Comments on: Cooler than the coolest cool?

Question: Cooler than the coolest cool?

adrober — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:17:14 -0800

What are the best free cool programs for a mac running OSX?

By: dobbs

dobbs — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:18:46 -0800

By: pedantic

pedantic — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:45:24 -0800

SubEthaEdit
Smultron
Paparazzi
Adium
SlimBattery
FuzzyClock

Notational Velocity, as dobbs suggested and without a doubt, Quicksilver. Must. Have.

A canonical list of canoncial lists is available at 43folders. Not all apps are free, but many are definitely worth a looksee. It's a great site to follow too.

By: anathema

anathema — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:47:10 -0800

Quicksilver. Personally, I could never bond with Notational Velocity.

By: boaz

boaz — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:49:56 -0800

Quicksilver is the coolest. [I knew before I hit preview that I couldn't possibly be the first one to mention it]

I prefer VoodooPad Lite to Notational Velocity for my note-taking, but, hey, I'm a wiki freak, so don't trust me.

MenuMeters and uControl also rock.

By: pedantic

pedantic — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:04:38 -0800

My bad: I forgot SideTrack (if you've got a PowerBook or iBook).

By: Remy

Remy — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:13:27 -0800

Fourth vote for Quicksilver.

By: majick

majick — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:25:38 -0800

This thread was a goldmine for me when I bought a Mac.

Also: Notational Velocity.

By: nathan_teske

nathan_teske — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:26:08 -0800

Mail.appetizer is always neat.

By: grimley

grimley — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:27:17 -0800

net news wire
acquisition
anything by Omnigroup
oh, and that Quicksilver thing.

on preview mail.appetizer is great. been using it for only a couple of days...

By: majick

majick — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:30:13 -0800

Also, this thread has lots of gems.

By: boaz

boaz — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:39:58 -0800

Also,

RBrowser Lite - ftp client
Fugu - sftp/scp client
NetNewsWire Lite - Still the best RSS reader IMHO, well not including NetNewsWire. ;)
VLC - Video player that plays darn near anything.
Desktop Manager - Multiple desktops w/ pager ala X Windows. Tons of options.
WinSwitch - user switching doodad for Panther that uses an icon rather than your full name.
AppKido - Cocoa doc browser
Aqualess - less replacement that launches separate viewer app
Eclipse - ridiculously extensible Java IDE
CocoaBooklet - makes booklets out of any print job
MailEnhancer - A plugin for Mail.app. The only feature I use is to make it display number of unread mails in all mailboxes instead of just the inbox, but it does a couple of other things too

By: revgeorge

revgeorge — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:42:26 -0800

Another vote for Quicksilver, but I also would suggest reading this introduction to the program. I had it installed for two months before I read that and figured out what the fuss was all about.

By: adrober

adrober — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:58:17 -0800

Thanks guys, these are really cool... I knew I asked the right crowd :)

By: Dreama

Dreama — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 21:07:13 -0800

Safari Enhancer which, among other things, can kill the omnipresent brushed chrome. SnapNDrag for easy, targeted screenshots. MacJournal for personal (offline) journal keeping. Fugu for SFTP. Sizzling Keys gives user-defined hotkey control to iTunes. Brickhouse to put a simpler interface onto OSX's integral firewall. Wiretap which captures audio from streams or any other source (good for making your own system sounds from CDs, DVDs, etc.). Escape Pod which allows for easy zapping of an app or GUI interface item that's hanging. MacJanitor to keep things tidy. WeatherPop sits in your menu bar and provides the temperature and weather condition. The freeware version is very adequate, the full featured version is only $8.

By: inksyndicate

inksyndicate — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 21:43:01 -0800

I second Wiretap. I noticed that under Windows, it's much harder to find a program like this, and many include spyware.

By: invisible ink

invisible ink — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 21:53:48 -0800

Also, the October 2004 issue of MacAddict is all about the best shareware apps.

By: majick

majick — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:12:42 -0800

Meteorologist is a WeatherPop-alike and completely free. Downside: it scrapes weather.com, which is usually wrong.

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 00:12:11 -0800

I second Wiretap. I noticed that under Windows, it's much harder to find a program like this, and many include spyware.

There's a program called MP3DirectCut that does the same thing (except to MP3 format). It's about a 100KB download, totally free, no spyware. I wish it had a (free) equivalent on OS X.. I still go back to my PC to use it. A full MP3 editing program in 100KB is magic in my eyes.

By: anathema

anathema — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 04:05:08 -0800

PDF Browser Plug-In and Word Browser Plug-In.

By: Remy

Remy — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 11:54:11 -0800

revgeorge - thanks for the link, it's always good to know people are still using the tutorial.

Also forgot to mention in my last post:
fiwt - Safari hack for find-as-you-type. Life saver.
Teleport - rendezvous-based virtual kvm. A little buggy but works well enough.

And if you're running servers, ditch Apple's Apache install and use the packages from Server Logistics.

By: ook

ook — Sun, 03 Oct 2004 07:58:59 -0800

Nobody mentioned konfabulator!