Ten Free Mac OS X Programs that Make the PC to Mac Switch a Breeze

22 June 2008 20,329 views 21 Comments

With more and more attorneys adopting Macs throughout their offices every day and the business world raving about the cost effectiveness of Mac OS X, today Macs are an accepted and feasible alternative to Windows in the legal community. Having recently made the switch to a Mac myself, I’ve put together a list of the top ten free Max OS X programs that made switching from a PC to a Mac a breeze.

1. Quicksilver
Quicksilver is a program launcher that uses simple commands to rapidly bring up any program, file, folder, or website. Quicksilver learns what files and programs are most often accessed and adapts so that those items are pulled up almost instantaneously when the user starts typing the name of the item in the Quicksilver interface.

For example, in screenshot below, I pulled up the Quicksilver interface with a single keystroke and then by typing in “ex” brought up Excel. Using the tab key I was able to bring up specific commands such as the option to open a specific excel document, move a document to another folder, or email a specific file. Quicksilver is very intuitive and allows users to execute specific commands so quickly that using the built-in OS X dock to open a program seems slow by comparison.

2. Anxiety

Anxiety brings the iCal task list to your desktop. It provides easy access to your to-do list so that tasks can be added or marked as complete without opening your full calendar. Anxiety stays in sync with iCal and disappears when not in use.

3. Caffeine

OS X has a great power saving feature built-in: after a short period of inactivity the screen automatically dims. Caffeine allows you to turn this feature on and off with a single click so that presentations can be run without interruption. It also prevents your Mac from going to sleep or starting the screensaver.

4. Growl

Growl provides unobtrusive notification messages from various programs that run on OS X, including Adium, Firefox, and iTunes. They simply pop up as semi-transparent notifications on the top right corner of your screen and then disappear.

5. Adium

Adium is by far the best instant messaging program I have ever used. You can seamlessly send messages to your friends using various protocols including AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, and MSN Messenger. Adium also supports tabbed conversations so you can keep all your conversations in a single window.

6. Smultron

While there are a number of free text editors available for OS X, my favorite is Smultron. Smultron allows you to have multiple documents open at the same time in an easy-to-use tabbed interface. Another popular free text editor for OS X is TextWrangler while users who want a word processing application with features closer to what Word or Pages offers, Bean is worth checking out.

7. Skim

Skim is a PDF reader that is cut above Preview, the default viewer in OS X, because of Skim’s enhanced markup capabilities. You can easily add notes, highlight portions the document, and quickly jump from one marked-up section to the next through a convenient side panel. Skim also allows you to create presentations and then run the presentations using the Apple Remote.

8. VLC
VLC is media player that supports most modern digital video formats including the DVD format and various streaming protocols. Installing VLC will save you the trouble of having to find a compatible player every time you need to play a new media format.

9. iStat Menu

One of my favorite features in Vista is the pop-up calendar that is displayed when you click on the time in the taskbar. iStat Menu brings that feature to OS X. It also allows you to display multiple time zones, open your iCal calendar, and add additional menus that display everything from the temperature of your Mac to the remaining space on your hard drives.

10. Rachota

Rachota allows users to track the time spent on various projects. Rachota can also summarize how much time was spent on each project and provide helpful time-maximizing tips.

Written by Benson Varghese. ♦ Contact Benson.♦ Have Res Ipsa Blog delivered to you.

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21 Comments »

Ryan said:

Switching to the Mac was the best move I made. Quicker than my PC and much easier to use. Lots of free applications too.

# 24 June 2008 at 4:01 am

Alex D said:

Great collection!

# 24 June 2008 at 5:25 am

Anwalt für Erbrecht said:

Nice post. Really liked it..
I am looking forward to updates and reading more stuff from you ..

# 24 June 2008 at 6:58 am

GK said:

Caffeine? I don’t understand. What you have written about this stuff is a standard feature of the OS X Energy Saver Preferences…

# 26 June 2008 at 1:39 am

paul said:

Thanks for the information.
I recently switched to a mac and now I miss a pc…These programs made me feel at home again. Excellent!! very informative article.

# 26 June 2008 at 2:22 am

Alvin Brinson (author) said:

What about all my games?

What about custom skins (like windowblinds)?

What about a driver for my HP Laserjet 1018 that doesn’t require manually compiling foo2zjs or whatever?

What about my ScanJet 3970?

What about my Logitech S510 Desktop Remote control?

I tried the switch. Too many things didn’t just work. Went back to my dual core Opteron.

# 26 June 2008 at 4:36 am

ste said:

Can’t understand why everybody is pushing VLC while MPlayer is far better

# 1 July 2008 at 2:10 am

Anthony Lawrence said:

I still see Quicksilver on everyone’s list, but for me, Spotlight is all I need. I HATED Spotlight before 10.5, but now I use it all the time.

# 2 July 2008 at 8:34 am

eipoe1 said:

Love the mac. Now if we can only more games programmed for it!

# 3 July 2008 at 5:59 am

paresh said:

useful article.

