Must-have Mac Apps?

Just bought a G3 iBook, just to kinda get my toes wet, see if I like the whole Mac thing. I'm pickin it up today, and wondering what are some "must-have" apps for macs? Obviously iTunes for music, iChat gets the IM thing done, but are there any must-have third party apps for just goofing around? I'm not really sure what I'm looking for, and if there's nothing needed, please say so.

May not be must have apps but some freeware I've found useful are carbon copy (for backing up), mac the ripper (dvd ripper), clamxav ( antivirus software, the mac doesn't really need it but if you're on a network with windows boxes it's good to have), handbrake (dvd compressor),and flip4mac (play wmv's through quicktime), that's all I got for now but I'm sure there are more

adium. It's an IM program that let's you use AIM, MSN, googlechat etc.

VLC player to play different codecs of video, I havent found a mac user who doesn't have photoshop yet (but I'm sure I will get a few replies from people after posting this), If your into your disc images then get roxio titanium toast, you are quite limited since you are using an old skool 500 mhz g3 iBook, I used to have one until about two weeks ago. However I was able to run some pro apps on it like final cut express and logic express. I would take a look at the downloads page on the apple website (go to the mac osx tab then look for the downloads sub-tab), there are a lot of third party apps to choose from and a lot of open-source apps). Also try looking at Versiontracker They give you a big list of thir-party downloads to choose from.

I've just discovered Imagewell, which seems like a really great lightweight little image file manipulator...

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I really only bought such a limited machine cause I wanna check Mac out. All those Smackbook videos and the newer hack to use the keyboard backlights got me excited, but I wanted to know if I could tolerate and perhaps enjoy the OS, too, before investing like that. It's got Tiger installed, and really all I'll use it for is IM, internet, music and photos. And I'd like to sync with my Nokia N80 (I'm on the cellphone forums for that). I'm going to play with the thing tonite, I'll post back on here for things I'd like to do, and see if I can't find the appropriate program.

Rcadden said:

Just bought a G3 iBook, just to kinda get my toes wet, see if I like the whole Mac thing. I'm pickin it up today, and wondering what are some "must-have" apps for macs? Obviously iTunes for music, iChat gets the IM thing done, but are there any must-have third party apps for just goofing around? I'm not really sure what I'm looking for, and if there's nothing needed, please say so.

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Pretty sure there's a thread on this floating around.
Check Macupdate.com to find some.
As for me...Quicksilver, Adium (IM client), Coconut Wi-fi are some of my favs.

If you've ever used Pandora, this would be something to check out: Pandoraman. It's a little browser just for Pandora, making it more like a stand-alone desktop application.

I second http://www.versiontracker.com for some great free apps, also http://www.macupdate.com Also look for maintenance programs like Onyx or MacJanitor to make it run smoother

i reccomend aMSN over audium or messenger for mac. mainly because it supports the other persons webcam

Must Have apps? Here is my list:

MenuMeters - puts all sorts of useful information up into your menu bar, such as CPU load, disk activity, memory usage, etc. The CPU stuff is invaluable

iClock - adds color, fonts and full Day, Data and Month to the menu bar clock. Looking at mine, I can see that it is "Mon 26 Jun". It also adds goodies like world clocks, a menu of currently running programs, which acts as a task switcher, a calendar app, etc. etc. etc. It is a fabulous bit of shareware.

Path Finder - a serious file manager for serious file management. I use Mac's Finder for simple day to day stuff, but when I need to do backups, detailed reconfiguration of folders and so on, I pull out the heavy armor, Path Finder. You won't believe how many additional functions it adds, which makes file management activities SO much simpler.

It is also a replacement desktop for the Mac, providing WAY more functionality than the standard desktop. You don't have to use the desktop feature, and it is off by default, so don't worry that it will take over your Mac if you install it.

Classic Menu - this little application lets you build up a menu of available applications in a cascading men fashion, rather like the Windows Start menu, or the launch menus in almost any Linux window manager. Plus, it can change that boring blue Apple symbol on the upper left of your menu bar to the original vibrant multi colored apple - this is worth the shareware fee all by itself! I know that I can achieve cascading menus via the Dock, but I just LIKE them on the menu bar better!

Thats it for my "must haves".

BTW, thanks for the pointer to ImageWell - that is a cool little app! A great addition to any digital photographers arsenal.

hmm... in addition to iLife and such, you could use GIMP (an EXCELLENT photoshop-like app), handbrake and iSquint if you have a video iPod or want a file to play in quicktime. Transmission is good for torrents, xACT for flac/shn/ape files, and toast titanium is a great burning app.

Apple has a section with a lot of downloads: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/

You can also look here for a big list of freeware apps: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24848

Mace said:

Coconut Wi-fi

Click to expand...

thanks for the tip. that's a great app for my ibook.

Oh and don't forget Image Resize , It's good for when you need to resize an image really fast. http://www.ghostknox.com/imgresize.html

I can't believe I almost forgot flickr uploader!

http://flickr.com/tools/mac_howto.gne

Where can I get iClock?

iClock is available at www.scriptsoftware.com/iclock.