back to article Ten Mac freeware apps for your new Apple baby

One saving grace of buying a shiny new Mac over a PC is certainly the lack of factory-installed bloatware. However, while Mac OS X is far from featureless, many users will find themselves headed straight to the Mac App Store or elsewhere to supplement their experience. Since not everyone wants to wade through endless lists of …

Page:

  1. markowen58

    Karabiner - key remapper

    Karabiner - https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/

    I use it to remap the keys. Although only two, F5 to put the display to sleep when I want and changing the eject button (Largely redundant now) to the 'delete' key. Although that button doesn't have a repeat on it, but it's better than an awkward key combo. There's plenty more available to suit your workflow though.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Karabiner - key remapper

      It can also make the F4 key call up Dashboard instead of Launchpad on newer keyboards which is what I use it for. Well, until 10.11 or 10.12 when in all probability it'll be knocked on the head for something else new and shiny.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Some more: Geektool

    I also like Geektool.

    I have the impression it's no longer actively maintained, but it allows you to run shell scripts and project the output in locations on your screen. I have 3 separate scripts running: one that gives me a calendar, one that gives me the IP addresses for WiFi, LAN, VPN and what that is externally, and one that shows me the top 4 programs in terms of system utilisation (the "top" program with some parameters), but my use is pretty tame by what I have seen some other people do - heaps of scripts around to experiment with.

    Count me in for a +1 for menu meters too, btw.

    As for the recommendations:

    Alfred: looked at it, but couldn't get on with it. Worse, spotlight is now working the same, it lost the austere interface I liked and turned into major screen overload. If you're looking for a local file, you're now quicker using the search in Finder.

    Brackets: a bit late to the party, it's Adobe and it hints at sharing cloudy things. I'll stay with TextWrangler instead.

    CrashPlan: umm, cloudy so not really my thing. It does enable people to at least do some backing up, but my money (literally) is on a paid product Carbon Copy Cloner as it gives me bare metal restore as I can boot up for that backup. Strangely enough, I have managed the same with ChronoSync, but that was because it was a challenge :).

    F.lux: umm, OK, but I tend to get nervous around people that see no problem in advising people to jailbreak their devices without telling them about the security implications (which they do for the iOS version)

    LibreOffice: a must. And a prime reason to question paying for MS Office (the main remaining reason is called Outlook). About the only weird thing I never got rid of was that it opened Draw when I drag an image into a document instead of dropping it into the document I'm working on, which is *very* irritating as I never use Draw (I use Pixelmator and Omnigraffle).

    MplayerX: confusing as there is something that seems similar, but I prefer it over VLC (which isn't bad either, but especially mkv files seem to work better on MplayerX). It just really, really dislikes switching from dual screen to single screen - VLC has no problem with that.

  3. Frankee Llonnygog

    Integrity

    A website link checker

    AudioSwitcher - because I can't be bothered to alt-click the volume icon in the menubar

    SmartReporter - a menubar icon that goes red if your hard disk is failing

    Microsoft One Drive - lots of free space and the app uses less resources than Google Drive or DropBox

    Wunderlist - great for keeping to do lists in sync cross platform

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    FileZilla

    FileZilla is one of those tools that you can't live without if you ever go near a website. It also supports SFTP, so you can upload without worrying about plaintext passwords.

    1. Neil Brown

      Re: FileZilla

      I think I used to use CyberDuck to do much the same. And with a comparably good name too...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: FileZilla

        I've got both installed. I like Cyberduck's approach to webdav as the built-in OSX webdav sucks (although I haven't checked on Yosemite), but I recall that Cyberduck needed some form of payment.

  5. Phuq Witt
    Holmes

    Albert vs. Quicksilver –discuss

    Long-time user of the excellent <a href="http://www.blacktree.com/">Quicksilver</a> here. I keep seeing mentions of this young upstart Albert. From cursory reading, both apps seem pretty similar. Anybody used both and got a comparison?

  6. Dan 55 Silver badge

    Keka - another decompresser.

    Sublime Text 2 - a nice text editor.

    SMART Utility - check the SMART status of external USB drives.

    XMenu - simple Apps menu in the corner.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Some command line stuff..

    exiftool: allows you to work with image EXIF information in great detail.

    Image Magick: a tool that most Linux users are likely to be familiar with for image manipulation.

    I also use nmap, but that's more for specialists :)

  8. I_am_Chris

    libreoffice

    " with almost perfect compatibility with Microsoft Office."

    ha ha ha ha! oh my aching sides. You've never had to try and get impress presentations working in PowerPoint, have you? They look terrible, line wrapping fails and forget any animations. I've spent almost as long fixing presentations as my children have spent making them.