# 3 July 2008 at 7:44 am

Chris said:

Nice list! I’ll definitely give Caffeine a try!

Anyway, there’s one big one you forgot, knowing that you lawyers love crunching numbers and sending immaculately word-processed threatening letters to people: NeoOffice (www.neooffice.org)! It’s an all-in-one office suite based on OpenOffice that’s Mac-native, and as a bonus, it will do a great job reading and writing in all those Microsoft Office formats as well. (You can also download OpenOffice and run it with X11, but that’s a real pain in the a$$, especially if you don’t know what I’m talking about)

Now here’s another one, if you get homesick (?!?) for Windows: VirtualBox (www.virtualbox.org)! It’s a free (for personal, not commercial use) virtualizer so that you can run Windows (or Linux or any other x86 OS you like) in a window on your OS X Desktop. I like it because after I meticulously design a document, I like to know it looks stunning in Windows before I send it out to all those Microsofties out there!

Best wishes to y’all, but if you send me a summons, I’ll sic the dog on ya!

# 6 July 2008 at 11:06 pm

Chris said:

I forgot to add that Cyberduck (cyberduck.ch) is probably the best FTP/SFTP client for the Mac today, and PaintBrush (http://sourceforge.net/projects/paintbrush) is a good replacement for Microsoft Paint.

# 7 July 2008 at 12:15 am

Benson Varghese said:

Thank you all for the comments!

GK - Caffeine allows you to turn off the power saving features with a single click making it easier to use than going into Preferences.

Alvin - You can boot into Windows on a Mac to play all your games. As far as skins, I would argue that once you use OS X, you really won’t want to change the way it looks. You can use the Apple Remote as a replacement for your desktop remote. For a list of HP printers that work out of the box with OS X, check out http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/fastFaqLiteDocument?lc=it&cc=it&dlc=it&docname=bpm35003.

Ste- I haven’t tried mPlayer out myself, but I have heard some great things about it. I’ll look into it. Thanks for the tip.

Anthony- I agree Spotlight is phenomenal at searching. Quicksilver not only finds programs and documents, it allows you to run specific commands as the program is opening. It saves a couple of steps in your regular workflow.

Chris - Thanks for the recommendations. VirtualBox sounds like a free alternative to alternative to Parallels, but I would guess that most readers will find BootCamp easier to use. I agree with your comments on Cyberduck and I’m looking forward to trying out PaintBrush. Thanks!

# 7 July 2008 at 7:06 am

Chris said:

@Benson- You’re right, VirtualBox is a free alternative to Parallels, but I beg to differ on BootCamp being easier as it has one major drawback: You have to reboot whenever you want to use a different OS. With virtualization software (VirtualBox, Parallels, VMWare, etc.) you can run multiple OS’s at the same time, transfer files between them, and copy/paste between them.

# 7 July 2008 at 7:28 pm

Brice said:

To all of those asking about games on Mac:

First of all, this is clearly not the focus of this article.

Secondly, I know it’s an extreme cop-out, but you can run Windows through Boot Camp on new Apples.

Someone needs to translate Wine (a Linux program that runs an efficient emulator for Windows games) for MacOSX, IMO. They’re both Unix-based operating systems, after all.

# 11 July 2008 at 9:41 pm

nobu said:

A nice spreadsheet app is Tables:

http://www.x-tables.eu/more/overview.html

Some driver are listed on

http://osx.hyperjeff.net/Apps/

e.g.

http://plentycom.jp/en/steermouse/

Just my two cents!

# 12 July 2008 at 4:33 am

John Di Giacomo said:

Great post Benson. I’m a big fan of Circus Ponies Notebook and DevonThink Pro. I use Notebook for my in-class notes, and I’m sure it would make an excellent trial prep tool. DevonThink Pro is great for case management as well. Green law firms can use DevonThink to cut down on paper waste, and its AI is excellent for searching documents and other legal file formats.

# 17 July 2008 at 6:31 pm

endy said:

thanks for the list, i love growl

# 23 July 2008 at 6:29 am

Zii said:

I would add Tiger Launch to that list. It stimulates something similar to the start menu, and is particularly handy if you don’t want your dock crowded. its a little paw print on the top next to the date.

# 23 July 2008 at 7:00 am

Jeffry Santana said:

Hi, i need a softwware for mac, of course, that work equals to quickbooks pro timer, only the timer, this softw is a timer project, please, don’t tell me fusion and parallels.

# 30 July 2008 at 9:22 am

admin said:

Jeffery - Here is a discussion of billable time tracking software for Macs that might point you in the right direction. While I haven’t used it myself, WorkTimer sounds like a sold free application that might suit your needs. http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=300665

ZII - Thanks for the tip. I like how unobtrusive it is. http://www.ranchero.com/tigerlaunch/

John - I’ve heard really good things about Circus Ponies and am looking forward to giving it a good trial run this Fall semester. I’ll check out DevonThink as well.

Thanks for the comments.

# 1 August 2008 at 6:38 am