Why Twitter is bigger than 140 characters
Are you a Photoshop expert? We need volunteers
Gaming Keyboard Roundup: Logitech, OCZ, and Razer

Helpful freeware apps for Mac OS

by Matt Hallock published Jan 7, 2008

Filed under: Apple, Mac OS, applications

More and more people are using Macs. Little freeware applications abound for Mac OS but not many new Mac users are familiar with some of the best ones. I've put together a short list of some of the more helpful applications I've run across.

Adium

Adium is an instant messaging client that combines tabbed chatting with connectivity to a slew of other instant messaging protocols. It sure beats the Hell out of all those iChat windows everywhere.

VLC

Unfortunately, OS X comes with only Quicktime. With more than 95% of the world running on things other than OS X and Quicktime, a solid investment in a third-party media player is necessary. VLC media player has a simple design that will run any video codec or DVD there is, even broken and incomplete files. Windows users should also check this out.

StuffIt

OS X automatically unzips *.zip files with its own extractor, but you’ll need something for those pesky *.rars and *.bins as well. StuffIt Extractor is compatible with *.zip files and 22 other compression formats.

Next »

About the author

Matt Hallock

Matt Hallock is a rendering fool and image haxx0r. Here on Icrontic, he is our Chief Inquisitor of Capital Letter Queries and can generally be found fulfilling said duties in our Pub.

7 Comments

Register to comment (quick and free)

  1. kryyst said Jan 7, 2008 3:30pm (ET)

    Not bad. But I think a few key items were missed.

    Chicken of the VNC A fantastically easy to use VNC client
    Perian Must have codec pluggin that makes quick time work with most video formats.
    Flip4mac's WMV Pluggin another must have quicktime pluggin.
    Neo Office at least until OpenOffice officially comes out with a good working version for OS X.

  2. Shorty said Jan 8, 2008 1:03am (ET)

    They do freeware for Mac?!

  3. Thrax said Jan 8, 2008 1:17am (ET)

    No, because everything just works.

  4. Shorty said Jan 8, 2008 2:20am (ET)

    That is what I thought. Why would there be apps for Mac when it surely does everything out the box (according to Apple). How strange.

  5. StainMeNow said Jan 8, 2008 7:18pm (ET)

    Here's a few other utilities I find useful:

    Desktop Manager for pre-Leopard multiple-desktop goodness (but it's not updated anymore)
    Coconut Battery to see how much your battery has degraded over time
    Bits on Wheels for your BitTorrent needs (and it's pretty)

  6. Thrax said Jan 8, 2008 7:20pm (ET)

    Azureus > all. ALSO with pretty swarm graphic.

  7. kryyst said Jan 9, 2008 10:57am (ET)

    Few more damn handy apps

    The Unarchiver all your archive formats in one package that integrates seamlessly.
    The Fink apt-get style repository for osx to handle all those linux type programs that work in os x.

Register to comment (quick and free)