OT. Recommended software for new Mac users

[Tim Allen <tim.allen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As promised in another message, I've put together a list of apps that I=20
find either essential and/or useful. I'm short on time so I haven't=20
included links to them all, however, if you go to=20
http://www.macupdate.com/ or http://www.versiontracker.com/
everything=20
should be listed there, along with alternatives. There's a lot more Mac=20
software out there than people realise.

Anyway, here goes, in no particular order...

F =3D FreeWare, S =3D ShareWare, C =3D Commercial App.

Audio Hijack (S). Captures audio from any application, ideal for=20
recording Real audio streams, DVD soundtracks etc.

Synk (S). Nice little backup utility that I use for backing up to an=20
external FireWire hard drive.

QuickTime Pro (C). Worth buying, and I also recommend finding and=20
installing every codec you can get hold of as with these installed you=20
should be able to play pretty much any video within QuickTime Player,=20
rather than having to use VLC or MPlayer.

VLC (F). You probably know this, can come in handy for playing video=20
that QT can't handle.
MPlayer (F), similar to above.

Checkbook (S). Cheap shareware clone of Quicken. Nice little app.

Toast (C). The daddy of Mac burning apps, well worth the money as it=20
handles pretty much anthing; audio, video or data.

HimmelBar (F). Excellent little freeware app that adds a customisable=20
apps menu to the Finder.

BluePhoneMenu (F). I've mentioned this in another message, very neat=20
Bluetooth phone app.

Cocktail (S). Excellent maintenance app that puts a nice GUI on top of=20
lots of powerful Unix maintenance commands. Run it once a week to keep=20
a Mac happy.

DiskTracker (S). Feed in your disks and it keeps an archive of what is=20
where. Been using it for years with no problems.

Galerie (F). This is worth =A350 in my book yet it's freeware!. Builds=20
superb photo and movie galleries from iPhoto or other apps. An=20
*essential* app without question.

MacTheRipper (F). Rips DVDs to hard disk and removes all region coding=20
and protection etc. No idea what you might use this for. Ahem.

DVD2oneX (C). Apparently it reduces a DVD9 disk to fit on a DVD5 disk.=20
Again I have no idea what you might use this for. *cough*.

For FTP I use Vicomsoft FTP Client (S) but Transmit (S) is excellent=20
too, and RBrowserLite (F) is a decent freeware alternative.

Temperature Monitor Lite (S/F) uses the sensors in your Mac and graphs=20
the output. Very geeky but useful too. I'm sure my dual G5 is alive you=20
know...

TextWrangler (F). Superb text editor. And it's free. Say no more.

MacStumbler (F). Finds wireless networks near your Airport equipped=20
Mac. Handy if your neighbours haven't got WEP turned on.

NetNewsWireLite (F). My preferred RSS feed reader as it's free. Loads=20
of other nice ones are out there too.

Activity Monitor and Disk Utility. Both come with OS X and are in the=20
Utilities folder inside the Applications folder. The first lets you see=20
what your Mac is up to, the second is useful for all things=20
disk-related, including repairing permissions.


Apologies again for the lack of links but I hope the above is useful to=20
the Mac users on the list.

Tim.