Free: OS X App Alternatives
While a lot of the Mac apps out there are free, most are quite expensive, or simply not worth the price being asked for them. This causes more and more people to resort to pirating, which not only is illegal, but is also unfair to the dev’s who spent long, hard hours coding these apps. Not to mention all the bad karma implications.
Here I have compiled a list of free alternatives to normally expensive Mac apps, that are just so useful you gotta have ‘em.
AppZapper
AppZapper is an awesome little utility, and it does its job of removing apps from you system very well. However, most people seem to think that its not worth the $12.95 thats its being sold for. Luckily, there are a few alternatives.
uApp – again, it does whats it’s supposed to do. Nice, simple interface.
* Editor: CleanApp was removed as it is not free, but $10. Sorry my bad, I was late getting the day’s stuff up.
Photoshop
Photoshop is honestly one of the main reasons a lot of people move to the Mac, and is really one of its most well known and oldest applications. The reigning king of photo manipulation tools from Adobe, Photoshop comes with a hefty price tag and a steep learning curve.
The Gimp – If you’re like most people you don’t have $600+ lying around to buy a photo manipulation tool. While PS does a lot more than just manipulate the families images, it’s sadly out of reach for most users. Happily Linux user’s have known about an amazing alternative for years. The Gimp is an open source solution that came out of Berkeley 10 years ago, but today is likely Photoshop’s most fairly matched rival. It might not be any easier to use than Adobe’s giant but, like most open source offerings, there is a great community of users online offering plenty of free help.
Disco
Disco is possibly the most well known disc burning app for the Mac platform, aside from maybe Roxio’s Toast. It has a kick-ass user-interface, and it is really easy to use. However, it comes with a fairly steep $29.95 price tag.
Burn – a lightweight and simple data, audio, video and DMG CD burner. You get what you (don’t) pay for, so its never going to beat Disco, but it will suffice if all you need to do is burn a couple of discs once in a while.
Transmit
Panic make great software, and Transmit is no exception. It boasts a shedload of features, and is really easy to use, but great features don’t come cheaply – Transmit retails at the price same as Disco, $29.95, which seems like a lot of money when you consider its function.
Fugu – It’s good enough to win an Apple Design Award! This fairly old client comes with drag-and-drop, Aqua interface, keychain integration and much more.
Cyberduck – Cyberduck comes with a host of useful features, such as spotlight integration, keychain access, iDisk syncing – pretty much everything you could possibly want from an FTP client.
.Mac Backup
I think we all agree that Apple’s online .Mac service is overpriced. However, it comes come with some good features, such as Backup, software to easily backup your important files. But you can’t use Backup without subscribing to .Mac for $100 per year, so here are some free alternatives, which are just as good.
iBackup – Probably the best free Backup app for the Mac – features include multilingual support, scheduled backups, smart folders, profiles and more.
PsyncX – Another backup app boasting ease-of-use and some sexy good looks.
And if you have any more apps that you know free alternatives to, or you would like us to find a free alternative to an app, just drop a post in the comments.

CleanApp is free? Says buy CleanApp for only US$10 on the right…
@Trevor: Thanks and corrected
Any good alternatives to Firefox for webgraphics?
/David
Remote desktop = chicken of the VNC
I don’t get the last request, any browser basically?
I think he means for web design? And if that’s the case I would have to say not really.
I use AppDelete and I’m thinking about Mozy for off site backup, as it is only 4.95 a month with unlimited storage and it’s encrypted.
for web-design, Mozilla’s NVU is a free Wysiwyg-alternative.
Microsoft’s Foldershare is another free synchronisation-app and cross-platform. Works very well.
I’d also suggest Gimpshop. It’s GIMP but with an interface that is much more Photoshop-like.
http://plasticbugs.com/?page_id=294
Here’s another backup option.
http://mozy.com/mozy/macmozy
2gigs free, pay for more than that.
@Hal B Sure: Wow Gimpshop is amazing. First time I’ve seen it…
I noticed it worked on my Mac nicely. It’s a bit unrelated but I spent some time getting it working on my Ubuntu box as well. A bit of a chore really. If anyone is interested in that see this article for very detailed instructions by Suramya Tomar for compiling and installing GIMPshop under Linux. There is even a Windows version of this app but I didn’t have time to test that one.
Gimpshop really does take most of the klunk out of The Gimp – Good find.
well, instead of GIMP i would strongly suggest the all cocoa implementation of SeaShore (via sourceforge) – it is outstanding.
for media, VLC Player (instead of quicktime pro)
for media, FFMpegX instead of VisualHub
…there are sooo many – like Micon for icon swapping and management instead of pixadex…
AND of course the free version of SuperDuper for backup, and free 1PassWd for password encryption and management (free holds up to 12 pw’s)
and of course my favorite, Smultron instead of Textmate…
Hey, nice list but just a heads up that the link to CyberDuck isn’t correct, it’s just another link to Fugu.
Here’s the proper link to CyberDuck:
http://cyberduck.ch/
I was going to put Mozy on there, buts its not really a full app – part of it is online….
Also, OmniWeb is great for design, but its really expensive, I’m not sure I know of a free alternatiove to that, maybe Shiira?
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