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.

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