Soroush Javidi

In the previous post, I wrote about some shortcuts and tips that new Mac users would be interested in (I certainly was looking for such things when I got a mac computer). In this post, I will write about several free applications that I have found useful or sought after to replace my favourite programs on Windows. So let's start:

1. Transmission  It's always useful to have a BitTorrent cleint handy and Transmission is a great one. There are several available for the Mac platform such as Tomato Torrent, Azureus and Bits on Wheels, but in my opinion this one is better than all of the others (except for Azureus, but we'll get to that). The program is beautiful itself and has a mac feel, and it really is lightweight, giving you the bare essentials of your download. One feature that it [in my opnion] may be lacking is the option to choose the files that are to be downloaded, rather than download all as bulk.

2. Azureus Some times Transmission may not be suitable for use and that's when Azureus comes to play. It is (as others have also said) a resource hog. My MacBook Pro did go very hot while using it, so I try to avoid it. Also, get the special Universal Binary Version if are using Intel Macs, as the other version didn't work for me.

3. Firefox (+ extensions) If you used Firefox on Window, then you'd probably like to use Firefox on mac as well. There's also Safari which comes with the mac OS and Camino which is more mac-like, but I think it's lacking in some features such as tab manipulation which can be achieved with Firefox. It also doesn't have the simple Search Web for... option when you right-click on a highlighted text, which I find very useful for me. If you know of a work-around do tell me. There's also Shiira. You may also be interested in getting optimised builds for your machine from website as there is also an Intel version available.

4. Smultron  I used notepad++ on Windows as a replacement for the bundled Notepad. I've been using Smultron on mac for a while now, thought there's also TextMate, but it's not free. You can create a project and have all your files in view, has syntax highlighting and re-opens files once the program is run. If it only had matching brace highlight like Notepad++ I'd be very happy. Actually, in the preferences, the option is present, but I haven't seen it to work, weird!

5. Adium Very nice looking Instant Messaging client. You can customise it however you like. It's just good, that's all! You can connect to msn, Yahoo and more using it.

6. VLC  I've used VLC to listen to MP3 CDs (which included .wma file) , watch DVDs, listen to streaming music (though the titles didn't show). Very useful software to have when you want to watch videos.

7. Stuffit Expander I needed to open a .rar file and that's when I downloaded this software. Not really a favourite of mine, as I only use it to open obscure compressed files. It'll come in handy.

8. MAMP Do you work with PHP and MySQL? I do! And I'm sure you know that Mac OS X has a built in Apache webserver and comes with PHP. Despite that, I wanted an easy way to work with these, and MAMP (Mac, Apache, MySQL and PHP) is great. Just start the application and you get Apache and MySQL running. I like to use PHPMyAdmin, which also comes with this great app. If there are any other suggestions, please leave them in the comments. Maybe there's something that I've missed out!