The Best Applications for Mac OS X

1. 1Password THE Mac password manager. Whenever you sign up, or login into an account online, 1Password will ask you to save that login and password. Now, whenever you go to sign up again, click the 1P button in your browser and select that login. 1Password Integrates with all major browsers. It also features Banking information, as well as a strong password generator.



2. Candybar The best icon changer and manager. Lets you safely change every icon on your Mac. Including the dock.



3. Things A beautiful task manager from Cultured Code. Lets you split record you tasks, and then choose which ones you wish to accomplish that day via the Today list. Also has an iPhone app with syncing.



4. Tweetie Twitter is hot. More and more people are joining the Twitter, it is becoming necessary. Tweetie is the best way to use Twitter on your desktop. Has a gorgeous design. It has threaded conversations, URL shortening, picture uploading, and search.



5. VoodooPad A sort of notepad/sketchpad/personal wiki/outliner. Very hard to describe, but
helps you stay organized in one document. Try it out, i promise you will love it.

1. TimeBoxed A sleek Mac-like timer. Very simple, but integrates with Growl, and has many different notification options for when time is up.



2. WriteRoom A full screen distraction free text editor. You have complete control over the colors of the text and background.



3. OmniFocus A true GTD (Getting Things Done) application from the OmniGroup. Sports contexts and pro
jects. Also has an iPhone app. This is for the serious productivity nut.

1. Coda An all in one web development tool from Panic. Features a built in FTP client, reference book, editor, and terminal. Also has that warm and comfy Mac feel we all know and love.



2. Transmit Also from Panic. THE FTP client for Mac. It has synchronization, an easy to use interface, dashboard widget, and droplets. Oh yeah, it has a slick icon.



3. CSSEDit The best CSS editor around. A visual editor, along with a live preview tool. Using X-ray mode, you can dissect other websites's CSS for yourself.
   
   
4. TextMate The go to editor for any developer, not just web. Has tons of language support, as well as theming and plugins. Also has code bookmarking.



5. Espresso Espresso is new to the scene. From the makers of the go-to CSS editor, CSSEdit. It is still young, and just hit version 1.0. But it shows a lot of promise. Keep an eye on this one.

1. MarsEdit One of the best blog editors for the Mac. Compatible with many different blogging systems, WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, for example. Allows you to have custom markups, perfect for custom CSS styles. It also has a neat tool for adding Technorati tags.



2. BlogAssist A nice HTML markup tool that sits in your menubar. Whenever you need to mark something up, you highlight the text, click the button in the menu bar, and select the type of markup you want. Its as simple as that. Comes built in with tons of markups, like Technorati and links.



3. Blogo Another blogging editor, but his one has a more radical UI. Featuring big, chunky buttons. Do not be turned off, Blogo has some backbone. It has HTML editing, full screen mode, pinging, and Twitter built in.

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networking sites. If you haven't yet joined in, you should. Twitter is a great way to connect with other people, share links, and get popular opinions. If you are just joining Twitter, consider following me @Macafarian. Due to Twitter's massive growth, countless online services and desktop clients have arouse.

1. Tweetie Although I mentioned it above, I have to again. It is really that great.



2. Nambu A more traditional Twitter client. Nambu Fits into the iLife design style, you know iTunes iPhoto, iCal.



3. TweetDeck The main appeal of TweetDeck is the group filtering. This allows you to catch all the tweets that you don't want to hear and keep a purified timeline for your pleasure. Of course you can still see them in the overall timeline.



4. Beak Still in development, but looks promising. It has a early preview version available to download. One thing that sets beak apart is its stat integration. Beak lets you see how many people are clicking on the links you tweet.



5. Twitterific A Twitter client by the IconFactory. A simple client. You can't look at a profile, you can't follow or unfollow a user, and it lacks URL shortening and picture uploading. Free, but with ads every hour; No ads for $15.

1. Pages Word Processing, the Apple way. Features full screen mode, doubles as a page layout tool, comes bundled with numerous templates, and built in outliner. Available as part of the iWork Suite.



2. Microsoft Word Microsoft Word, I'm sure this is the what popped into your mind as soon as you read word processors. Works well, gets the job done nicely.



3. Bean Bean is a small rich text editor. It is designed to be a quick way to write, not to replace Word or Pages. Free and easy to use.


4. Mariner Write is another small and lean wordprocessor. The feature balance is perfect, not too many, not too few.

1. Safari Browse the web, Apple's way. Recently, the 4th version was released. Safari 4 is currently the fastest browser available with its nitro engine.



2. Firefox A favorite of many, mainly due to its extensive array of plug ins. These range from social site extensions (Stumble Upon, Digg, Squidoo) to skins that give Firefox some personality. FireFox is an open source project, meaning anyone can contribute.



3. Camino Basically FireFox rebuilt to meet the Mac philosophy. Integrates much more smoothly into to Mac OS X than FireFox, but not as many plug ins. Open Source.



4. Opera Opera has a few features that help it stand out. One of these is speed dial. Basically, you save sites to various slots. When you wish to access it, you click on it and you are taken to the site. Another is synchronization. Opera can sync everything you have tweaked about it to an online server. When you go to another computer, you have access to all you preferences.



5. iCab A shareware browser (meaning you have to pay for it.) The feature that caused iCab to stand out was its ad blocking ability. You can tweak its filters, if it blocks something you want to see, you can have iCab always show it in the future. iCab costs $20

1. Transmit The best FTP client around. Features everything you could want, Amazon S3 support, synchronization, easy file editing, and more. All this goodness has to come with a price, a steep one. Transmit runs for $30.


2. CyberDucky Free and open source. Richly featured, and is comparable to Transmit.


3. Forklift A different spin on FTP, using the iLife design.
   
   All of these FTP clients are very advanced, each very similar in features. Which application you use mostly depends on which interace you like the most and are comfortable with.
   
   

1. Mailplane Gmail on your desktop! Mailplane is a email application that lets you use all the features of the web gmail, but on your desktop. Integrated smoothly into OS X. See my lens on Mailplane.



2. ThunderBird Email, the Mozilla way. From the makers of Firefox comes ThunderBird. Following the path of Firefox, it has add-ons to make your email experience better. If you like Firefox, and you like open-source goodness, you'll love this application.



3. PostBox From the original creators of Thunderbird. Has threaded conversations, like Gmail. Also has filtering by topic, inbox searching, and tabbed email browsing.

1. World Of Goo World Of Goo is a crazy, physics based game for the Mac. You control various types of goo balls, which you use to build structures. These structures carry other goo balls to the destination. Worth every dollar.



2. Multiwinia A strange, Tron-like RTS (Real Time Strategy) game. You control little men, who fight to complete an objective. Whether that be obliterating the opponent, defending a base, or capturing a flag. Strangely fun and addictive.



3. Assault Cube An open-source first person shooter. Available on Windows, Mac, and Linux.



4. Quinn Quinn is a free, Tetris-like game for Mac. It has online play, a nice highscore system, and very customizable controls.

1. Adium Adium is one of the most popular IM clients around, and with good reason. Adium supports 18 different services, all integrated into one contact menu. These include mainstream services, AIM, to Facebook chat, to Yahoo! Japan. Almost every aspect of Adium is customizable. From the contact menu, to the chat bubbles, to the dock icon.



2. iChat I have to mention it. iChat comes bundled in with Mac OS X. The main draw of iChat is its voice and video chat support and its excellent video conferencing features.



3. MSN The official MSN IM client for Mac.



4. AIM AIM, the erhh... AIM way.



5. Skype Skype is a great service, with computer to computer voice, international calls, and more. With a cost of course.