in Roundups
11 Applications for the new Mac owner
Did you get a new Mac for Christmas? Perhaps it was your first Mac too? Even if you didn’t get a new Mac, here is a list of eleven applications you should have on your Mac that might make your life easier, or just more fun!
As usual, some a free and some are paid but most in this list are free or have free versions!
Adium
Adium is one of the best chat clients for the Mac. It supports all of the major protocols like MSN, Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo and more. It has a highly customizable interface with many skins available for a free download on the Adium website. The app itself is free.
NetNewsWire
If you read RSS feeds and subscribe to them, check out NetNewsWire. Its latest upgrade now supports syncing with Google Reader so that you always have access to your feeds and can read them where ever you are (including syncing between iPhone and Mac automatically). The application is free with ads or available in an ad-free version.
Things
My favorite to-do management application is Things from Cultured Code. Available for both the Mac and the iPhone, it helps keep your to-do list managed and make sure you do what you need to do. It features a great interface with advanced organization features for your items, all to keep you going in your day-to-day life.
Things is available for purchase at $49.95 from Cultured Code.
iWork
Apple’s own office suite is called iWork and includes the absolute best presentation software there is, Keynote. Other than Keynote, it also includes their word processor, Pages and spreadsheet application, Numbers. All of them are easy to use and come with a wide range of beautiful templates to get your writing/calculation projects started with style. The suite is available from Apple for $79.
SuperDuper!
You do need to back up your Mac and together with Time Machine which does incremental backups, I always recommend that you clone the entire drive to a backup drive, in case of a failure. This means you can just pop in the other drive and just keep going, with minimal loss, should anything happen.
SuperDuper! does this and is available for purchase for $27.95.
Evernote
Keeping notes together can be a daunting task. Evernote helps you organize and manage notes that you save or jot down. It syncs with their online service so that you have access to the notes where ever you are. This also means that you can get their clients for cellphones (including the iPhone) that will sync right up with Evernote and all your notes. The service is available for free with limits.
SpamSieve
Sadly, all of us get a lot of spam every day. To prevent it from reaching and cluttering up your inbox, you can use a spam filtering system, like SpamSieve. It installs on your computer and upon installation, you teach it which messages are good and which are bad. It will then filter them.
SpamSieve is available from C-Command for $30.
Handbrake
If you are like me, you have got quite a few DVDs laying around at home. If you are more like me, you too want to get these into say your iTunes library, or onto your computer for viewing. This is easily done by Handbrake, an app that rips pretty much any DVD to your drive.
Handbrake is available from their project website for free.
Tweetie
Twitter has become a huge success over the past years. At the same time, using Twitter from its web interface has become less and less popular, in favor of applications like Tweetie for Mac. Tweetie is my absolute favorite Twitter client with a very good-looking interface and powerful features.
It is available from Atebits either as a free, ad supported version or a paid, ad-free version for $19.95.
Parallels Desktop
It has been said that the Mac is also the best PC. Fact of the matter is that you can run Windows (or any other OS) with great results on the Mac. If you don’t want to use BootCamp, you can install Parallels and virtually run Windows side-by-side with Mac. You can also boot into your BootCamp partition this way if you want. Very neat indeed!
Parallels Desktop is available from Parallels for $79.99.
Skype
Skype is a very popular service for making free voice and video calls around the world to other Skype users. If you know anyone that has Skype, you can enjoy talking for free by just downloading the official Skype client on their website. It is fully free for Skype to Skype calls!
About Erik Bernskiold
Erik is the owner of the Bernskiold Media Group and is a Web Designer, Photographer and Software-Trainer. He is interested in all aspects of graphic design and media production as well as gadgets and technology.
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Good list Erik. Here’s mine in no order of importance
1. iWork – does a lot of things good enough
2. Evernote/Dropbox – handles $80 of your cloud needs
3. MobileMe – If you have two + device and one being portable a must have IMO
4. Carbon Copy Cloner- Donationware that works.
5. Adium – IM needs adeptly covered
6. Pixelmator – you can stop the obsessing about Photoshop now.
7. 1Password – I wouldn’t compute without it.
8. NetNewsWire – Other than straight Google Reader there’s none better.
9. Yep or Leap – Document management, tagging and file browsing
10. Dropzone – a nifty and extensible utility that lets you drag n drop to services/folders
11. Transmission – stable bittorrent client.
Thanks for your list. I cannot believe that I left out 1Password from this list! I just overlooked it while writing the article. It is indeed indispensable!
There are a few apps you mention that I haven’t heard of, which I will definitely check out!