What are the best freeware programs for Mac

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coldgold111

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 19, 2002
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97
What are some of your favorite free programs for your mac... i love Adium but other than that i don't know of many programs... fill me in
 
The Unarchiver
Xee
VLC
perian (codec pack really, enables Qt to play lots of stuff)
Visor
VirtuDesktops (discontinued sadly)
SMCFancontrol (nice temp mon. / fan monitor in the new one)
 
Plenty of threads concerning freeware floating around [H]. Lots of great apps!

Transmission - BitTorrent
MacTheRipper - Ripping (oddly enough)

XSlimmer - Not Free! Well worth the $12 though. Saved me several gigs of space.
 
For a MacBook, the aforementioned smcfancontrol is a necessity for me - Apple's settings don't speed up the fan until gone 60dc, by which time my legs are rather uncomfortable! It really makes no impact on battery at all to have the minimum fan speed set to 3200rpm rather than 1800rpm, & it's still inaudible.

And also to second another app above, Visor is wonderful if you spend any amount of time at the command line.

Cyberduck is a great FTP client, Colloquy is one of the best IRC clients I've used, Chicken of the VNC if you need VNC, obviously VLC for playing videos (google for "Codec Pack For All the new Mac Users" for a great codec pack that has played everything I've thrown at it so far), if you want a simple music player (i.e. not itunes) then take a look at Cog (though it doesn't play 24-bit FLAC yet).
 
growl is a very useful notification tool
VLC, great video/dvd player
cyberduck ftp
taco html editor for quick html edits
onyx
 
lost eden said:
Chicken of the VNC if you need VNC
Click to expand...

Do you find CotVNC slow at all?

For me it is PAINFULLY slow, even on a local gigabit lan :( So slow in fact that i'd rather boot up Windows (parallels) and use TightVNC in the VM.
 
Hurshai said:
Plenty of threads concerning freeware floating around [H]. Lots of great apps!

Transmission - BitTorrent
MacTheRipper - Ripping (oddly enough)

XSlimmer - Not Free! Well worth the $12 though. Saved me several gigs of space.
Click to expand...

Wow - that xslimmer app is pretty cool - thanks!
 
Azureus (for torrents)
UnRarX (for extracting multi-part RAR's)
VLC (has tons of codecs, plays just about every video file)
 
For me it is PAINFULLY slow, even on a local gigabit lan So slow in fact that i'd rather boot up Windows (parallels) and use TightVNC in the VM.
Click to expand...
I don't find it any slower than vncviewer on my linux machines, but I have to point out that the only thing I use it for is to log in to my headless ICS box to tweak firewall settings & shut the thing down - nothing that needs smooth display.
 
hungryduck said:
be careful with it - I broke all my rosetta apps with it once and had to reinstall os x...
Click to expand...

It has a back up feature but I've never used it. I'm a switcher so most of my apps are still through windows with boot camp/parallels.
 
hungryduck said:
be careful with it - I broke all my rosetta apps with it once and had to reinstall os x...
Click to expand...

I think you're thinking of removing frameworks from monolingual. XSlimmer has never changed an app that is PPC only or natively Intel only, it just removes from those that are universal and it's always worked without a hitch. I scored this awesomely useful app back when it was I think 6.95 for pre-order. Best money I've probably spent on a Shareware app besides Disco and SuperDuper!
 
I think THE BEST freeware application for mac would have to be VLC media player. It plays practically any media file on the planet and is very easy to use, and doesn't take a lot of space. Perian is also good, but I use VLC more. MacTheRipper would probably be second place. I have cyberduck FTP, and if you need FTP, which I really don't then it is also very good
 
how do you get vlc to play real audio/video files? more importantly, how do you get any free program to convert those files to something more useful?
 
What about chatting or im'ing programs. I usually use either Skype of Trillian but that is for my PC. What does Mac offer that is along the lines of say Trillian
 
AdiumX here, as well, it's an amazing program, and it's easy to use
And with Real files, you have no choice but to use RealPlayer, and I don't really have a problem with the OS X version as long as you set it not to play anything but Real files, and then it's actually not bad. And yes, I have searched desperately for a converter, and I can't seem to find a free one that works, but there are commercial alternatives
 
Adium (chat client of pure awesomeness)
Camino (web browser, better with the addons from pimpmycamino.com)
growl (various app notifications)
vlc (all media ever)
smcFanControl (keep your MBP cool)
You Control Tunes (iTunes controller in the menu bar)
MenuMeters (system stats in the menu bar)
Transmission (torrent client)
Pac the Man X (PacMan!)
Monolingual (strips out useless language packs, I got 2GB back)
Mactracker (info on all the mac models ever)
MacTheRipper (DvD backup)
KisMAC (wireless scanner)
HandBrake (video encoding)
Chicken of the VNC (VNC)
Cyberduck (FTP)
 
TheLordsServant said:
I think THE BEST freeware application for mac would have to be VLC media player. It plays practically any media file on the planet and is very easy to use, and doesn't take a lot of space. Perian is also good, but I use VLC more. MacTheRipper would probably be second place. I have cyberduck FTP, and if you need FTP, which I really don't then it is also very good
Click to expand...
If VLC is the best freeware app around, then I'm Mickey Mouse.
 
Black Morty Rackham said:
If VLC is the best freeware app around, then I'm Mickey Mouse.
Click to expand...

True dat.

VLC only has experimental matroska video support... and like 90% of anime is distributed in that format... so subtitles work kinda 50/50...
 
Black Morty Rackham said:
If VLC is the best freeware app around, then I'm Mickey Mouse.
Click to expand...

How's EuroDisney working out for ya? ;)

My only issue with VLC is that it takes forever to start on my ppc mini... other than that I like it more than Qt Player or anything else I've ever used.
 
Adium
Transmission
Handbrake
NeoOffice
Thunderbird (duh)
Firefox (duh)
Aqusition
Cyberduck
Flip4mac
UnRARx
stuffit


Think thats all..
 
I didn't say VLC was a bad application, mind you. But if I could only keep one freeware application around, I'd much rather keep Adium, or a number of other apps.
 
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