Best Mac Freeware

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I finally ordered my Macbook along with an Incase neoprene sleeve. Anyway, I found the freeware thread for PCs, but couldn't find one for Macs. I google searched, but came up with just a bunch of games. I'm looking for good freeware apps/utilities, along with maybe a game or two. Anyone know of a good list, or have a site that they reccomend that lists a bunch?
 
I recommend Abiword for the mac since Pages is not all that great.

Safari is nice, but I like Firefox more.

what are you looking to get? I'm a mac addict...
 
Just looking for a good starting point. I will be getting the MS Office suite through Notre Dame's tech department when I get back to school in the middle of January. Other than that, i'm looking for a little of everything.
 
please understand that MS Office will not run as smooth as you'd like since it's not a universal binary. but yeah MS Office is sweet.

The thing is with the mac since everything comes bundled in with iLife and other things it's pretty tough to find better software than that on the Mac...it even comes with Comic Life...

So I'm assuming freeware games...tough to recommend because I don't do much gaming on my mac.
 
Hmm....forgot about that. I've heard about something along the lines of Neooffice or something along with Open Office. Would either of those be better while I wait for a universal binary version of MS Office?
 
yeah, if it's a universal binary you would get much better performance...although feature wise they get blown away by MS Office...
 
[quote name='Jewelz23']please understand that MS Office will not run as smooth as you'd like since it's not a universal binary. but yeah MS Office is sweet.

The thing is with the mac since everything comes bundled in with iLife and other things it's pretty tough to find better software than that on the Mac...it even comes with Comic Life...

So I'm assuming freeware games...tough to recommend because I don't do much gaming on my mac.[/quote]

Working at the Genius Bar, I can say that about 95% of all Intel machines I see run Office fine.
 
I use Camino for web browsing. I find that its a more suitable Firefox for the Mac, than Firefox is. It uses the Mozilla engine, and has the same button layout of the Firefox for PC, with cntl being the apple key. Firefox Mac key placement is all screwy, and a pain in the ass when using Mac/PC at the same time.
 
[quote name='WebScud']Working at the Genius Bar, I can say that about 95% of all Intel machines I see run Office fine.[/QUOTE]

Now that Macs are using the Intel chip, I can't help but wonder if we'll ever see Access included in the suite, or if MS has abdicated the market to FileMaker Pro for good.

I never used Comic Life, but I'm going to have to now; thanks to whoever suggested it.
 
[quote name='WebScud']Working at the Genius Bar, I can say that about 95% of all Intel machines I see run Office fine.[/QUOTE]
I was referring to the actual speed of the program since its being emulated by rosetta.
 
Adium - works much better than iChat for AIM/Yahoo/more.

Firefox - same as the PC one, works better than Safari IMHO.
 
[quote name='Jewelz23']I was referring to the actual speed of the program since its being emulated by rosetta.[/quote]

So was I. Beyond a second or two of additonal launch time I do not see a hit in performance.
 
OFfice runs fine on intel macs. it's not like you needed a super computer to run it in the first place so emulation doesn't have any ill effects.

I liked Pages alot when I did the trial. I think I'll grab Iwork when the '07 version comes out.

Mac the Ripper is a good app, but you'll have to donate to get the newest version.

Handbrake is a good one for ripping video_ts files to ipod type format.
 
Fun And Games:

Emulators:

MacEmu -The home of emulation on the Macintosh, was suggested to me, seems good.

Emulation.Net -The best site I've found to grab Mac console emulators like Snes9X etc

Games:

Quinn Quinn -is an implementation of the well-known game Tetris for Mac OS X. This is the pure Tetris, not another variation of the original rules.

Frozen Bubble -Possibly THE greatest freeware game EVER released. Much like the arcade classic Bust-a-Move only FREE and using penguins. Oh yeah did I mention it's completely FREE?!?


Operating System Tools:

System Maintenance/Tools/Add-Ons:

uControl uControl is a keyboard remapper and more. Meaning, those useless keys can now be reused, remapped, or reduced.

Cocktail -Cocktail is a general purpose utility for Mac OS X. The application serves up a scrumptious mix of maintenance tools and interface tweaks, all accessible via a comprehensive graphical interface and toolset. It is a smooth and powerful utility that simplifies the use of advanced UNIX functions.

