Setting up a new Mac OS X computer for myself

• Microsoft Office if desired, otherwise consider latest version of NeoOffice (which is free)
• Audio Hijack Pro - Lets you record audio that some application is playing to the speakers.  Costs money, but free to try it out.
• Default Folder X - nice for letting you quickly pop around to recently used folders, favorite folders, or to a folder visible in a Finder window, when you are in "open file" or "save file" dialog boxes.
• Delicious Library - Nice program for keeping track of books, CDs, DVDs, cassette recordings, etc. in your physical library.  Can sync its contents to your iPod, so you can carry it around with you when you are trying to remember whether you already have some item that you are considering purchasing.  Has cool feature that you can hold up the bar code of items that have them to the computer's camera, and it scan it and look it up on some database on the Internet.
  
• FileSpot - was MoRU.  Nice interface to Mac OS X's Spotlight search that makes it easy to tweak the search options.  I think I still prefer MoRU's interface, but I haven't had FileSpot for long.
• info.xhead - stores passwords in encrypted file, protected by one master password.  Good for keeping other private things like family SSNs, passport numbers, insurance policy info, driver's license #s, credit card #s, etc.
• Little Snitch - The built in Mac OS X firewall blocks incoming connection attempts from the network, except those you explicitly permit.  Little Snitch detects when programs attempt to make outgoing connections, and lets you permit or block them as you choose.  Can save configuration to remember to always let certain programs make certain types of connections (e.g. always let Safari or Firefox connect to port 80 to any computer)
• Pacifist - I haven't used this often, but when it is useful, it can save lots of time.  Helps if some part of a Mac OS X package was damaged or removed somehow, and you can't figure how else to restore it except by a complete Mac OS X reinstall from scratch.  Try this first.
• Path Finder - I'm not yet converted to using this, but some people prefer it a lot over OS X's Finder.
• Parallels - I've used this on an Intel Mac for running Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux.  Nice, but I've heard good things about VMWare's Fusion from those who have used both.
• Phanfare - Only useful for those with accounts on Phanfare's web site, of course.
• Popcorn - from Roxio.  I've used this to create backup DVDs from commercial DVDs I've 'ripped' using MacTheRipper.
  
• Spotless - Nice little utility for enabling/disabling Spoftlight indexing on various volumes.  Useful if you want to have an external drive solely for backup purposes, and don't want to have Spotlight index it for you.  Shareware, so it costs $, but you can try it out for free.
• SuperDuper! - Nice simple backup utility.  Makes it easy to create a fully bootable external backup disk for a Mac.  Can do much faster incremental backups.  Does not make it trivial to have separate backup state for multiple past times (e.g. one month ago, last week, yesterday), but good for keeping the latest backup only.

• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• Adium - for instant messaging
• Audacity - A free sound editor.  I haven't used it nearly as much as Sound Editor, so I can't give them a fair comparison yet.
• Chicken of the VNC - VNC client
• ClamXav - virus scanner
• coconutBattery - for laptops.  Nice to see how worn out the battery is.
• GeekTool - I haven't taken full advantage of this yet, but I have something simple for showing my current private IP address, and my public IP address when I'm behind a NAT.
• iSquint - can convert video between some formats.  I've heard VisualHub is even better, but costs $
• MacTheRipper - Lets you make backups of copy-protected DVDs
• MenuMeters - I like to be able to see my current network send/receive stats, memory usage, and CPU usage in the menu bar at all times.
• Netscape - Yes, it hasn't been updated in years, but it does have a nice simple WYSIWYG HTML editor in it that I still use occasionally for simple web pages (like this one).
  
