Freeware Friday: Anti-Productivity Edition

We have been talking at MacApper for the past few weeks about different weekly “specials” we could do, and one of the ideas that was brought up was a weekly freeware post. This has now evolved into “Freeware Friday,” where every Friday either I or another MacApper contributor will put together a roundup of a few little freeware apps we have been playing around with the past week.

Today, I have put together a list of 4 little applications that will help to kill your productivity (like you even need help with that, right?). They have no productive value, but definitely can get addicting, or are great when you have a little time to kill.

The first application that I want to bring to your attention is BallDroppings. I first learned about this game a while ago from a post on MacUser. Basically, little white balls drop from the top of your screen (you can alter the place where they drop from) and you draw lines that the balls bounce off of. The balls make a noise when they hit a line.

You can alter a bunch of variables in the game, like air friction, gravity, pitch of the ball bounce, and also how fast they come out of the feeder. I’ve wasted many hours playing around in this game, and I expect there are many more to come. BallDroppings is (of course) freeware, and you can download it here.

The next application, Bullet, is one of those applications you break out when you are really bored. At its core, it is an application that takes over your mouse, and makes bullet holes wherever you click. You can set whether to fade the bullets out after each shot, overlay a bulls-eye on your screen, and it even has auto-fire!

Bullet is an application that gets old fast, but whenever you just get that “put holes in my desktop feeling,” Bullet is there to help. It is also good when you want to confuse your coworkers and family by leaving it running on their computer. The developers no longer seem to have Bullet listed on their site, but you can download it from the Mac Softpedia.

iStache is an application for everyone. 17 years old and still no stubble? Ever wonder what your grandmother would look with a full beard? With iStache, you no longer have to wonder. Once you have a picture you want to “Stache-ify,” you just need to select a style and get staching! A slider lets you choose the size of your stache or beard, and a drop-down menu lets you choose from 12 styles (everything from the “Hitler,” to the “English Gentleman.”

The last application, Enigma Simulator, really impressed me. It is well polished, and quite neat once you learn the history behind it. Enigma Simulator is a computer simulated Enigma Machine, which is a machine that Nazi-Germany used back during WWI and WWII to encrypt and decrypt messages.

To use the Enigma Simulator, You first have to select your settings. In the screenshot, I set the three letters at the top of the screen to “M-A-C.” Holding down Command-3 opens the Schreibmax, which keeps track of the keys you press. I typed “macapper” which outputted our encrypted text, “PMPDUHME.” After resetting the dials back to “M-A-C,” I typed “PMPDUHME,” which then decrypted back to “MACAPPER.”

Enigma Simulator is complete with sound effects, and German text. To learn more about the Enigma Machine, check out the wikipedia article. You can download Enigma Simulator from Terry Long’s website, which also has an FAQ about this application, and examples.

That about does it for this weeks edition of Freeware Friday, if all goes well, another roundup of freeware apps should be posted next Friday. If you don’t think you can wait until next week for your freeware fix, make sure you take a look at “The Great Mac OS Freeware List.”

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