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Must Have Programs for New Macbook Pro owners?

Colloquy awesome irc client for mac only (free)
iPhone Explorer great for storing files on your iPhone/iPad/iDevice (free)
iWork Hands down beats Microsoft Office (paid)
Coconut Battery great tool to check battery quality (free)
Cyberduck fantastic ftp client (free)
Coda simply the most amazing html editor for mac only (paid)
Jdownloader internet download manager (free)
Skitch nice little screenshot sharing program. (free)
Bettersnaptool expands on the windows 7 snapping feature and makes it better (paid mac appstore)
Unarchiver wipes the floor with every other unrarer/unzipper available for mac (free)
Caffeine neat little menu icon that stops your mac from sleeping (free)


Just a few off the top of my head, not sure if any of them have been mentioned yet.
 
Caffeine - Prevents screensaver and sleep at the click of a button. I use it almost constantly. (Free)

Size Up - An alternative to the other snapping programmes for positioning windows. (Paid)

Filezilla - My preference for FTP transfers. (Free)

Perian - Allows you to play more video formats. (Free)

Flip4Mac - WMVs (Free or Paid)

Growl - Notification system. (Free)

Team Viewer - Remotely controll another machine running Team Viewer, great for supporting my parents on their computer. (Free)
 
satkin2 said:
Caffeine - Prevents screensaver and sleep at the click of a button. I use it almost constantly. (Free)
Click to expand...
Can I ask why you like to force your computer from sleeping? I see Caffeine recommended a lot around here and I can't think of any case where I would like to keep a laptop from sleeping.
Team Viewer - Remotely controll another machine running Team Viewer, great for supporting my parents on their computer. (Free)
Click to expand...

Awesome suggestion! I haven't seen this before, but on the website (perhaps I'm looking at the wrong software) it looks like it's very expensive, not free. Am I looking at the wrong site. This software sounds really cool and I would like to play around with it.
 
TuffLuffJimmy said:
Can I ask why you like to force your computer from sleeping? I see Caffeine recommended a lot around here and I can't think of any case where I would like to keep a laptop from sleeping.
Click to expand...

I used to use it when I have the screen dim automatically after not touching it. So when I would watch a movie, the screen would dim and I'd have to touch the trackpad. Well, by turning on caffeine, the screen would stay bright/lit when I watched flicks.

Also, although I'm not sure if caffeine does this, but a case where you would want to prevent your laptop from sleeping is when you have it connected to an external display + keyboard/mouse and want to use the laptop but with the lid closed.
 
TuffLuffJimmy said:
Can I ask why you like to force your computer from sleeping? I see Caffeine recommended a lot around here and I can't think of any case where I would like to keep a laptop from sleeping.


Awesome suggestion! I haven't seen this before, but on the website (perhaps I'm looking at the wrong software) it looks like it's very expensive, not free. Am I looking at the wrong site. This software sounds really cool and I would like to play around with it.
Click to expand...

I can't access the site as I'm at work, but it's from http://www.teamviewer.com there is a free version that works perfectly well for me. I'm on Mac and my parents Windows 7. You can also get an iPhone app, but I haven't tried it yet, not sure it would work well without wifi. There may be a paid version but in terms of just controlling and viewing a remote machine the free verison has worked for me. I'd tried Log Me In before this, which also had a free version, but it didn't work as reliably for me.

As for Caffeine, watching videos online, ie BBC iPlayer, the screensaver would come on or the screen dim after a short time, I don't want to go into my system preferences to change the settings, I just click on the Coffee mug and it won't happen.
 
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iPhone1 said:
BetterTouchTool - enables Windows 7 like snapping and allows you to increase the tracking speed on your trackpad.

MagicPrefs - allows you to customize the actions and gestures of your trackpad.

Both applications are FREE!
Click to expand...


BetterTouchTool is now upgraded to BetterSnapTool and is $1.99 in the app store
 
These are the apps that I consider indispensable.

Quicksilver
Omniweb
Dropbox
Notify
iStat Menus
1Password
CoRD
 
Locodice said:
iWork Hands down beats Microsoft Office (paid)
Click to expand...

Yeah, if all you need to do is type up a pretty grocery list.

