Top Mac OSX Utilities

Call me old-fashioned but I'm a keyboard fan. I want quick access to stuff without having to use the mouse - in particular I want to run any application quickly and easily.

I use LaunchBar, a shareware utility from Objective Development. At its simplest it's just a fast application launcher - it indexes your Apps and then when you press the hotkey and type "itun" it'll probably guess you want to run iTunes. And the more you use it, the smarter it gets.

For advanced users you can set up your own abbreviations for apps, launch files as well as programs, use it as a calculator, etc. Even when compared with the improved Leopard Spotlight LaunchBar remains a must have for me.

You can find out more and download a trial version at:
http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html

Although Leopard improves the raw Apple Finder, I still don't like it. One of the nice things about OSX is that's it's easy enough to replace the system default desktop with another one.

PathFinder from CocoaTech provides a whole host of features for power users and a more pleasant desktop experience.

This is a power user app. The learning curve is quite steep. It might not be worth the effort for the average user - but for me it's a great productivity tool.

Download a demo from:
http://www.cocoatech.com/pf4/

Apple Mail has its own spam detection facility. It's not bad, but it's not great.

Spamsieve is great. It's simply the most effective spam detection utility I've ever used. It integrates well with Apple Mail (and also apparently with other mail systems). It takes a little while to train it but once you do its accuracy is stunning.

SpamSeive won't eliminate the spam problem, nothing seems able to stop the torrent, but it should help you to tame it.

http://c-command.com/spamsieve/

Sticky notes sound like a great idea but never quite satisfy me. I need to be able to quickly make, search and save notes without fiddling with the mouse or cluttering up my screen. Notational Velocity from Zachary Schneirov isn't a stickies program yet gives me just those capabilities.

Notational Velocity is a simple, lightweight note taking program. Each note has a single line title and an open text area (no formatting, this is for note taking not word processing). To search for a note, just start styping. To add a note, just start typing.

The whole thing can be keyboard driven, making it extremely efficient. You can even assign a hotkey to bring it to the foreground.

Notational Velocity home page

With Leopard comes the Time Machine, so backing up is easier. But only if you've got a spare drive of sufficient capacity. Even then, what happens if the house burns down?

If your data is valuable then you really need offsite backup as well. Not for everything, just for what really matters.

I use CrashPlan. It sits in the background and automatically backs up your work over the net (encrypted). You can either back up to CrashPlan Central (for a small fee) or to a friend's computer. And it's compatible with Windows and Linux as well.

There are two versions you can buy, personally I think it's worth paying the extra for the Pro which provides real-time backup and file versioning.

You can download a free trial from:
http://www.crashplan.com/index.vtl

I love art and photography, so for me some sort of slideshow software is a must. If I'm not using the Mac I'll often leave it running a slide show of my favourite photos or artwork. I suppose that makes my Mac a classy digital picture frame!

There are loads of ways of doing this, even the built in screen saver itself. I use Slide Freebie. It's simple, it's lightweight, it has the features I need. And, in true OSX style, it just works.

http://www.artlythere.com/slidefreebie.shtml