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Free Software for the Mac

David — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 23:36:25 +0000

We all like free stuff. I know I do. When it comes to free software, the Windows world is known to have plenty available. But what about the Mac side of the world? Are there any free applications for the Mac? And the answer is yes. There are free applications for the Mac. Now, when I say “free,” I mean legally free. I’m not talking about any of the pirated stuff.

Now that we established the fact that there is free software for the Mac, the next step is to find it. There are several ways of doing that. You can search Google, visit Apple.com and browse around in the OS X section, or you can visit other freeware directory sites. But there is one other way. And this way is MacLibre.

I’ve found this to be the easiest way to find, download and install free Mac software. MacLibre is a small program that aggregates freeware applications for Mac and allows you to download and install these applications from one simple user interface.

MacLibre organizes these applications into five categories.

Create – image editing and authoring and audio editing programs
Internet – web browsers, instant messengers, email and RSS
Multimedia – video and audio players and rippers
Office – productivity software such as word processors and spreadsheets
Utilities – desktop management, anti-virus scanning and terminal enhancing applications

Some of the titles that you will find in MacLibre are:

Audacity – software for recording and editing sounds
Gimp – application similar to Photoshop for editing and authoring images
Adium – an instant message client that supports protocols such as MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, AIM and others
Cyberduck – FTP and SFTP client
Firefox – open source web browser
Thuderbird – open source email application
Vienna – a free application for reading RSS feeds
MPlayer – a media player that plays a variety of DivX and other codecs
NeoOffice – an open source office application that includes word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, vector drawing and database applications
ClamXav – an antivirus scanner
VirtualDesktop – a desktop manager for Mac

These and other applications are available for download and installation through MacLibre. To begin enjoying these free programs all you need to do is install MacLibre.

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FTP Client for the Mac

David — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 04:48:00 +0000

If you find yourself doing any kind of web design or development, you will definitely require an FTP Client. For someone like me, who primarily blogs and maintains a small family web site with pictures it is nice to find a good application that does the job well, but doesn’t break the bank.

Cyberduck (Price $0.00) is just that kind of application. It is an open source FTP client for the Mac. It has a full set of features for most FTP needs and it comes at no charge. I use it to upload file to my host’s sever and to manage those files at the remote location. It has worked very well for me. Cyberduck is under continual development. Recently it has been updated to version 2.8.

I won’t bore you with all of the details, but just to give you an idea of the feature set. Cyberduck supports FTP, FTP/TLS, and SFTP protocols, external editors, integration with OS X, Growl, AppleScript, allows you to bookmark connections to different servers and comes in a variety of languages. Just to name a few.

Give Cyberduck a shot. I think you will like it.

Widgets: iStat Pro – Information at Your Fingertips

David — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 02:16:40 +0000

If you’ve used a Mac for any length of time, you definitely know about widgets. Mac OS X comes with Dashboard, an application that runs a variety of small applications that accomplish all kinds of things. These widgets can be downloaded from Apple.com or from the web sites of their develops. Apple pre-installs several of these widgets on all of the new Macs. However, you can expand your widget collection to an unimaginable extent.

I’d like to share with you one such widget that I find very useful. Granted, I’m a techie and I enjoy knowing what goes on under the hood of my computer. I like to know the temperature of my machine, fan speed, network speed, up time and so on. An easy way to access this information with one key stroke is to use iStat Pro widget. It displays the information I listed and more. With it you can know the charge of your battery, available capacity of the hard drive, most active processes, CPU usage and memory usage.

If you find yourself curious about what’s under the hood, iStat Pro is the widget for you.

What widgets do you find useful or most enjoyable? Let me know in the comments.

Adium X – Version 1.1.2 Released

David — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 03:18:58 +0000

Adium released a new version (1.1.2). There are no cosmetic changes, however this release addresses some issues with Safari 3.0 beta, improves performance and adds some new preference settings. Get your update today.

Games for the Mac

David — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 22:52:05 +0000

One of the differences between Macs and PCs is that Macs don’t come preloaded with games. Even though Windows is supposed to be for serious tasks, it comes with several simple games to distract one from work at hand. Well, despite the fact that there are many fun things to do on the Mac, such as making movies, creating web sites and surfing the web, once in a while it is nice to play a mindless game. So, where can you get some nice Mac games and not break the bank. I will tell you of two games that I’ve installed on my MacBook Pro and enjoy playing to rest my mind.

Pac the Man

This is an imitation of the original Pac-Man. It is a well written game and runs great on the Mac. It is available from McSebi at no charge. So, you can download and enjoy some good old fun in a matter of minutes.

Otis

This is a block game by Wonder Warp Software. It is an addictive game, as the tag line indicates. It is also free, however the author would appreciate a donation.

Check out these two games and add to the fun things you can do on your Mac.

Deeper – Unlocking Hidden Mac OS X Preferences

David — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 01:37:06 +0000

Deeper is a free utility for Mac OS X that gives you access to hidden preferences. You can access additional preferences for the Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, Login, and other Misc. settings. I’ve used it to reveal hidden files in Finder and add a shadow to the Dock. Some of the other options allow you to enable the developer mode in Dashboard, print backgrounds from Safari, change the spacing between icons, etc.

Google Earth – Exploring the Sky

David — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 03:56:04 +0000

Google has released a new version of Google Earth. With version 4.2 you can now not only explore the earth, but you can lift up your sights and explore the sky. What’s different this time is that this version is available simultaneously for Mac and Windows. With the original version of Google Earth, Mac users had to wait for Google to release a Mac OS X version. This is another indication that Google is trying to be more Mac friendly. After all, Google’s CFO sits on Apple’s board. I’m sure Steve Jobs is making sure that the biggest search engine and free software developer plays nice with Mac.