I must be the only oddball here. Other the MS-Office (which trounces iWork in the compatibility dept.) along with some other high priced "specialty" apps, I find most everything that came with OSX/iLife is enough for me. Apple apps are so integrated into the OS I really try to use 'em before looking elsewhere. Plus they update themselves. :)
 
superfula said:
Quicksilver
Click to expand...
I used to love Quicksilver. It was a godsend for quick actions and its pure keyboard input made it a godsend for shortcut junkies. However, its lack of recent development and quirks, bugs, and incompatible plugins in Snow Leopard have made it a lot less useful for me. Now I'm just using Spotlight (although rarely) and Terminal. I still can't do a lot of things I loved in Quicksilver, like appending text to the end of documents easily, but I've got some pretty effective workflows going without it.

Has anyone heard any new development or useful plugins for Quicksilver recently? Do people still use it for cool tasks or do most people now just use it as an application launcher/spotlight?
 
My personal essential apps list for my Mac:

FireFox: this needs no introduction, simply the best browser to date IMHO due to all the plug-ins.

Evernote: Free until 60MB. I love its integration with iOS. Whenever I come up with an idea or some stuff that I want to remember for later time, I just type, or paste a link onto. All sync'd on the cloud too!

uTorrent: you know.... torrent... :D

TuneUp: Like Shazam on iOS/Android but for iTunes. It's totally worth it as it can check the track info (ID3) of all your mp3s and even find duplicates in your library. I got my lifetime subscription after 5 minutes using it. There's a coupon code if you google up for 15% off I think.

Appcleaner: clean apps mess.

-----------------------------------------------
Firefox Plug-ins that I rate as must have:
Fire Gesture (allows mouse gesture with right key pressed to perform certain tasks such as back, close tab, forward... etc)

Lastpass: truly the last password you need to remember. There was a recent incident where their server might have been compromised, but the company behind lastpass dealt it with high efficiency and came forward as soon as possible, giving me an impression that it's a company that takes its business very seriously. And having all your online passwords saved on the cloud is simply amazing.

Adblock Plus: After this, you will rarely see ads while browsing.

XMarks: Now part of Lastpass. It's perhaps the greatest cross-platform bookmark sync/storage out there with compatibility to IE, FF, Safari... etc. It stores your bookmarks online and allows you to have profiles of bookmarks. So, while maintaining all the links in a single account, you could have all work computers with the same bookmarks, and all personals with other set. The premium version extends its capabilities to iOS, Android, Blackberry... etc. Oh, and there's Opentab sync. So whatever tab you had opened in your desktop would be sync'd to your mobile device. :D
 
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TuffLuffJimmy said:
I used to love Quicksilver. It was a godsend for quick actions and its pure keyboard input made it a godsend for shortcut junkies. However, its lack of recent development and quirks, bugs, and incompatible plugins in Snow Leopard have made it a lot less useful for me. Now I'm just using Spotlight (although rarely) and Terminal. I still can't do a lot of things I loved in Quicksilver, like appending text to the end of documents easily, but I've got some pretty effective workflows going without it.

Has anyone heard any new development or useful plugins for Quicksilver recently? Do people still use it for cool tasks or do most people now just use it as an application launcher/spotlight?
Click to expand...

You're in luck. New devs have updated it and are looking to add features in future builds.
http://qsapp.com/ for updates
http://lovequicksilver.com/ for tips
 
My must haves are:
LimeChat
Adium
Coda
xmarks
drobbox
CloudApp
gfxStatus
iWork
 
Here's the one's I regularly use:

- BetterSnapTool - For easy organization of more than one window on a single Space

- SMC Fan Control - Control fan speeds, easy view of current MBP temperature

- Hand Brake - converting files, ripping, etc.

- VLC Player

- iProcrastinate (app store) - a To-Do list. Each item can have its step-by-step to-do list, as well as specific files attached to them in case it's computer-related work.

- Dimmer Than Dim (app store) - Forgot if it's free, but you can make your screen dimmer than the lowest setting available to you by default

- iAlertU - security app for those that need to step away from MBP for a little bit. uses the isight/motion sensing in case someone moves your laptop, setting off an alarm. Also takes note of wi-fi coordinates (if that's a term) AND takes a photo using the isight instantaneously and e-mails it to you)

- Transmission - for the torrent user

- Dropbox

- Spotify

- Evernote
 
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