Jaems’ top ten picks for Leopard-friendly Macintosh Freeware
By Jaems • Mar 26th, 2008 • Category: TutorialsIn ascending order of joy:
These ten applications let you do what Apple should be letting you do. And they are free. Help put a stop to software piracy!
10. TacoHTML
TacoHTML is an HTML editor but it is not WYSIWYG. But the real beauty of Taco is that you can open and edit basically any kind of web document. It has a jump to line feature, colored tags, spell checking, code checking, live preview, and site saving and browsing. It is great for editing PHP. Unlike its close competition, NVU and Mozilla Composer, TacoHTML doesn’t force tags and formatting upon saving a document. This means it’s not hard to do something dreadful while working with it, but at the same time, it doesn’t “think” for you. It is a clean and extremely fast-launching application.
9. CaptureMe
CaptureMe is a screen shot application. Beyond normal screen shot capabilities (which your Mac can already handle very capably), CaptureMe offers the ability to capture screen movies. This means that it is a worthy and free competitor to the sort-of pricey, yet highly functional SnapzPro. CaptureMe is not as stable or as well-developed as SnapzPro, but it can rescue you at times when you least expect it.
8.DoNA:the Domain name Analyzer
DoNA is a neat application. You can use it to check the availability and/or expiration date of any website. You can also use its built-in whois feature to find registrants of many sites, when possible. It will generate sitenames based on availability and keywords that you can either manually enter, or load from a preset library of terms. You can then save a session so that you can easily keep an eye out for that domain name you are lusting after.
7.Lab Tick
Lab Tick is a small menu item that allows users to control the backlighting of their Powerbook or Macbook Pro keyboards. Apple does not give you access to it, but Lab Tick does. It’s free, and with the latest update, users can now use the built-in control panel to teach it hotkeys for toggling on and off, and for increasing / decreasing brightness.
This preference pane allows you to run Windows media formats through QuickTime. That means you can delete Windows Media Player for the Mac for good. I did. ‘Nuff said.
5.Switch
You have a .wav file on your desktop. You’d like to convert it to MP3. What do you do Well you can open it in QuickTime and try to export or save as. But MP3 is not an option. You can import it into iTunes, then convert to MP3 there. But then you fill up your library with two copies of a sound file that you most likely don’t even want in your iTunes library in the first place. Plus you need to drag and drop it back to the desktop when you are done, to prepare for the file to be emailed or whatever it is you want to do with it.
Or…. you can use Switch.
4.Adium
Adium lets you connect to any of several instant messenger clients – all in one window, and with tabs. You have access to most of the normal chat functions such as file sharing, avatars, and other preferences. However you may not use video or audio chat natively at this point in time, though there is a plugin that will allow you to do this. Do you have Mac Leopard? Do you use Yahoo messenger? Well, Adium is the solution until the day Yahoo decides to make Messenger compatible.
This is the Macintosh version of the popular Windows and Linux IRC client XChat. They decided to begin charging for the Windows version, but the Aqua version is still freeware. I am not sure how long it will be developed, but it is the best all around freeware Mac IRC client (in my opinion – and I have tried them all). It allows for customization of menu items, shortcuts, has a great interface, allows tabbed chatting, and runs Perl, TCL and Ruby modules as needed. This is only a small list of the things it can do.
Cyberduck calls itself “The FTP browser for OSX”. This is a tall claim, but completely justified. I have used the Duck as my only FTP client since it was in Alpha. It has gone through phases of slowness and crashing. But today it is a fully grown-up and feature packed client. It lets you view hidden files, upload and download in numerous formats, it has a dashboard widget, a support forum, a QuickSilver module, and lets you use FTP, SSH, and TLS connections. There seems to be no limit to what the good samaritans behind CyberDuck are willing to pack into it.
:::: AND THE FIRST PRIZE GOES TO ::::
Imagine an application launcher that does what Spotlight should do, just much better. Imagine an application where the developers won’t even let you donate to them. Instead, they tell you to send money to one of their favorite causes. Imagine launching everything at lightning speed – impressing the fingers off of your Windows friends. An app that is decorated with, and surely inspired by, the words of Zen Buddhism and TaoDeJing, this could be one of the hippest, coolest freeware projects I have ever seen.
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Good list..Capture Me is interesting. I’ve found iusethis.com for a source of popular apps and such. Off the top of my list would be the Unsanity products HERE, of course, as you’ve listed it already, Flip4Mac, and a few other good ones…for back up, Superduper, and a simple free one, iBackup….and an excellent vital info database, info.xhead, and another one by the Flip4Mac people, Drive In
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