    I desperately tried to make open/neo/libre office work seamlessly with my work colleagues and at home, but there are just too many incompatibilities.

    in my experience it's only good for reading Office documents not writing them. Forget about collaborative working.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: libreoffice

      in my experience it's only good for reading Office documents not writing them for Microsoft Office

      There, FTFY.

      Impress is IMHO the weak spot of LibreOffice, but you must add that especially files in the abomination that is MSOOXML tend to be horribly botched. However, that even happens between different versions of MS Office - a problem that I have as yet to encounter with any version of Libre/OpenOffice.

      We tend to use Keynote: it's extremely efficient to get a good presentation together and it encourages a degree of austerity - plain slides work better.

    2. James O'Shea

      Re: libreoffice

      It's not quite that bad. You can round-trip documents which use only basic (and I mean _basic_) features. Use any features more advanced than, say, borders, and you're begging for trouble. Worse, LibreOffice (andOpenOffice) don't handle fonts the way MS Office does (or, in fact, the way the other free suite does). This means that if you have a long document there _will_ be differences in layout. It doesn't matter if you're just reviewing it, but if you're printing... oy, vey.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: libreoffice

      Also, it wants me to run an old version of Java which I'm not inclined to do. Shame.

  9. JLV

    Clam XAV - (took Sophos out for hogging)

    Tesseract - command line OCR coming from Linux

    Picasa pix mgr (from Google)

    Dash - (freemium) offline IT documentation browser

    Macports - to install more goodies (see also Homebrew)

    LibreOffice

    Not free:

    Sublime Text editor

    Pixelmator

    Affinity Designer - vector graphics

  10. psi101

    Some more

    XLD - accurate CD ripper / burner (free)

    for the PC there is dbpoweramp (not free)

    LTspice - circuit simulator with gui (free, very frequent component lib updates)

    (also for PC)

    Adium - chat/IM client

    iTerm - terminal emulator

  11. pacmantoo
    Paris Hilton

    f.lux on Windys Top 10 freebies list too?

    Just wondering why f.lux only mentioned on the Mac top 10 freebies list but not the windys one? Run it on 7 and love it.

  12. DerekCurrie
    Happy

    ClamXav Does Offer Real-Time Protection...

    ...If you download the free version available from the ClamXav website (linked in the article). Only the Apple App Store version does not have real-time protection.

    The feature is called 'Sentry' and is available via the ClamXav Preferences. You can add any folder to the Sentry monitoring list. You an have Sentry scan any disk as it is connected to your Mac. You can have Sentry automatically start when you log into your Mac. It can detect and quarantine infected files. I use Sentry to automatically scan any file that arrives into my Downloads folder.

    ClamXav can also be set to automatically scan your email content for both malware and phishing attempts.

  13. alama

    Microsoft Office on Mac

    I think I might question the claim that "Microsoft Office is the bane of a Mac users existence" in the article. Actually I think that Office 2011 is an excellent software suite on Mac and actually superior to Office 2010 on Windows (haven't used Office 2013 on Win yet so can't comment). Office 2011 on Mac has every feature that Office 2010 on Windows offers *plus menus and toolbars*. No Ribbon! (well there is one, but you can collapse it and just use menus and toolbars instead if you want.) I think Microsoft is not allowed by Apple to do away with menus on Mac because they are so fundamental to the design of OS X. I hope MS doesn't delete menus and toolbars in Office 2015 for Mac.

  14. stu 4
    Go

    here's my pick:

    RSS Menu

    Carbon Cloner

    CCleaner

    XtraFinder

    Find Any File

    gfxCardStatus

    QuickRes (easy access to retina resolutions)

    Grand Perspective

    Handbrake

    Progress Downloader

    XBMC

  15. Nigel Whitfield.

    Although not free after the trial ...

    Two add-ons for Mail that I find invaluable are LetterOpener Pro, which decodes pesky winmail.dat files, and MailHub, which learns where you're likely to want to file messages, and suggests the correct folder. Makes it much easier to keep on top of things. $30 for the former and $20 for the latter. Well worth it in the amount of time saved.

    Free stuff:

    For fan control I use smcFanControl, though I am still on Snow Leopard and a 2008 MacBook Pro.

    PeakHour is useful for keeping an eye on the throughput on the network via SNMP

    For database fettling, I use a MySQL client called Sequel Pro

    For checking wireless stuff, and what's being advertised via Bonjour, iStumbler

    LastPass (I have the premium version, to sync with the Android phone, and allow Yubikey auth)

    Dolphin plugin for Firefox, makes it easy to push tabs from the tablet or phone to/from the Mac

    I second the votes for Graphic Converter too; got me out of many a tight spot. Also adds some useful options to the right click menu in the Finder, like 'Set file date to EXIF date'

Page:

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like