Whats your top 10 programs to have on a iMac?

For functionality:
-BetterTouchTool (Free!) best way to add and modify gestures. Also has handy window snapping which I love.
-Quicksilver (Free!) - Hard to figure out at first but works way better than spotlight IMO.
I barely use any available features for either. But both have turned into highly needed all the time.
-Growl now with Hiss added for ML. Makes Notification Center work more seamlessly.
-Chrome - I prefer Safari as my main browser. But some things just don't work right such as Flash.

Any other apps would determine WHY you want a Mac anyway. For me it's photo editing so I'd add Photoshop and Lightroom for my must haves. But that is where apps become very user specific per needs. So when it comes to industry specific app that is too specific for a list such as this and not too helpful for you unless you are looking for that field.

Here's what i'd get.

1.iLife. If your Mac doesn't come bundled with it, i say you get it. It's a great bundle of apps and can prove usefull.
2.iWork. Even my wife started using it instead of ms office a few years ago for everyday work. You should have seen her college classmates when she showed a psentation made in keynote... She was the only Mac user around.
3.MS Office. If you need complete compatibility with documents made on a P(ieceof)C(rap). It works great, i haven't had any hiccups as i have almost everyday on windblows machines.
4.MPlayer OSX Extended and VLC to handle your movies.
5.Messages comes bundled with OSX. It can handle your YM account quite nice. Skype you need to download yourself.
6.MenuMeters is a great way to have important data about the system right on the menubar. You can see cpu usage, ram usage, network usage, and so on.

I guess this would be a minimum of apps i'd have on my Mac. I don't care for other browsers since i have never had problems with Safari. Flash player is a pain in the butt, but there are workarounds for it. I use flashplayer and still will untill it gives me some reason to throw it in the trash.

WARNING! Stay away from the so called "optimization programs" like MacKeeper. It's a piece of crap that does nothing good for you. I'd personally shoot the guys behind it if i had the chance for cheating so many "really stupid" people into buying it. Also try and keep away from antivirus software. There are more chances of you getting Aids from a rusty nail than infecting your Mac. That doesn't mean you gotta be foolish and install every piece of bloatware you can find...

I won't repeat the above

Rather than repeating the above excellent recommendations, as a recent Mac convert (using the rMBP while I wait for my iMac), I'd also add a few:

1. Ultradock - Which brings IMO one of the few useful features across from Win7: Mini previews of open apps as you move along the doc, and being able to jump from the preview of one item into that item (eg open MS Word file) from amongst a few open items of that type.

2. Divvy - A simple way to position and resize windows.

3. Hazel - Great way to set auto destination rules for different document types and rules like auto management for your trash.

4. Clipboard History - Being able to select amongst the last 50'ish of the items you've copied to your clipboard.

5. iStat Menu 3 - Lots of great system information in your menu bar.

6. Living Earth - Just coz it's so damn cool. Okay I find it useful to be able to check time, temp and weather for a couple of locations around the globe.

7. Tab launcher - Because I have too many programs I like to be able to access without opening launchpad.

8. Parallels - Because there are a few Windows programs I need to keep using.

Enjoy the switch. I definitely am.

App's I use are....

iPhoto

Aperture

Snapseed (may get rid now google bought them)

NZBVortex

Handbrake

ConverterPro

iDentify

iTunes

Rowmote

What the "top 10" are going to be depends a lot on what you will be using your Mac for.

1Password for managing passwords and private notes
TextExpander 4 (not from the app store) for increasing productivity
Omnifocus for managing to-do lists (if you are into Getting Things Done approach to productivity)
Fantastical as an enhancement to the built in Calendar
Evernote to manage "reference" material and notes
Day One if you are into journaling
Pixelmator for photo editing
MindNode Pro for mindmapping
Alfred for launching apps & other quick tasks
Reeder for managing & reading rss feeds
MacGourmet for managing recipes
PandoraJam for playing & recording Pandora

TotalFinder - To make the Finder work like it should
BlueHarvest - Life saving process to remove Apple's multitude of hidden files for my NAS boxes
Mac Blu-ray Player - Plays anything I throw at it and a nice non-intrusive ui
Boxer - Greatest DOSBox design ever. GoG.com uses it for their Mac releases
XCode - Main reason I have an iMac.
VMware Fusion - Still need my Windows stuff occasionally. Bootcamp aware too
Virtual ][ and Sweet16 - Apple ][ emulators for me to go back to a simpler time

