Mac OSX tools

Now and then I write a post about tools I use on the mac. I decided to create a page with a more permanent character representing all the tools I like on the mac. Therefore this page is created. If you notice any mistakes or have better ideas, please let me know. I cannot give you guarantees with respect to prizing or licensing.

logo	name	what for	price	description
	adium	Instant messaging	free	A replacement for msn and all other chat clients like yahoo and jabber. In the netherlands a lot of people are on hyves. Hyves uses a jabber server as well to see who is online. This integrates very nicely with adium. Check the following page if you want to try adium with hyves. This software is free to use.
	AppFresh	system tools	free for personal use	The mac includes an update utility, but it does not work for all software packages you use. This application tries to fill that gap. It enables software updates for (all) your applications, it is kinda new, but it works reasonably well.
	AppZapper	uninstaller	$12.95	Takes care of removing applications from your machine. Each application stores more files than the ones in your application folder. This small little app knows them and removes them as well. Just pick up the application you want to delete, drag it into the appzapper window and it is gone.
	BetterZip	utility	$19.95	BetterZip feels very comfortable to create new zips. I would like a command line interface but have not found it yet. It would be nice to be able to open a new archive from the the command line. Or just create a new zip based on a folder from within finder. These options seem to be missing. There was a comment on my blog item that came up with an open source alternative, you can check that out as well.
	Cyberduck	ftp,sftp,scp,…	free	A very nice ftp client. Exacty what you need when doing ftp or sftp, nothing more, nothing less. This is is very cheap, it does not need to cost you anything.
	DrawIt	Drawing	€29	Looking for an easy drawing program to create these nice log’s or other drawings with very nice lightning effects. This is your tool. Nice usage of layers. Easy way of selecting filters to introduce effects. It is not free, but 30 euro is not very expensive for a tools like this.
	Fan Control	utility	free	This is about the temperature of your mac book pro. It can become pretty hot since the fans jump in late. The Mac should be perfectly capable of handling this, however you can have more control available. The speed is better at lower temperature and the machine just feels nicer when the temperature is lower. This utility integrates with your System Preferences panel.
	Fluid	utility	free	With Fluid you take a url, give it an icon and create an application. This application can have it’s own links and preferences. Looks nice and it comes with some advantages. You can place it on your dashboard. It has it’s own icon when going through you apps with command-tab. Very easy interface and free to use.
	KeyCue	utility	€25	It is an application to help you find and then remember all you shortcuts. It integrates with all the applications I use to show possible shortcuts. It is not a free program, but the value you get for only 20 euro’s (excluding vat) is very good. Try it yourself, you’ll be supprised.
	Marsedit	Blogging	$29.95	Up till now I was writing my blog items using my blogging software. Not really a problem, but also not a real good experience. One thing I did like was the integration of special tools to write blog items. Acutually that is why I moved from serendipity to wordpress for blogging. This marsedit is a nice tool, not to complicates, and not very expensive .
	Omnigraffle	Drawing	$199.95	This is the best tool I ever used for drawing diagrams. It just works like expected. Has a lot of alignment, sizing, grouping, colouring options to you available.
	Openoffice	office suite	free	I was not sure if I really had to mention this one. But I decided that the current release of open office is so good, it would be an error to leave it out. I use it on a daily basis and it does what it should do. Writing documents in a lot of formats including the microsoft 2007 editions of word, excel, etc. Very nice if you do not want to pay any money for the microsoft office suite. Nine out of ten users will find what they need in the suite.
	VMware fusion	virtual	$79.99	Using linux, windows, etc on your mac? Then MacFusion is what you want. I especilly like the unity approach. This way you can run windows applications like they are running native on the mac. So using alt-tab and showing microsoft vision, or windows explorer, or even the command prompt.
	Remote Desktop Connection	remote desktop	free	Sometimes you just need to connect to a remote windows machine or server. Then this is a very nice utility. You do not need vmware for it to run
	SmartSleep	utility	free	Nice utility to change the way you MacBook goes into hibernate mode. By only doing Ram (beware you can lose data) your macbook will be faster in going into hibernate mode and faster when awaking. This utility adds an additional mode that will backup to disk if your battery is getting on his end.
	Smultron	text editor	free	This is a nice text editor that you can invoke from the command line, it has the possibility for script access, code coloring. A nice utility that you should use if you do not want to pay for anything. I wrote a blog post about this tool describing a script to format xml code.
	Syrinx	Twitter client	free	A twitter client that does what you need, nothing more nothing less. It shows your friends, it shows twits. It keeps track of your last read tweet. It is also less present than some other twitter clients that are well known.
	Tunnelblick	vpn	free	Very nice utility when you are using openvpn to connect to a remote server. Seems to be running very well.
	Versions	version control	€46.41	Mac OSX comes with out of the box support for subversion. Using the command line is not very difficult for the basic tasks. But for more advanced tasks a graphical interface would be nice. It would be even better if this interface gives the feeling of a mac application. Well search no longer (if you want to pay for at least). Versions is here. This is a very nice application and it seems to work very well. The biggest disadvantage is the price. It is not cheap for an application that only makes your life easier. Than again, if you work a lot with subversion it could be worth the money.