TinkerTool -TinkerTool System is a professional maintenance tool for Mac OS X. It allows you to change advanced operating system settings and offers a wide variety of maintenance features.

Menu Meters -MenuMeters is a set of CPU, memory, disk, and network monitoring tools for MacOS X.

Shapeshifter -ShapeShifter is a revolutionary new product that lets you change the overall appearance of your Mac using 'themes'.

Delocalizer - DeLocalizer will remove all non-American English localization resource files that you request. I've saved on average about a gig of hard drive space on each machine I've done this on. Of course it all depends on how many languages you want to remove. (Will work on 10.3 despite being untested)

FruitMenu -FruitMenu is a haxie that gives you the ability to customize the Apple Menu and contextual menus. Using a visual editor you can edit the contents of the menus to suit your needs and taste.

Quicksilver -App/document launching tool. Scans your system and enables you to launch applications with a few keystrokes. Pretty awesome.

Screen Capture Utilities:

Snap Pro X -Snapz Pro X 2 allows you to effortlessly record anything on your screen, saving it as a QuickTime® movie or screenshot that can be emailed, put up on the web, or
passed around however you please.

Remote Desktop Clients:

Microsoft Remote Desktop Client -Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac allows you to connect from your Macintosh computer to a Windows-based computer and work with programs and files on that computer.

Laptop Utilities and Battery Monitors:

Slim Battery Minitor -SlimBatteryMonitor is a replacement power gauge for Mac OS X that monitors both laptop batteries and many UPS batteries.

Ibatt -iBatt is a battery monitor for PowerBooks and iBooks. It goes far beyond the basic charge level information reported by the system, and tells you your battery's capacity, voltage, and overall health report. In addition, it will provide a running graph showing trends in your battery's performance.


Database and Programing Tools:
SQL Programs:

CocoaMySql -CocoaMySQL is an application used to manage MySQL databases (locally or over the internet). It lets you add and remove databases and tables, change fields and indexes, view and filter the content of tables, add, edit and remove rows, perform custom queries and dump tables or entire databases.

DbVisualizer -Unlike other platforms DbVisualizer on Mac OS X does not use the InstallAnywhere LAX file (dbvis.lax) to define various runtime application
and Java properties. Instead DbVisualizer is packaged as a standard Mac OS X application. Runtime and Java properties includes for example, which Java VM to use, the size of the Java process, etc

Development Tools/Programing Aids:

Eclipse -Java development tool

HTML Editors:

Taco HTML Edito- Taco HTML Edit is a full-featured HTML editor and PHP editor distributed as freeware.


Productivity Apps:

Text Editors and Office Apps:

Smultron- Smultron is an open-source text editor written in Cocoa for Mac OS X Panther

Open OSX -Many programs here, all free, including Open Office an EXCELLENT Microsoft Office clone. Requires some X11 and unix knowledge to work the install, not much though.

Text Wrangler - an insanely awesome, 100% free text editor. I know text editing isn't the sexiest task on a computer, but having access to something as robust as Text Wrangler can really make your life a lot easier. It's from the makers of BBedit (best. text editor. ever..... but expensive!), has about a bajillion kick ass features (syntax highlighting, document drawer, editing files directly on an ftp server, checking for differences between docs, etc) and, did I mention it was free?

Image Software:

The Gimp A Photoshop-esque tool, with many of it's abilities, for FREE!


Widgets and Misc:

Weather Info:

Weather Pop 2- WeatherPop displays, in the menu bar, the current weather conditions for virtually any city or town in the world.


Cataloging / Organization:

Catalog Software:

DVDpedia -DVDpedia is a DVD cataloging software for Mac OS X.

CDpedia -CDpedia is a CD managing software for Mac OS X.


De/Compression Tools:

Compression Software:

Stuffit Expander- StuffIt is the best compression format available today! And the StuffIt Family of products is designed to meet any level of compression needs.

Multimedia (Playing, Ripping, Burning):

Ripping/Burning Tools:

MacTheRipper -A freeware DVD ripper (extractor) for Mac OS X. MacTheRipper removes CSS encryption, Macrovision protection, sets the disc's region code to '0' for region-free by
default, and is capable of removing RCE region protection as well, making an unrestricted copy of any DVD movie you own.

Handbrake- HandBrake is a GPL'd multi-platform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 ripper/converter. HandBrake was originally available on the BeOS, but now has been ported over to MacOS X and to GNU/Linux.