Here are mine:
Photoshop elements
Premiere elements
Toast
Openoffice
Osirix
Clipboard history
Firefox
Thunderbird

Chrome
Calibre
Flux or Shades (for making the screen a bit less bright. iMac screens are really bright even on lowest setting!)
Spotify
VLC
Transmission
Open Office
Dropbox

CandyBar
TotalSpaces
Google Earth
LionDesigner
Skype
Vuze
Firefox
OpenOffice

Chrome
Adobe suite
Utorrent
Unarchiver
VLC player

Here are my essentials (some free, some paid):

MS Office 2011
Handbrake
OnyX
iLife Suite
Firefox or Chrome as alternative browsers
VLC Player
MPlayer OS X
Steam and some of its games
Adium
Mac DVD Ripper Pro
Unarchiver
Google Earth
Skype
Dropbox
1Password
Sweet 16, a wonderful IIGS emulator
iWork

mine are:

textmate
wget
CS5 Photoshop
VMWare (for Winslows and CorelDraw)
VLC
Blender
MS Office
AirVideoServer
XCode
Transmission

Cinch. Best thing I've ever paid for. It's almost identical to Windows 7's Snap feature.

Apps I use:

SuperDuper!
ClamXav
iWork
iLife
Pixelmator
iDraw
Sketchbook Express
Adobe Creative Suite
Bento
Calibré
iBooks Author
Dropbox
Facetime
TeamViewer
The UnArchiver

Coda v2
Chrome
Divvy
Adobe Creative Cloud
Reeder
Twitter
1Password
Tincta
Dropbox
MS Office 2011

I'm not going to include the standard Apple stuff like iLife, Safari, and iTunes. I'm going to keep my list strictly to add-on programs.

In no particular order, the ones that come to mind:

-VLC
-Handbrake
-MS Office 2008 (I would like to have 2011, but I purchase through the home-
use program and I'm not eligeable for the upgrade yet)
-Firefox (for when Safari doesn't cut it)
-MetaX
-MacTheRipper (Versons 3.X and 4.X)
-DVD2OneX
-DVDImager
-Quicken 2007 with appropriate Lion upgrade
-MPEG Streamclip

[edit]
Should add Carbon Copy Cloner - the donationware one. Since that brings me to 11, probably take off DVDImager as I almost always use DVD2OneX. But I don't even do that much anymore since it is rarer and rarer that I'm going to DVD.

Perian (why has no-one mentioned this?)
Adobe Lightroom
Toast Titanium
Pages (don't use the others - $22 only)
VLC Player
Dropbox
1Password
Evernote
EyeTV (TV Tuner/Recorder)
Turbo.H264 HD (Converter)
Identify

Purchased or Free
iPhoto
EyeTV
Dropbox
Carbon Copy Cloner
Zinio
iWork - Keynote/Pages
Openoffice
Shave (Video Editor)
VLC
X-Plane 10


Included with Mac OS:
Safari
Mail
iTunes
Grab
Messages
Notes
Quicktime
Image Capture
Facetime
Calendar

About virtual machines.

micke1967 said:

Hi Great really good tips...
A detail question...
is Parallells better than VM Ware fusion on handling virtual images?

Can both migrate if I have existing VPC images??(microsoft) or existing VM Ware player images (created on windows)?

Click to expand...

Well, since nobody answered your question about virtual machines, here's my opinion. I have used virtual pc from micro**** quite a lot years ago. But when i discovered vmware, i moved to that. Don't ask me why... I just did. Vmware works like a charm on all my current macs so i haven't had a reason to give Parallels a try. They pretty much do the same thing and they both work fine. I think there is a way you can import older virtual machines into vmware. Not really sure since i never needed to do that. Vmware player images might work, but you might need to do an "update" on the virtual machine on first boot.

Alfred (get with power pack otherwise spotlight is on par)
Hyperdock
Screenflow
MacX Free ripper
Tinkertool
Red Crucible 2
Geektool
Safari
Candybar
Photoshop

Vmware is a good solid program. And yes you van load your virtual images created in Windows in there. However parallels desktop's new version is much faster then vmware

Evernote

Alfred

Sparrow

VLC

Reeder

Dayone

iClip

Handbreak

Popclip

1password