MacMembraneThere are peels everywhere…

Everyone loves Freeware! But developers work hard on their creations, and giving everything away for free doesn’t pay the bills. Here are ten of my favorite shareware applications that I was more than happy to shell out a bit of cash for.

If you want freeware (and who doesn’t?) here’s 10 Apps for a Fresh Mac. And here’s ten more.

1Password

The internet is a scary place! As the monsters become smarter, you need to take precautions against their sinister designs. 1Password is a password manager for your Mac. Safari already saves passwords for you in your keychain, sure, but 1Password enhances this inbuilt capability ten-fold. Smartly save your new passwords from web forms in its database and autofill them the next time you visit. When it comes time to create a password for a new site or service, use 1Password’s strong password generator to make sure your form is secure. All of my passwords are now 28 characters of mixed letters, numbers and symbols – strings that I could never remember, but 1Password makes it so that I don’t have to. Peace of mind.

Download 1Password from Agile Web Solutions. 34.95 USD after a free trial period.

MarsEdit

I love blogging. But I love blogging even more because of MarsEdit. Far and away the best blogging client for the Mac, MarsEdit is akin to a plain text editor that lets you apply custom markup macros to your writing and send your work up to your weblog with a single click (or keystroke, in my case). Set up is dead simple, and despite MarsEdit’s power under the hood, the application is extremely intuitive and easy to use. And if your into scripting your apps, MarsEdit’s extensive AppleScript support won’t let you down (read about my MarsEdit workflow, with scripted goodness, here). Perhaps best of all, MarsEdit’s developer consistently releases maintenance builds between major updates and adds significant features almost monthly.

Get MarsEdit from Red Sweater Software. It’s 29.55 USD after a 30 day trial.

CSSEdit

CSSEdit lets you edit CSS (cascading style sheets) and preview the results of your experimentation instantly in its integrated browser. I can’t speak for experienced CSS mavens, but if you like to experiment and want to learn one of the most important aspects of the new web, CSSEdit is an amazing teacher. Install the included bookmarklet and open up any site you’re viewing in Safari in CSSEdit. Examine the code. Modify the code. Learn. View style hierarchies in the preview window, set new classes and ids via an HUD pop up and apply styles using comprehensive drop-down menus. When you’re satisfied, send your creation up the server via your favorite FTP application without leaving CSSEdit. The app may cost 30 Euros, but to me that’s cheap tuition.

Download CSSEdit from MacRabbit. It’s 29.95 Euro after a time unlimited demo with crippled saving.

WriteRoom

WriteRoom is the application in which I am writing up this post. Beautiful and fully customizable full-screen mode! I’ve tried the excellent Scrivener, but that application has far more firepower than I need – WriteRoom is simply full-screen, distraction free goodness. But WriteRoom has replaced TextEdit for me in most cases, and not because I need full-screen for everything I write, but because even when editing documents in a discreet window the application is completely soothing on the eyes. A nice, black text editor! WriteRoom’s extensive options let you set your text color and background to whatever you like, moreover, so if black isn’t your fancy, change it up. This is something of a luxury application, but whatever increases your ability to crank out words is worth the money in my opinion.

Download WriteRoom from Hog Bay Software. It’s 24.95 after a demo period.

Airfoil

If you have an Airport Express and haven’t heard of AirFoil, your time has come. The Airport Express comes equipped with AirTunes, which can send audio from iTunes to remote speakers over your network. Amazing! But what about Safari? Songbird? Or GarageBand? Install AirFoil and send audio from any application to your Airport Express. What about video? If you’re sending sound alone to your Airport Express, your Mac will buffer the output in maintain a clear signal. This makes video impossible to watch – you’ll see someone talking and hear what they say 3 seconds later. But Airfoil 3 comes with Airfoil Video Player, a full featured video app that syncs video with its audio output. It’s brilliant. Airfoil completes Apple’s Airport Express.

Get Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba. 25 USD after a demo which overlays noise on transmissions longer than 10 minutes.

