Rohit Nair’s Blog

Now that I’ve entered Mac Land, I thought i’d list out my top apps that I use almost regularly. All freeware of course.

1. Quicksilver : Trust Quicksilver to be the first app to be listed on ANY such list. It just is the most useful and amazing app on a Mac. Basically a keyboard app launcher, its has a lot more features that can be customized using some of the many plugins that are available for it.
2. Adium : Adium is the most popular multi protocol chat client on Macs. It supports AIM, Jabber, Yahoo, MSN (in case somebody still uses it) and everything else that you can think of. You can also set the current track playing on iTunes as your status message.
3. iTerm : The terminal on OS X Tiger is pretty basic. Therefore iTerm is not an option, its a must! It has support for tabbed terminals and everything else that you would be familiar with on a normal Linux terminal. If you are a vi/vim user there is this issue of the arrow keys not working for navigation. You could always go back to the original HJKL navigation keys but if not, this is what i did to fix it.
4. VirtueDesktops : Virtual desktops is another feature Tiger does not natively support. Worry not as VirtueDesktops fits the bill perfectly, with Compiz/Beryl like desktop transitions as well.
5. Growl : Growl is a system notifier, and it’s highly customizable. You can set which apps should notify you and when they should do so.
6. SizzlingKeys : This gives you the power to control iTunes without leaving your current app. Plus it notifies and gives details when a new track starts. (Keyboard shortcuts to control iTunes can be set using the iTunes plugin in Quicksilver as well, just make sure you don’t enable both together, especially with the same shortcuts! )
7. Azureus : This not an obvious choice, but in the end i use Azureus because its highly customizable thanks to plugins. SpeedScheduler is one cool plugin with which you can schedule your downloads without staying awake waiting for those unlimited download time slots(BSNL broadband users will love this) It is resource heavy and has a lot of useless and unnecessary stuff in it though.

Now here are ones that almost made the list.

1. Yahoo Messenger for Mac : Unlike the messenger for Unix, this ones a full blown version with most of the bells and whistles of the Windows version. Plus iTunes integration for status message. Sadly, using Adium is much more convenient.
2. Visor : This is one cool little app. Visor provides a systemwide terminal window accessible via a hotkey, much like the consoles found in games such as Quake. The way it just drops down from the top is so cool, needs Terminal.app to be running though. Don’t use it since I’ve switched to iTerm. This ones made by the same guys who have made Quicksilver by the way.

There of course other obvious cross platform apps that are as much a must on OS X as they are on any other OS. LimeWire, VLC player to name a few.

Finally, a couple of apps that I would love to see on a Mac. No prizes for guessing which company makes them.

1. Internet Explorer : As bad as that piece of junk might be, fact is you cannot live without it. There are several sites that work only with IE and while developing for the web, you need to make sure it works on IE as well. Have tried out IEs4OSX which uses Darwine but that didn’t go very well.
2. Zune Software : I’m trapped between Mac world and MS world to be frank, its a shame Microsoft hasn’t come out with a software for the Mac. No wonder Zune is going nowhere as a product, they really cannot expect everyone to use only MS products. Lot of efforts have gone in trying to make it work on OS X but the only progress so far is that one can read its contents.