MacMembraneThere are peels everywhere…

About two weeks ago I wrote up a list of 10 Freeware Apps to Immediately Install on a Fresh Mac. This list was targeted at first time Mac users, and besides attributing to this group a rather general interest in music and movies, I made no assumptions about how they would use their computers. I focused on these users because I had recently restored two Apple computers for friends who were new to OS X and, wanting them to have a great first experience (how could they not?), I loaded up their machines as best I could.

All of the applications from the previous list have a home on my own computer, but of course they have lots of company. Here are 10 more freeware apps of a slightly more specialized nature. I think that the majority of users will find them all useful over time.

Quicksilver:

In essence, Quicksilver is a keyboard based application and document launcher, but beneath the surface Quicksilver is a powerful and versatile little creature. Compose emails or send files without opening Mail, rename, move, copy or compress files, manipulate images, supercharge your clipboard, add system wide keyboard shortcuts to common actions and scripts and much, much more. Moreover, there is a multitude of application specific plugins for Quicksilver which extend its amazing out-of-the-box functionality even further. After climbing the learning curve, Quicksilver will make any user more efficient and productive, reducing if not completely eliminating trips to the Finder. It’s the Mac application that I couldn’t live without.

Download Quicksilver.

NetNewsWire:

Subscribing to RSS feeds makes consuming a massive amount of online content convenient and easy, and NetNewsWire is the absolute cream of RSS readers for the Mac. Group feeds by folders and smart folders, display unread articles in any number of ways, open articles in an external browser or in NetNewsWire itself, save notable articles or text clippings for later use and read all of your news using only the spacebar. NetNewsWire also comes with a large selection of ‘themes’ to customize the experience to your taste and integrates with other popular Mac apps. NetNewsWire is super fast, super stable and way powerful.

Download NetNewsWire.

Cyberduck:

Cyberduck is a remote file browser that supports FTP, FTP/TLS and SFTP transfers and integrates seamlessly with all the most popular Mac text editors. Easy bookmarking, access to bookmarks from the Finder, server history, smart memory of interrupted transfers, keychain integration, Quick Look support, powerful directory synchronization and an adorable and functional dashboard widget all make Cyberduck a top condender among Mac FTP clients. It also has extensive AppleScript support if your up to adding features of your own or automating existing ones. Top it all off with a user-friendly interface, and Cyberduck packs a huge punch for a free application.

Download Cyberduck.

TextWrangler:

A free text editor from the makers of BBEdit, TextWrangler lets you compose and edit plain-text and Unicode files with ease. TextWrangler supports syntax coloring and language specific options for a wide variety of coding protocols, has comprehensive AppleScript support, configurable keyboard shortcuts for often typed code and an integrated spell-checker. TextWrangler lets you search and replace text across multiple documents and even has a ‘Gremlin Zapper’ to purge your documents of unintended invisible elements. TextWrangler integrates with Cyberduck without configuration. It’s a rock solid application.

Download TextWrangler.

Audacity:

Audacity is a multi-track cross-platform audio editor with an intuitive interface and powerful features. Record live, edit sound files in popular formats, cut, copy, splice and mix diverse sounds, adjust the speed or pitch of a track independently and export your creation to mp3. Audacity is a cross-platform application and while its interface may not be the most Mac-like, it is nevertheless easy to access all of its features. Most Macs come with GarageBand preinstalled, but Audacity’s unique and easy to use feature set makes it a must-have alternative for audiophiles.

Download Audacity.

VoodooPad Lite:

Most people have heard of Wikis - online self-linking documents that allow users to modify or extend any webpage. They are a great way to organize a body of knowledge and are steadily gaining popularity online. VoodooPad Lite brings the power of the wiki to your desktop by allowing you to create your own multi-page local documents and link between them via text and images. VoodooPad’s simple interface makes quick work of linking pages and creating new pages on your wiki is just as easy. Use it to take class or meeting notes, organize research, plot a novel or just about anything you can think of. VoodooPad is an extremely versatile and unique application.

Download VoodooPad Lite.

Songbird:

Songbird is a desktop media player with an integrated web browser for reading music blogs and listening to online audio files. Until recently, Songbird felt somewhat unMac-like, without support for even the most common keyboard shortcuts applicable in nearly all Mac applications. With the 0.5 release, this has changed. Bookmark your favorite music blogs, create online playlists and download songs directly into your Songbird library. Songbird reads all the same audio file tags as iTunes, so importing your iTunes Library is as easy as pointing Songbird to your music folder. Though still in beta, Songbird is an innovative application with lots of potential.

Download Songbird.

Cocoalicious:

Cocoalicious is a freeware client for the popular Del.icio.us online bookmarking service. Upon first launch, Cocoalicious will download all of your online bookmarks and tags for quick viewing within the application. It also has a rudimentary browser window for viewing the source of individual bookmarks without the need to open them in an external browser. Posting new bookmarks to your account is easy, too. Highlight some descriptive text from an article, hit the included bookmarklet and enter some tags for your new bookmark (Cocoalicious will autocomplete your partially typed tags for you). Cocoalicious makes managing your Del.icio.us bookmarks easy and fun.

Download Cocoalicious.

Bean:

TextWrangler is great for editing plain-text files, but most people want a rich-text editor (i.e., a word processor), too. Bean is fast and light and has an easy to use interface. It offers writers a live word count, a page layout mode, the ability the import/export a bunch of popular text formats and, as a native Cocoa app, tight integration with OS X. Moreover, Bean is solid and quite pretty overall. And though Bean doesn’t include many of the flagship features of MS Word or Open Office, for most writing tasks Bean gets the job done with style.

Download Bean.

AppFresh:

Currently there are 118 apps in my applications folder, and while most of these alert me if there is an update available when I launch them, it can be a little annoying to open an app to get some work done only to have to wait while it downloads and installs an update (I know that you can ignore these, but I never do). With AppFresh you can batch update all of your applications at once without the need to open each one individually. AppFresh integrates with the extensive IUseThis online database to grab the latest versions of each application on your machine and installs them automatically. I run AppFresh about once a week to avoid the hassles involved in maintaining a fully up-to-date cache of applications.

Download AppFresh.

These ten applications combined with the ten from the previous list are a great start if you’re new to the Mac platform. If you’re not, I hope that you’ve found one or two that you weren’t familiar with and have a chance to play around with them. Of course, let me know in the comments if I’ve neglected any of your favorites.