Awesome Free Mac Add-ons

ByMike Moffit

Apple computers come with enough software to last a decade of fun use. However, sometimes there are just things you need to do that OS X doesn’t support out of the box. Here’s a list of my favorite free Mac apps!

System add-ons:

NTFS-3G (SUPER–USEFUL, allows full use of Windows & Linux-formatted drives)

Perian (Used to play most video formats)

Flip4Mac (Used to play a single archaic video format [.wmv files])

Secrets (Preference Pane allowing pretty thorough customization. Be careful, you can screw up your system mighty quick! However, it lets you set things like Time Machine intervals and the minimize animation “Suck”)

iStat Dashboard Widget (Gives hardware information such as temperature, battery health and RAM usage). iStat Menus is even more awesome, integrating this info into your menu bar, and costs $16. Well worth it.

Growl (Alerts you of events, such as new messages, new mail, etc)

DoubleCommand (Lets you change key mapping. My right option key is an enter key. Also, allows you to flip the Windows and Alt keys when using a keyboard with the Windows key layout.)

Cuckoo (Gives me my handy little Timex-watch alarm hourly)

Xmarks for Safari (Allows bookmarks to be synched to a central location)

Notify (Puts gmail widget in menubar, announces new messages)

Sizzling Keys (Allows control of iTunes from any application via keyboard commands)

Programs:

Tweetie (Favorite Twitter client)

Google Chrome (Favorite Browser) With AdBlock & Xmarks Addons

Firefox (Second-favorite Browser) With AdBlock & Xmarks Addons

Skype (Allows video chat and audio conference calls between Skype users)

Adium (Fantastic chat client, fully customizable)

Alarm (Plays iTunes music at a specified time of day)

LibreOffice (NeoOffice for the Mac-native interface.) A full office suite, open-source! Previously OpenOffice.

VirtualBox (A virtual machine software by Sun Microsystems, allows Windows to run at the same time as Mac OSX. Unfortunately it’s a bit slower than Parallels 6, and a bit more limited, in both features and support. But hey, it’s free and open-source!)

Mactracker (An almost full archive of Apple hardware. Pull up the system specs of your Performa 6220CD from 1995!)

coconutBattery (Gives you all the data on your laptop’s battery)

PandoraBoy (Allows playback of Pandora internet radio from an application instead of a webpage)

VLC (Fairly universal media reader for Mac)

Editor’s Note

Here’s a fun add-on for anyone who grew up in the NES/8-bit generation. It’s so cool I couldn’t help but throw it in!

Mega Man Effect (Mimics the level start screen/sounds from the classic Mega Man II whenever you launch an application! Good for a quick laugh.)
-BB

Have a favorite free app or add-on that was left out? Feel free to comment below!

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