Hazel

I wrote about how I use Hazel to keep my desktop organized and since I’ve taken the pill, I can’t imagine my Mac without it. Hazel is folder actions on steroids, without all of the AppleScript effort. It can monitor any folder on your Mac for incoming files and ‘do stuff’ with them – almost anything. Move jpegs from your downloads folder into Pictures, Mp3s into Music or PDFs into Documents. Set colors to your new folders an files or after a defined time, move or delete older files. Auto empty the trash at a certain size, delete your applications as well as all their associated files, trigger Automator actions, shell scripts or AppleScripts when the contents of a folder changes… I feel that there’s so much here that a discerning user will undoubtedly find new ways to use this diamond of an application. Amazing app.

Download Hazel from Noodlesoft. 21.95 USD after a two week trial.

XScope

If you do any kind of visual designing on your Mac, XScope is something you should check out. XScope is a color picker, on screen ruler set and light browser emulator rolled into one. XScope also allows you to draw Photoshopesque grids on your screen if you need to line things up vertically or horizontally. The application’s most novel feature, however, is a kind of smart measuring tool that lets you quickly (very quickly!) find the distance between two screen elements using an expanding ruler. XScope’s keyboard shortcuts are extensive and a bit of a learning curve must be overcome, but the application is designed thoughtfully and moreover is quite pretty in itself. If you use a bunch of separate tools to pick colors, take measurements and compare screen elements, XScope will replace them all and give you new tools that you never knew you needed.

Get XScope by The Iconfactory. It’s 26.95 USD after a 40 hours of usage.

FastScripts

Readers of MacMembrane know that I am an enthusiastic if amateur AppleScripter (check out my collection of free scripts). Your Mac comes with a built in menu-bar utility to access your scripts on the fly and that’s great, but once you try FastScripts you will see the poverty of Apple’s script menu. FastScripts lets you assign scripts to context specific folders which will only show up when their parent application is active. When I’m in Safari, for example, only my Safari scripts will be fully exposed in the top menu. To access your other scripts, just scroll down to their folder. More importantly, however, is that FastScripts lets you assign shortcuts to any or all of your scripts – hence the name of the application. There are, of course, freeware methods by which you can assign shortcuts to scripts or anything else (Quicksilver is my favorite), but it’s FastScripts’ elegant management of your AppleScripts that makes the application one of my favorites. If you script your Mac, FastScripts will make you smile.

Download FastScripts. 14.95 after a 30 trial. A free FastScripts Lite version is also available (download link near bottom of page).

QuickTime Pro

QuickTime Pro is a small up-sell that Apple sneaks into OS X. If you only have QT installed, have a look through the menus – many will be disabled until you shell out the cash for QT Pro. The upgrade gives you a wealth of export options, as well as a super quick way to slice up a video, adjust it’s sound or color range, or export it for the web. QuickTime Pro, as is to be expected, integrates tightly with all of iLife, so, for instance, you get a bunch more options when you export from iMovie. For small edits and tweaks to your movie files, QuickTime Pro is a great investment.

Get QuickTime Pro from Apple. It’s 29.95 USD.

TextExpander

TextExpander is a productivity tool that lets you reuse common snippets of text without retyping them over and over again. The utility sits in your menu bar and provides you with a folder organized list of your text snippets which you can insert into any document. I’ve heard it used most for replying to stock emails, but I use it whenever I’m working on a new website. When I open a blank CSS file, I enter into TextExpander all of the values that I will use over and over again in my style sheet. This makes it easy if I need to jump over to Photoshop to create an image using like colors or dimensions. It’s a quick way to work, and you can even download a bunch of stock snippets relating to XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. from the developer’s website. Amazing time and sanity saver.

Get TextExpander from Smile on my Mac. 29.95 USD after a 30 trial.

There we have it! There are so many sweet applications for the Mac that I could write a hundred posts like this. What are your favorites? Let me know in the comments!