What programs and apps do you use?

What are some programs you use that you feel are necessary? What do they do? Why are they necessary?

I use smcFanControl, gfxCardStatus, and iStat. smcFanControl obviously lets you control your fan speed. gfxCardStatus lets you choose your graphic card or use the default dynamic switching. iStat is of course the famous widget that basically tells you everything you need to know about whats going on inside. I feel all of these are necessary for me to have complete control of my Macbook Pro.

 

Terminal

...lets you do everything.

 

GeekTool to customize my Mac desktop with the date, time, weather, etc.

 

On the CLI side of things: Terminal, zsh (started using this recently, happily ditching bash now) and git. As for the Mac applications I can't live without:

• Butler
• 1Password
• NetNewsWire
• TextMate
• SubEthaEdit
• Cornerstone
• Adium

 

When I reinstall all I install is Steam, Microsoft Office, Handbrake, and Transmission excluding iLife and Xcode.

 

Terminal, iLife, MS Office, iWork, Logic, Pro Tools, and Finale, are the majority of what I use.

 

I'd really wish that people would just give short descriptions of the apps and programs they mention.

That way it would actually be useful to new mac owners like myself.

 

Ok, I'll go down my menu bar and dock.

Menu Bar:

iTouchserver- can use an iPod Touch as a mouse. awkward, but useful for couch control and such.

Menumeters- I can see disk read/write, CPU usage, RAM, and network usage.

Dock:

Google Earth

Chicken of the VNC- VNC client, doesn't work very well. I use Apple's remote desktop for Mac to Mac, and a browser-based Java plugin for controlling PC's.

VINE Server- VNC server, doesn't work very well. Apple's built-in server is a lot better.

Vuze.

Firefox- main browser
Chrome-nice to have sitting around
Safari- not clue why it's still on the dock

Adium-AIM, GChat, and Facebook chat in one.
Skype

TextEdit

JDarkRoom- experimenting with this as an alternative to WriteRoom. Both apps basically allow you to type a plain text document on a totally dark screen.

Photoshop- occasional playing with photos

Openoffice

M$ Office

Pandora Radio Adobe Air App- require Pandora ONE subscription, totally worth it.

iTunes

EyeTV- works with Elgato EyeTV Hybrid hardware

VLC- best media player ever

FCE

iStumbler- shows nearby airport addresses

KeypassX- password keeper. If I was going to do it again, I'd use Lastpass, may convert eventually.

Activity Monitor/System Profiler, Disk Utility, Terminal

Disk Tools Pro- disk maintenance app that has a permissions error in it.

Parallels desktop- as a 17-year Windows user (I'm on 21 years old), I will always have a copy of Windows around.

System Preferences.

 

Prepare yourselves for a long list, as I have a LOT of essential apps:

• Eclipse IDE (for Java and Python development)
• Launch4j (packaging Java JARs into Windows-native EXEs)
• BetterZip (final packaging just prior to release, to create ZIP archives)
• py2exe (Python equivalent of Launch4j)
• py2app (Mac version of py2exe)
• Python (obviously)
• Audacity (creating sounds for my programs, and modifying existing sounds)
• CrossOver Mac (running Windows programs without Mac equivalents; also used for development)
• GraphicConverter (creating images for my programs, and modifying existing images)
• Terminal (used for development, mostly to remove .DS_Store files from JAR archives Eclipse generates)
• Xcode (for Icon Composer and a few other tools it installs)
• Squiggle (part of Batik, for manipulating SVG graphics used in development)