MacApper Staff Application Picks 2007

The staff here at MacApper look at Mac applications constantly so that we may bring you reviews of all the best Mac software. While we constantly are using new Mac apps, we all have our favorites that we use every day and would be lost without. I thought it would be interesting and hopefully helpful to some of you to to complile our staff’s favorite apps and share them with you.

So without further adieu: the 2007 Edition of MacApper’s Staff Picks.

Taylor Sternberg
Perian – Whenever I am helping someone set up their computer, I always go to Perian first. It is the “Swiss Army Knife for Quicktime”, which means that it installs additional codecs. More codecs = more videos are compatable with Quicktime.

Adium – This is another app that I adore. It could be considered the Firefox of Instant Messaging applications (although that could change), with plugins and customization galore.

Quicksilver – Move over Spotlight! This is the best way to search for items on the Mac (even with the improved Leopard Spotlight). Although I have not yet unleashed its true power, it still remains my favorite application. I always feel silly when I try to invoke it on another person’s computer.

Miles Evans
Coda – Coda by Panic has changed the way I work on my web based projects and significantly increased my productivity.  I can’t say enough about this app, if you do any webdev at all just buy it and thank me later.

kisMac – No l33t h4x0r’s Mac is complete without a packet sniffing and WEP cracking tool like kisMac. Also check out Nmap.

Keynote – Of all the Apple apps, keynote is likely my favorite. I do a few presentations per year and keynote makes me look way more professional than I truly am. 10 stars!

Steven Owens
Adium – Has many more features than iChat and allows me to utilize multiple IM protocols.

TextMate – The ultimate text editor for any application. Literally supports every type of syntax highlighting out there. Very extendable with plugins.

NewsFire – Allows me to get all my RSS feeds in one place. Interface is intuitive and easy on the eyes.

Will Holmes
NewsFire – The best RSS Reader? It’s really well designed and easy to use.

Pages – It’s cheaper than Microsoft Word and if people gave it a chance I know they’d love it.

Quinn – It’s a really fun tetris style game. What more can you say!

Victor Johnson
NetNewsWire – Simplistic interface, offers just enough features without bloating the interface and confusing the end-user.

Aperture – Combines two very important things: Professional image editing and image organization. I used to have to resort to using both Photoshop and iPhoto, but now I am down to one application.

Mail.app – The one application that is never closed on my Mac. It plays well with IMAP as well as .Mac rules and mailbox syncing.

Alec Feld
Awaken – I would be out of school if it wasn’t for Awaken. This trusty little tool wakes me up everyday to my music choice, and acts as a full function alarm clock. The Apple Remote functions as a sleep/snooze controller, and the full screen mode is perfect for glancing at the time when waking up. Awaken is a great app from Jerry Brace at Embraceware. Jerry’s always working hard to improve the app and listen to customers, and his work shows in the app.

Remote Buddy – This app is perfect for those lazy days or weekends. With Remote Buddy, I can effortlessly navigate and control my Mac from my sofa. Need to launch a video? With Remote Buddy, it’s no problem. Navigate through it’s amazingly organized menu, find the app you want to launch, and choose the file. Remote Buddy supports a bunch of apps, and is bound to support more in the future.

1Passwd – Sometimes, filling out login forms or order forms can be tedious. With 1Passwd, forms are filled in a click. 1Passwd securely saves all of your login information for various sites, and even saves identity forms, great for quickly completing orders. To fill in a form, click the 1Passwd button in your browser, and the form is instantly filled. This app is a true timesaver, and is incredibly helpful.

Van Lam
Mozy – Free automatic online backup. I’m no cryptologist, but it seems pretty secure to me. The interface for scheduling and retrieving backups is easy and intuitive as well. It’s free for 2 GBs, or you can pay a mere 5 clams a month for unlimited storage.

Pzizz – It may seem like a silly idea to pay for sounds waves crashing on a beach and weird ambient tones, but I’ve found that this app actually works. I now sleep a total of four hours a night, up from 2 hours. Lovely.

Nocturne – A night vision mode for your mac . It does everything OS X’s built in Cmd+Option+Ctrl 8 does, in addition to shadow & desktop background removal, and color correction. For the hacker personality, obviously.

Darcy Fitzpatrick
Final Cut Pro – There are other major Non-Linear Editing applications on the Mac that many Apple zealots may not be aware of, like Adobe Premiere Pro and Avid, but Final Cut Pro schools them irregardless of where your loyalties may lie.

