Inspired this lackluster list of must have software for switchers to OS X I'll make my own. The main focus will be on bundles programs and freeware, though a commercial/shareware program wont be excluded because of that. I wont tell you which one is best, or try to give an objective ranking. Download them yourselves and give them a try and pick what works best for you.

Web Browsers

There is one major web browser on OS X, three free ones and two commercial ones.

The big dog is Safari. Its bundled with the OS, is fast, powerful, simple and what you'll probably end up using. Firefox is the biggest of the three free browsers. However it suffers from what makes it powerful. The GUI is drawn by a cross platform system that does not translate to the Mac as well as it does on Windows or Linux. However all the extensions and themes make it a strong choice for more advanced web browsing. The other big free browser is Camino. Starting out as a proof-of-consept to see if the engine that powers Firefox could be made to work within a native Mac OS X GUI Camino has come a long way to become a stable, powerful and simple browser. There are two “also rans” in the free web browser market; Opera. The two commercial browsers are OmniWeb, a great advanced web browser built upon the technologies in Safari, and iCab a small fast and “super-advanced” web browser with a small but active group of developers.

I personally use Camino as my main browser as its rendering engine is more supported than Safari and the Mac GUI is friendlier than Firefox's.

Text Editors

Apple's TextEdit is a great little program. It'll open Word .doc files and create .rtf files that will open in Word, but sometimes you need more. TextWrangler is a great free text editor from the creators of the Mac's premier text editor BBEdit. TextWrangler has many of the features found in its big brother but removes the HTML specific editing functions, if that is important to you the next choice is perfect for you. TextMate is a shareware (39 euros through PayPal) text editor designed with coding in mind, from HTML to Python to Java and Objective-C TextMate features syntax hilighting and an amazing number of tools for testing your code. A different take on the text editor is SubEthaEdit. Once you get past the different name you find a nicely powerful text editor with one amazing unique feature. Featuring the standard syntax hilighting for assorted programming languages the biggest feature of SEE is collaborative editing. Other users of SEE can connect to your machine and you can collaborate on the same file at the same time. Plus it is free for personal use, but if you're going to use it commercially they ask for a scant $35.

If it's just for you SEE is the top dog in this group with TextWrangler coming in second. If you want the power, but don't want to break the bank shelling out for BBEdit, TextMate is right up your alley.

FTP Clients

If all you do is download from FTP servers the Finder will serve your purpose, if you do more than that you have a few options out there. CyberDuck is a free SFTP/FTP client that focuses more on the remote server than integration with with local and remote system. A solid basic client with a few advanced features, like synchronizing and remote editing of a file in an external editor. The big client on OS X is Transmit. Featuring a two pane browser, one local and one remote, and supporting FTP, SFTP and iDisk/WebDAV connections Transmit is a deal for $17.95. Transmit has batch uploading/downloading, synchronizing local and remote folders, remote editing in both Transmit itself or an external editor and perhaps the best feature of all is that it has tab support for having multiple connections in a single window.

For the money Transmit is the best FTP client, but CyberDuck is a strong choice for the free crowd.

Graphics Programs

For light graphics editing and touching up nothing beats GraphicConverter. iPhoto will work for minor things but for the more advanced stuff GC is the tool you'll need without spending a fortune on “pro” apps.

Launchers

Though not often thought of as essential software once you try a launcher you'll never want to use a Mac without one. A launcher is a simple program that's invoked with a keyboard combo where you type a few letters to launch applications, run scripts or open web locations. There are three big players here LaunchBar (shareware), QuickSilver (free) and Butler (donationware). This is a very passionate category and as a long time LaunchBar user I can't fairly evaluate the others. Download them all and try each out and pick the best one for you.

IM Clients

The best multi-protocol client is Adium X. Sporting a slick interface lots of features and an elegant simplicity Adium is the premier IM client on the Mac. If you don't feel Adium try out Fire. Another multi-protocol client Fire has been around almost as long as Mac OS X has and has a loyal user base. A final multi-protocol client is Proteus. Unlike Adium and Fire, Proteus is not free to use.

Unfortunately these multi-protocol clients aren't the end-all of IM programs on the Mac since they don't support a few key features. iChat will be needed for webcam chats and consistent file transfer. For Yahoo! IM the official client is passable with file transfer and webcam support. For MSN the best option is Mercury, a clunky Java app that supports most of the crud that MSN supports. Its always handy to have these available when the situation calls for it.

Video

For video playback the Quicktime player will do for many of the formats you'll encounter, but its not the best. The VLC Client is a fantastic media player that will play most any video file thrown at it, be it divx, mpeg, mov or wmv. Occasionally you'll come across some wmv files VLC can't handle and you'll need to shell out some cash for Flip4Mac which allows you to play wmv files natively in Quicktime.

If you need to convert videos to play on your brand new iPod go grab iSquint to convert all your videos to iPod compatible MPEG-4 videos. If you want to make watch your DVDs on your computer without needed in the DVD the only option worth your time is the simple to use HandBrake.

BitTorrent

The friendliest of all the clients out there for the Mac is Tomato Torrent. IT features all the things you need in a BT client, has a nice friendly interface for downloading and creating torrents. Most importantly each torrent download can have its own settings that don't affect any other torrent. The official BT client is also nice and uses a single window interface as compared to Tomato Torrent using a single window per torrent. If you don't want to create any torrents Transmission is for you. It's a fast, slick and compact torrent client that is just a downloader.

Blogging and RSS

If you blog regularly a nice desktop editor is a good thing to have since they integrate well with the OS X system. The oldest client is ecto. As well as being the oldest ecto is the most feature rich blogging client on the Mac. Featuring a WYSIWYG editor and a plain code editor, image and file upload, multiple blog support from one login and a host of small features that enrich a post ecto is a solid program for just $18. The other big editor is MarsEdit from the makers of NetNewsWire. MarsEdit takes a simpler and more familiar method to weblog editing, make it like email. Not sporting as many advanced features as ecto ME supports the main core features of editing and file upload. If you use Firefox and want a quick editor look no further than Performancing. A nice web log editor that is an embeded plug-in for Firefox 1.5 or greater. Though it doesn't support file upload it allows you to quickly post without switching context to another application.

For reading news feeds the Mac has more programs than you can shake a stick at. The biggest is NetNewsWire. Coming in both a free and commercial version NNW is the granddaddy of RSS readers on the Mac. Sporting an email like three pane interface, tabbed web browser for reading more about the entry, customizable per-feed persistence and refreshing. Another popular program is Pulp Fiction, another program having both a free and commercial version. Taking the email metaphor to the extreme Pulp Fiction treats every item like an email allowing you to apply powerful filters to the news items and sort it in a near endless number of ways. NewsFire is another RSS reader that's more streamline and sexy than the other two. There's no free version of it which seems to be a detriment in this market where the two biggest players have free versions and there are a host of web based services that a free or low cost.

That's it for now, I'll add more programs when I think of them.

Tags: mac os x, software