Media Players:

VLC- a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

MPlayerOSX -MPlayerOSX is binary distribution of MPlayer (The Movie Player for Linux) and comes with native GUI in MacOSX.

Audion -A single app that bravely handles all your audio needs. An iTunes alternative.

Whamb- Another iTunes alternative, freeware & supports OGG file formats. Using the iTunes 4 skin, near ringer for the program.


Networking:

Wireless Network Tools/Detection/War Driving:

KisMac- For detecting wireless networks

Mac Stumbler -MacStumbler is a utility to display information about nearby 802.11b and 802.11g wireless access points. It is mainly designed to be a tool to help find access points while traveling, or to diagnose wireless network problems. Additionally, MacStumbler can be used for "wardriving", which involves co-ordinating with a GPS unit while traveling around to help produce a map of all access points in a given area.


The Internet:

Instant Messenger Programs:

aMSN -An MSN Messenger client for OSX that actually shows display pictures, emoticons, file transfer image previews, etc. Not sure how MSN Messenger 5.0 will turn out but 4.0 lacks all this and more.

Fire -Fire is a free Instant Messaging client for Mac OS X. It supports the seven most popular Instant Messaging services: Aim, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, etc

Aidium Adium X 0.76,- a multiple protocol instant messaging client. This is a culmination of a year long rewrite of adium, which now utilizes libgaim (the core part of gaim) to connect to multiple protocols, and is also based on a new plugin architecture.

File Sharing/Bit Torrent Apps:

Bits on Wheels -Bits on Wheels is the first bittorrent client 100% written for the Mac. It is also the first client to show a realtime 3D view of your downloads. Recomended by our own mod Mort as "the best bit torrent app"

Tomato Torrent- Bit Torrent has taken the world by storm and is by FAR one of the top download methods for all types of files today. The official OSX Bit Torrent client much like it's Windows
sidekick won't cut it, Tomato Torrent is the best client for torrent downloads AND uploads on OSX that I've found.

Carracho -An OSX file transfer program that I find can be very helpfull in obtaining things you can't find in torrents.

Azureus -Azureus offers multiple torrent downloads, queuing/priority systems (on torrents and files), start/stop seeding options and instant access to numerous pieces of information about your torrents.

Limewire- LimeWire is a file sharing program running on the Gnutella Network. It is open standard software running on an open protocol, free for the public to use. LimeWire allows you to share any file such as.mp3s, .avis, jpgs, tiffs, etc.

Aquisition- A Limewire-esque program suggested

ACQ Lite -Acqlite is a Cocoa Gnutella client for Mac OS X. It is released under the terms of the GPL and is a completely free way to do person-to-person file sharing on your Mac, without worrying about spyware, adware, time limits, or "calling home."

Internet Telephony:

Skype The big, free Internet telephony company.

File Transfer

transmit 3 Column view, idisk, sidebar, ftp/ssl, search, zooming, tabs... THE ALL NEW transmit 3 takes mac os x ftp to the next level. Again!

IRC Clients:

X-Chat Aqua X-Chat Aqua is a MacOS X IRC client. If you are familiar with XChat for UNIX/GTK+/X Windows, then you will be at home with X-Chat Aqua. X-Chat Aqua uses the IRC engine from XChat and has been designed to look and feel like XChat.

Snak -Snak is a program that will let you participate in discussions in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels. A channel is like a virtual meeting room where people meet and talk.

RSS/Atom readers:

Vienna -Vienna is a surprisingly complete OpenSource/Freeware RSS/Atom newsreader built specifically for Mac OS X.
 
Thanks for that list. I've been looking for a good bare bones dvd organizer (refuse to pay for delicious library). I'm going to give Comic Life a try too. Looks fun.
 
[quote name='munch']Thanks for that list. I've been looking for a good bare bones dvd organizer (refuse to pay for delicious library). I'm going to give Comic Life a try too. Looks fun.[/QUOTE]

I agree. Delicious looks great... but I can't see myself paying that much when I tend to use DVDAf and other stuff more.
 
[quote name='lordwow']I agree. Delicious looks great... but I can't see myself paying that much when I tend to use DVDAf and other stuff more.[/QUOTE]

Yikes looks like DVDPedia isn't free.
 
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