Essential Mac OS X Apps for Switcher
Sunday, October 5th, 2008Riding on the Halo effect of Apple’s popular iPod, more and more Windows users are switching to Mac. Here’s a list of apps that replace windows’ in Mac OS X.
Browsers
Camino - a Mac OS X-native browser built on Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine. [download]
Firefox - a free and open source web browser, uses Gecko layout engine. [download]
Safari - Mac OS X’s pre-installed browser. Built around the WebKit open source project , it was designed to render web pages blazingly fast and includes a number of innovative features.
Replace Internet Explorer!
Burner
Burn - a burning application for Mac OS X. [download]
Replace Nero
Chat
Adium - a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more. [download]
Colloquy - an open source IRC, SILC and ICB chat client for Mac OS X [download]
Replace Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Trillian, Pidgin, mIRC
Download Manager
Speed Download - an award winning download manager for Mac OS X. $[download]
Replace Orbit Downloader, Download Accelerator
File Compression
Compress Files - an easy to use tools for compress, archive, encrypt files and omit Mac-specific invisible files. $[download]
StuffIt Expander - this free application automatically expand and decode files you download from the Internet. [download]
Replace WinRAR, WinZip
FTP
Cyberduck - an open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV and Amazon S3 browser licenced under the GPL with an easy to use interface. [download]
Transmit - the next-generation Mac OS X FTP client. $[download]
Replace FileZilla
GTD
Things - simple but highly rated task management application. [download]
OmniFocus - professional-grade personal task management application. $[download]
iGTD - a GTD-like personal organizer. [download]
Replace Microsoft Outlook(Add-In), TaskMerlin, ToDoList
Image Editor
Paintbrush - a Cocoa-based paint program for Mac OS X, similar to Microsoft Paint and the now-defunct MacPaint. [download]
Replace Paint
Image Viewer
Xee - a lightweight, fast and convenient image viewer and browser. [download]
Replace IrfanView, Windows Picture and Fax Viewer
Media
VLC Player - a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. [download]
Replace Windows Media Player
NotePad
TextWrangler - a powerful general purpose text editor. [download]
xPad - the ultimate notepad, TextEdit and Stickies replacement for Apple’s OS X. [download]
Replace Notepad
Office Suite
NeoOffice - a full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs) for Mac OS X. [download]
Replace Microsoft Office
P2P
Transmission - a fast, easy, and free multi-platform BitTorrent client. [download]
Vuze - a free BitTorrent client used to transfer files via the BitTorrent protocol [download]
Replace BitComent, uTorrent
PDF Viewer
Preview - Mac OS X’s default PDF viewer.
Skim - a PDF reader and note-taker for Mac OS X. [download]
Replace Adobe Reader, Foxit
RSS Reader
NetNewsWire - the most popular Mac OS X RSS reader. Developed by NewsGator, the same with FeedDemon. [download]
NewsFire - simple to use and packed with features, NewsFire makes it a joy to keep atop the constant flow of information on the web. [download]
Shrook - a next-generation news reader that is not only easy to use, but offers advanced features not available to Mac users anywhere else. It supports all versions of RSS and Atom. [download]
Vienna - a freeware, open source RSS/Atom newsreader for the Mac OS X operating system. [download]
Replace Snarfer, FeedDemon