Tareque's Personal Portal

Mac Freewares You Shouldn't Live Without

There are far less freeware applications out there than there are for Windows. While I recognize the efforts developers put in to develop their applications and understand why they aren't all free, I believe Mac users should be able to get up and running with a set of free applications that serves most of their computing purposes before they start buying some. So I have compiled a list of great freewares that are available for Mac.

Firefox the Browser

Firefox, the award-winning Web browser, is secure, reliable and fully customizable to your online life. Firefox empowers you to accomplish your online activities faster, more safely and efficiently than any other browser, period. Built with Tab browsing, popup blocking and a number of other seamless innovations, Firefox stands out ahead. Period. Download from: Firefox official download page

Folx the Download manager

Folx is a free Mac download manager, which provides with high speed, downloads resume, the ability of ftp downloading no matter what browser you use. It helps you download any file via HTTP, HTTPS, FTP directly or via proxy in just several clicks. Seems like the Mac community finally got an equivalent of Flashget. Download from: Folx official download page

NeoOffice the Office application suite

NeoOffice is a fully-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing programs) for Mac OS X. Based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, NeoOffice incorporates dozens of native Mac features and can import, edit, and exchange files with other popular office programs such as Microsoft Office. Download from: NeoOffice official download page

Quicksilver the Disk navigator

At first glance, Quicksilver is a launcher. Quicksilver allows you to navigate to what you need quickly and easily, while keeping your hands on the keyboard. For example, if you want to launch an application hidden in the depths of your file system, simply activate Quicksilver with a keystroke, type a few letters of the application's name, then hit Return or Enter to launch it. Download from: Quicksilver official download page

Adium the Instant messenger

Adium is a free and open source instant messaging application for Mac OS X. It can connect to: AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ and MobileMe (formerly known as .Mac), MSN Messenger, Jabber, including Google Talk and LiveJournal, Yahoo! Messenger, including Yahoo! Japan, Bonjour, compatible with iChat, MySpace IM, Facebook Chat and more. Download from: Adium official download page

Seashore the Image editor

Seashore is a lovely open source image editor for Mac OS X. It features gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for both text and brush strokes. It supports multiple layers and alpha channel editing. It is based around the GIMP's technology and uses the same native file format but much more lightweight. Download from: Seashore official download page

Onyx the System optimizer

A multifunction utility for Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel). It allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files, to run misc tasks of system maintenance, to configure the hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock and of some of Apple’s own applications, to delete caches, to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome and more. Download from: Onyx official download page

Perian the Codec pack for QuickTime

Perian is a free and open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats. With Perian installed, any OS X application that uses QuickTime can now use these additional media types:

• AVI, FLV, and MKV file formats.
• MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivx, H.264, FLV/Sorenson Spark, FSV1, VP6, H263i, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), and MPEG Layer II Audio.
• If they are inside an AVI you can also use the following formats: AAC, h.264, mpeg4, AC3 Audio and VBR MP3
• Subtitle support for SSA/ASS and SRT

Download from: Perian official download page By the way, if you also want to play WMV/ WMA through Quicktime, download and install Windows Media Components for QuickTime

FileZilla the FTP client

FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client. FileZilla provides you with lots of useful features along with an intuitive interface. Download from: FileZilla official download page

Pastor the Password manager

Pastor is a software for storing all your passwords, website logins, serial numbers, etc. encrypted and password-protected. It comes with a built-in password generator. Download from: Pastor official download page

Transmission the Bittorrent client

Transmission has been built from the ground up to be a powerful, yet lightweight BitTorrent client. Transmission's simple, intuitive interface is designed to integrate tightly with whatever computing environment you choose to use. Transmission strikes a balance between providing useful functionality without feature bloat. Furthermore, it is free for anyone to use or modify. Download from: Transmission official download page If you think of some other application that should be on this list, please leave a comment.

Already got most of these, but Folx is new to me, and I'll also try Onyx. Thanks!