerTool! This is such a useful app! It's incredible how much stuff you can actually customize in OS X, but Apple chooses to hide from the user. I never even knew it was possible to shut down the Finder when it's not in use.

My 3rd party top 10:

1. Quicksilver (the only thing I miss is a HUD panel-style primer window, that would be amazing)

Quicksilver is also now my No.1 app.

I'm doing so much with it now I've gone mad setting up triggers for everything (Tagging files, switching from a page in Safari to Firefox (if it won't behave correctly in Safari), opening plain text links in Safari, copying files to a network drive, executing Automator workflows, clipboard manager, searching Google, Google images, Demonoid, snippet store... & on & on :wacko: )

What do you mean by a 'HUD panel-style primer window'? Sounds interesting.

Edited by FOOOD
Quicksilver is also now my No.1 app.

I'm doing so much with it now I've gone mad setting up triggers for everything (Tagging files, switching from a page in Safari to Firefox (if it won't behave correctly in Safari), opening plain text links in Safari, copying files to a network drive, executing Automator workflows, clipboard manager, searching Google, Google images, Demonoid, snippet store... & on & on :wacko: )

What do you mean by a 'HUD panel-style primer window'? Sounds interesting.

So far I've only been using Quicksilver to launch my applications. :p

HUD panels are the black transparent utility windows used by iPhoto, Pages etc. I'd love to see a primer window in the same style instead of the Unified one we have right now. I used the bezel and cube interfaces for a while but I don't really like their layout.

Ah, I know what you mean now. From the Pro apps. I was thinking the exact same thing this week :rolleyes:

It'd be great if someone could make it. I might hava go at a mockup & see if I can drum up some interest in it.

That would be sweet. Down part is that it isn't just a matter of replacing some .tiff files, it actually has to be hardcoded into the .nib files.

Yea, it'd be easy enough to make the images, but I'd need to get someone else interested in it to code/implement the images :blush:

I'm not sure how much interest there'd be in it? There's already an interface being worked on called Fumo that's a little like the Pro apps looks.

Forum thread

Mockups

It's not the same as the Pro app look, but I wonder if it would be different enough to Fumo to get someone else prepared to help? :huh:

I keep switching between Primer & Bezel. The only thing I don't like about Primer are that the options stick out of the right hand side. I prefer them to display at the bottom like they do with Bezel.

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