Celtx – The do-everything pre-production tool. It’s ten years ahead of the screenwriting application curve and includes server-side collaboration features. Best part: it is free.

VLC – Plays everything. ‘Nuff said.

Fraser Drew
iTunes – Simplest way to manage music in OS X Period.

EyeTV /Aurora combo – Best Alarm Clock in the world. Why have *beep beep* when you can have TV!

Adium – Microsoft MSN on OS X is terrible, so until someone does MSN A/V (whether it be Adium or MS), I can’t live without it!

Michael DeLeon
Amadeus Pro – One of the best audio editing apps on the mac at a fraction of the price of other popular apps on the Mac. For podcasters, you’ll love the id3 tag editor and exporting straight to mp3. Good interface, easy to use, feature-packed and only $40.

Final Cut Express – New version out with even more features. Still wondering how they can sell an app like this that in now way seems like a “lite” version for $200.

Visual Hub – Previously used sites like media-convert.com and zamzar.com to re-encode videos to a format which I could work with. Visual Hub does that and a lot more and won’t take nearly as long.

Michael Mistretta
iChat 4.0 – I just love the tabs, and the ability to have my AIM, MSN (through Jabber) and Google Talk contacts. Video chatting and Audio chatting rock and the quality has been greatly improved. iChat theatre make sharing presentations and slideshows so simple, and screen sharing is so much fun, and is implemented wonderfully.

CoverSutra – Awesome iTunes controller, that allows you quick access to rate, skip, play, and shuffle songs. Beautiful interface, and and only there when you need it.

Skitch – Allows me to easily and visually share what I’m doing to someone else over the internet. Takes screenshots, annotates them, and allows you to upload them in one click. Amazingly easy, and changes the way I communicate my ideas to others.

Austen Saltz
Quicksilver – It’s the definition of simple, yet still has many advanced features. My favorite uses are iTunes keyboard shortcuts and Camino bookmark indexing. I simply can’t live without them. And now, it’s open source!

Schoolhouse – My homework is a lot easier to process and complete with this app. Not only does it help you keep track of assignments, but it can color-code different courses, and allow you to track your grades over the course of the semester.

NeoOffice – Cheaper than MS Office, cheaper than iWork, cheaper than pretty much anything, NeoOffice is a free, native office suite for Mac based on OpenOffice. It integrates well with OS X, and performs all the functions that I need from an office suite.

Andrew Brigmond
FontExplorer X – Simply put, this is the best font management program I’ve seen in a long time. Extremely stable in a harsh working environment and carries no price tag what so ever. Free software just tastes better.

Parallels Desktop – While Apple is an amazing company there’s still plenty of things you can’t do without a Windows machine handy. I use Parallels daily for everything from troubleshooting to gaming. The performance is amazing and new features are added often.

REALbasic 2007 – Support for the OS X platform is rapidly growing and new applications are being developed all the time. Yet sometimes what you need just hasn’t been made yet, so why not just create what you need? REALbasic 2007 lets you do just that with an easy to understand programming language and user friendly interface. And if you also happen to be a PC user still it can automatically build Windows and Linux binaries along with your OS 9/X application. This one I definitely couldn’t live without.

Sébastien Arbogast
ForkLift – The next level of Finder, I use it all the time to access remote servers like FTP, SFTP. It even handle Amazon S3 remote storage. There’s even a “delete application” button to uninstall apps properly.

Pages – Every time I send a communication to my colleagues, like an invitation for some business meeting or a newsletter, I just prepare the content in plain text, and just before sending the final version, I copy/paste it into one of the layouts in Pages. And I always some feedback like “hey, you must have spent some time on it!”. And I say “no, I’m just using a Mac!”.

Remote Buddy – Thinking about other ways to use your WiiMote? This is the application you need. It allows you to do everything on your Mac from a remote distance. You can even reprogram buttons on the Apple Remote.

Greg Healy
RapidWeaver – Whenever I need to throw together a quick website, nothing beats RapidWeaver. Being able to add a video gallery, flash slideshow, and blog with one click sure is better than doing it by hand.

ImageWell – As an Editor here at MacApper, I sometimes have to resize the images in some contributor’s posts. ImageWell makes this as easy as dragging the image onto it’s icon in the dock, typing in my restraints, and then clicking “Send.” Couldn’t be easier.

iClip – This application has become invaluable to me. Being able to have multiple clipboards is a life and time saver. If you do not have iClip 4 or an application that allows you to have multiple clipboards, I suggest that you go and download one right now!

Well that about wraps it up! What are your 3 favorite OS X apps?

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