Mac osx software you cant live without

The one I _really_ can't live without is LaunchBar. Not free (although there are free alternatives, I _really_ prefer the original here...), though. Looking at my Dock...

- Safari
- Mail.app
- Terminal.app
- Fetch
- iTunes
- VLC
- TVBrowser
- BBEdit
- Adobe CS/CS2/CS3 (I mix because I prefer InDesign and GoLive as the older versions and use Photoshop CS 3 beta)
- Preview

and the most important one: TextEdit. I use it to write my texts and books. It's really great for writing - at least if you're actually capable of writing and don't depend on too many gimmicks that "more evolved" (read: bloated) textprocessing apps 'feature'.
 
Synergy iTunes remote
AudioScrobbler
Photoshop
Illustrator
Flash
After Effects
Handbrake
Adium
Activity Monitor
Fetch
SNES9x
iTunes
 
- Butler. Honestly, I do miss some features of LaunchBar, like drag-n-drop support, but Butler does a million other things I can't live without, too, plus it's free and I can write my own extensions for it. It's like half a dozen must-have tools in one.

- PithHelmet. I consider Safari downright unusable without it. Safari won't even normally let me turn off gif animations! My eyes hurt just thinking about it...

- BBEdit Lite. It's so good that I stick with it instead of using its successor, TextWrangler. BBEdit Lite is just so much faster and simpler. I will use it until it no longer runs.

- Color It! My favorite graphics program from the old days is finally available for OS X. (It's not free, though, and there's not even a demo available yet, but I took the chance and put down the money for it, and I'm glad I did.) It is very obviously a port of a classic Mac OS app — it doesn't even have live window dragging! — but nevertheless, its sheer usability still shines. I've used every other affordable graphics app for Mac (and some non-affordable ones, like Photoshop), and they all make me scream in frustration. Color It lets me work in ways that make sense. I have always considered it to embody the Mac Way. I just love Color It, and I am very glad to have it back. I actually resorted to using it in Classic before — it's that superior to everything else. If you do any bitmapped "sprite style" graphics work (as opposed to photo editing or that kind of thing), Color It is a must. It's in no way a replacement for Photoshop, but Photoshop just really sucks at a lot of things that Color It is great at (why can't Adobe give me some decent shape and selection tools? WHY?!?). Okay, enough ranting/gushing.

- A few programs I wrote for myself that I have still not publicly released. One of these days... :)

- QuickTime Player (Pro version). Best video player out there. I long for the day when QuickTime can play subtitle files and play OGMs and MKVs (look forward to the next version of Perian!, so that I'll never need to use VLC again (great app, but...bleh).


Some other apps that are great, but that I don't feel like I couldn't live without are Audio Hijack Pro and everything in my signature.

And some cool but ultimately pointless apps that I love to have are ChangeDesktop and BackLight 2.

Oh yeah, and Calculator. Darned useful. :) I'm still looking for one that more graciously accepts pasted-in statements, though.
 
*MY* Essential apps: Safari, VLC, Azureus, iTunes, Poisoned, Quicktime Pro, and of course all my games.
 
TypeIt4Me

Not free but I couldn't do without it.

Also EmailCleaner, More Photo Libs, Join Together (audio book files in iTunes), Claris Home Page (well it's not sold any more so it must be free) and Claris Emailer (ditto).
 
Most used and useful:

Safari
Firefox
Mellel (multi-lingual capability)
Nisus Writer Express (short projects)
Papyrus XII (page layout, used for book)
RagTime 6 (page layout for specialty studies/diagrams)
MacSword (free Bible software, for quick reference including Hebrew OT, Greek OT [LXX], and Greek NT)
Photoshop Elements 3
 
Oh, I forgot an essential one: USB Overdrive. Not using it is like wasting your mouse.
 
Toyviewer - a good graphics viewer with some nice tools
Firefox - a great browser
Thunderbird - email & newsgroup reader
CocoaWget - downloader
VLC - multimedia player - also does streaming
Flip4Mac
Perian codecs
Cog - sound file player - cannot play .ogg files without it
Jview - a nice viewer, especially for going through a large image collection

LiquidCD
 
Terminal
Remote Desktop
SubEthaEdit
Smultron
Adium
skype

Most everything else is of the replaceable nature ... so using multiple browsers, editors etc. Maybe Aperture should be on the list too.
 
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