Essential Apps for Your Mac

ByMike Moffit

My mind is in Spring Cleaning mode right now (maybe because this weather is ridiculously unseasonable?). In between scrubbing the wet paw prints from my entryway due to an early onset of the dreaded Mud Season, I figured I’d do an audit of all of the apps on my Mac to find the ones I’d classify as truly “essential.”

The following excerpt, originally featured in Kibbles & Bytes issue #623, was a perfect starting point for multiple reasons: the apps mentioned are free, it includes two of my favorite “de-clutter” apps and finally, because it’s fitting that it was written by Ed since we’re watching Spy (and her mud tracks) while he’s out of town.

*****

OnyX is a multifunction maintenance, optimization, and personalization utility for Mac OS X. I use it about once a month or so to keep all my Macs running smoothly.

OnyX allows you to verify your Mac’s Startup Disk and the structure of its System files, run miscellaneous tasks of system maintenance, configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, Safari and some of Apple’s own applications, delete caches, remove cumbersome files and folders and more.

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, more) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

In other words, VLC will play back many file formats that the QuickTime Player, Windows Media Player, etc. can’t handle. Best of all, VLC doesn’t need any external codecs or programs to work.

Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor (or more precisely, a rich text editor), designed to make writing convenient and efficient. Bean is Open Source, fully Cocoa, and is available free of charge!

Bean includes many writing essentials including a live word count, a Get Info panel for in-depth statistics, a zoom-slider to easily change the view scale,
an Inspector panel with lots of sliders, date-stamped backups, auto-saving, page layout mode and more.

I combine Bean with Think for efficient, clutter-free writing.

NetNewsWire is an easy-to-use RSS and Atom reader for your Mac. It allows you to browse, subscribe, read, and save hundreds of thousands of website feeds. It is a true desktop Mac application, with integration with Spotlight, Address Book, iCal, iPhoto, Growl, Twitterific and more. Best of all, it effortlessly syncs with NetNewsWire’s web-based RSS reader for free, allowing you to manage all your RSS feeds from any Internet-connected computer (Mac or PC).

Handbrake is an open-source, multithreaded video transcoder available for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. It will convert just about any video file you can play on your Mac into a variety of other, easier to play, more portable video formats. Most people use HandBrake to back up their DVDs, or convert a DVD into a file that can be played back on their iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PS3, etc. Use it as you will. HandBrake has been updated substantially over the past several years since its initial release

I admit, since Time Machine debuted, I don’t use this app as much as I used to. However, for simple, successful backups, Carbon Copy Cloner can’t be beat. You can also use CCC3 for backing up across network, backup to disk images, and backup of selected files only. CCC 3 features an interface designed to make the cloning and backup procedure very intuitive. In addition to general backup, CCC can also clone one hard drive to another, copying every single block or file to create an exact replica of your source hard drive.

Forget the other commercial unarchiving apps (like the free version of StuffIt)—the Unarchiver is all you need. Uncompress RAR, 7zip, tar, and bz2 files on your Mac. The developer notes the “many new Mac users will be puzzled the first time they download a RAR file. Do them a favor and download UnRarX for them!”

Google SketchUp is used to create, modify and share 3D models of anything you like. I know a few people who used SketchUp extensively to plan and pre-visualize house renovations. I’ve used it to create a virtual set for planning camera placement. There are dozens of video tutorials, an extensive Help Center and a worldwide user community for SketchUp, making it relatively easy to learn.

Want to remove some of the apps you’ve downloaded here, or downloaded in the past? Try AppCleaner. It’s a small application which allows you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps. Installing an application distributes many files throughout your System, using space of your Hard Drive unnecessarily. AppCleaner finds all these small files and safely deletes them.

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