Instant Messaging:
[x]
Adium is the best free, open-source application for IM. It supports AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk, ICQ, and other protocols. However, it's file transfer support may sometimes fail on you. Keep iChat as a back-up for file transfer over the AIM protocol (its file transfer support over MSN usually works, however).
[x]
Skype is my preferred program for audio chat and conferencing. iChat also supports audio chat over the AIM protocol.
[x]
MSN Messenger for Mac is an almost-barebones, fairly decent port of the bloated Windows counterpart. Adium does everything MSN for Mac does, however, if you are used to the interface or prefer to use an "official" product, MSN for Mac is surprisingly decent (despite not supporting many of the features the Windows version does, although in some cases that's not a bad thing).
[x] Avoid AIM for Mac and Yahoo! IM for Mac.
Media Players:
[x] QuickTime and iTunes are my preferred choices for everything they're supposed to play. However, if you come across files that you can't play, there are several other players that you'll probably need sooner or later.
[x]
VLC Player can play most files you throw at its direction. It's the only major player on the Mac that supports OGG/OGM files without any plug-ins. It can even play most WMA files, and earlier WMV (codec 1/2) files. It also has full DVD support, in case you don't like DVD Player (although that app is pretty kickass). VLC will also play nearly any AVI files that QuickTime doesn't, including the DivX format without any extra plug-ins. It also has fullscreen playback if you're not up to paying for QuickTime Pro. VLC is a must.
[x]
Windows Media Player for Mac is, unfortunately, a necessary evil if you plan on watching any newer WMV (codec 3) files. It also comes with a plug-in that allows you to play embedded Windows Media content in your Safari browser. The program, when installed, will open all files to play in a default size, so really low bitrate files will look in exceptionally poor quality until you tell the player to open in each file's custom resolution in the Settings. In one odd area where it outshines QuickTime, it includes fullscreen playback.
[x]
RealPlayer OS X I find using less and less lately, because fewer sites seem to be using the crummy RealMedia format now. However, it's still necessary to play these files, and it also includes fullscreen playback for every file format that QuickTime supports. Just avoid their "14-day free trial" and get the free player, of course.
FTP:
[x]
Cyberduck meets all of my needs in this area.
HTML:
[x] TextEdit, AppleWorks, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel will save your files as HTML, however the HTML code will be full of 'junk code', so if you prefer to write your own basic HTML, the following free programs should suffice.
[x]
SubEthaEdit costs $15 for commerical use, but it's free for personal use, and it's quite good. It is perfect for saving as *.TXT, a format which TextEdit can open, read, and save modifications to but cannot create new files of. However, I use it mainly for hand-writing HTML code. It also does CSS, JavaScript, and other formats. No fancy lay-outs or templates; it all needs to be hand-written.
[x]
Taco HTML Edit is another great freeware program for writing HTML code by hand. It's a bit easier to use than SubEthaEdit, also.
Browsers:
[x] I alternate between Safari and Firefox for primary browsing. As a general rule, even if you intend on using Safari for most tasks, if you'll have one backup browser,
Firefox should be it. (If your Mac ships with Microsoft Internet Explorer for Mac, you can probably delete it. I did and I have come across no sites that whine at me to use Internet Explorer yet.)
[x]
iCab is an excellent, underrated browser. It has been remembered in the past for horrific CSS support. That changed with version 3, which even passes the Acid2 test (Safari and Konqueror are the only other browsers capable of doing so, to my knowledge). iCab also has an amazing slew of power user features including filters and ad blocking; other free browsers need extensions or plug-ins (such as Adblock for Firefox) for these purposes. Gmail does not support iCab, even though iCab is fully capable of doing so; you will view Gmail in HTML format when using iCab (which is useful if you ever have the displeasure of using a dial-up connection).
[x]
Camino, like Firefox, is built on the Gecko rendering engine, but features a more 'Mac-like' interface. It is also the only browser besides Safari that allows you to change your default browser (an important setting that Apple took out of the main System Preferences).
[x]
Opera has a slow start-up time, but once it's started up I find the browser to be about as fast as the others. My favorite feature about Opera is that it automatically saves the tabs you had open when you quit the application, so when you re-open it the webpages you were viewing are right there. It even saves your web sessions when it crashes (which is rare, and happens to all browsers occasionally) and you have to restart the application.
Mail:
[x] I just use Apple Mail. If it's not to your liking, there's also
Thunderbird.
Other Great Stuff:
[x] Although Preview is king of PDFs on the Macintosh,
Adobe Reader will allow you to read your PDFs full screen (much more ideal for eBooks and other long files). Beware, however, that the application is quite slow and takes up considerable drive space (nearly 90 MB just for a PDF reader).
[x]
Audacity is an excellent open source audio editing application. It has plenty of effects and a good interface (although it is somewhat slow on the Mac), and it will convert OGG files to MP3. The new beta even claims to support AAC and the audio from MOV files, although I haven't tried it out yet. The AAC/MOV support is a Mac-only feature.
[x]
Audio Recorder runs faster than Audacity, and supports more file formats. It's also a little easier to use. Don't mistake it for an audio editor, though; it's main use is for recording. Consider it the equivelant to Windows Sound Recorder, only better.
[x]
DVD Capture allows you to take screenshots (in JPG format) from a disc playing in the Apple DVD Player.
[x]
ffmpegX is a shareware program (the only limitation for using it free is a dialog box asking for a donation at start-up) that converts nearly anything to anything. This will convert MOV to MPG, WMA to MP3, and it even does DVD/VCD stuff, although I haven't tried that out. A very useful app nonetheless.
[x]
FileJuicer will extract images out of Microsoft Office documents, extract all of the items out of compressed browser caches, and it will even open zip-like EXE files (not programs, but those files you occasionally come across that contain an archive of files in EXE instead of a more common format such as ZIP or RAR).
[x]
FrostWire is a free p2p program that connects to the gnutella network. Unlike LimeWire, it contains no nagging screen asking you to upgrade to the "PRO" version at start-up, because FrostWire is completely free and has no Pro version. However, it lags a little, and definitely wasn't built with the Macintosh in mind. But it's useful if you're into file sharing, and better than LimeWire.
[x]
HandBrake will rip chapters on a DVD video disc into MPEG-4 or AVI format, with customizable bitrate, size, and audio settings.
[x]
iBackup is a freeware backup utility. I just got this one today (I'm a freeware junkie too), so I haven't used it much, but it looks quite solid.
[x]
iPodDisk will allow you to copy the songs off of an iPod.
[x]
iSquint is a conversion program that is less complicated than ffmpegX, but also less customizable; it is meant to convert AVI, MPG, and MOV files to the format that latest generation iPods are able to read. For heavy duty conversions or converting to anything other than the iPod (MPEG-4) format, ffmpegX is probably more useful in that regard.
[x] MacTheRipper was a DVD extractor for Mac OS X. Its website appears to have been taken down due to legal threats from Macrovision.
[x]
PNGCrusher is a tiny little app that lets you drag and drop a PNG image file into it and it will attempt to crush down the PNG file size to the smallest file size possible without a loss of quality.
[x]
Tomato Torrent is a simple, easy-to-use BitTorrent client for Mac OS X.