• Quicksilver - I've only used this for its application launching capabilities.  It is worth it to me for that alone, but it can do a lot more than I haven't taken the time to learn yet.
• RealPlayer - occasionally useful when you run across a web site with audio or video that requires a player from Real Networks
• Skype
• Sound Studio - I've forgotten if this costs money or not.  I've found it very helpful in trimming dead space from the beginning and end of recordings I've made on the Mac from audio cassettes, and to split up a long recording into multiple separate files for each track.
• SpotInside - I haven't used this much yet.  It lets you make Spotlight searches, but also quickly see a preview of a portion of the document containing the keywords you are searching for.  That can be very handy for deciding whether the file was the one you were looking for or not.
• Temperature Monitor - good if you want to see how hot that laptop is getting inside.  Works for desktop systems, too.
• VLC - can play lots of video formats that QuickTime can't.  I haven't tried Flip4Mac, but I've heard others say that it is good for enabling QuickTime Player to play lots of other video formats that it otherwise cannot.
• Windows Media Player - similar to RealPlayer and VLC, but only for Windows Media files.

• Apple's developer tools, including XCode, from one of the install DVDs that came with the computer, or available for download from Apple's web site
• X11, can be found in similar locations as developer tools above
• Platypus - lets you take a shell script and make a Mac application out of it.
• PrefEdit - I don't recall when I got this, but it was probably recommended to me for doing some low-level viewing and/or modification of some application's preferences file.
  
• StreamWatcher - Handy program that lets you watch all network traffic on a selected network interface, including a wireless one, and shows only one line per TCP or UDP 'flow', with the recent traffic activity on it.  Little Snitch 2.0 has a similar feature, except more qualitative than quantitative, but it does associate the traffic with the application name running on your Mac that is at one end of the data stream.
• fink - Other people take lots of Unix/Linux open source programs, figure out if there are any modifications to them required to make them compile on Mac OS X, and make the modifications available through fink.  Packages I like to install:
• aspell
• bzip2
• clisp
• diffutils
• elisp-manual
• emacs22
• file-dev
• findutils
• libpcap
• wdiff
• wireshark
• MacPorts
• dynamips
• SBCL - I tend to download latest binary release from the project web site, or get latest source code from CVS and build it.
  

• Colloquy - IRC chat
• CopyPaste - I haven't used this much
• Digital Universe - create views of the stars and planets from various places and times on Earth.  Probably does a lot more, too.  I haven't played with it much yet.  Starry Night is very cool, too, but costs $.
  
• Font Book - I don't recall if this came with my Mac or not.  Handy for quickly seeing what your fonts look like for the whole alphabet.
• Freefall - Costs $, but cool screen saver showing the current location of man-made satellites orbiting the Earth.
  
• Google Earth
• Mactracker - Cool little program with detailed info on all Apple products ever sold.
• Mathematica Player - Wolfram Research distributes lots of documents that can be viewed with this, available on their web site.
• MPEG Streamclip - I've only used this once, but it was useful for converting a video I had from one format to another.  VisualHub might be just as good -- not sure.
  
• OSXII - Apple II emulator
• SketchUp - cool 3D CAD-type program.  Can be fun to play with, viewing 3D models created by others, and playing with making your own.
• Voice Candy - fun program for kids to play with.  Kind of like Apple's Photo Booth, except you play with audio and effects that modify it, like making your voice sound like a robot, or Darth Vader.

• Apple's Keynote
• OmniOutliner
• OmniGraffle - good drawing tool for the same kinds of drawings you might use Microsoft's Visio for.  Can export drawings from Visio in XML format and read them in OmniGraffle, and I think the other direction works with that format, too.
• VMWare Fusion

• Synchronization/backups:
• Keeping multiple snapshots or checkpoints using rsync for backups:
• rsnapshot
• rsnap
• arRsync - an rsync GUI for Mac OS X
  
• Unison - bidirectional file syncing
• Encrypted password database
• KeePass and KeePassX - Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X
• System performance statistics monitoring for Mac OS X
  
• MenuMeters
• iStat Menu
• iPulse
• Wireless network finder
• WiFind
  
• Video
• VisualHub - convert between lots of video formats easily
• Handbrake - for 'ripping' DVDs to back them up
  
• For recording movies of what you are doing on your computer's screen:
• Snapz Pro X
• iShowU
  
• Jing Project
• NetFlow / Internet traffic analysis
• NFDUMP
• flow-tools (available on MacPorts)
• flowd (available on MacPorts)
• flowscan (available from CAIDA)
• cuflow
• ntop - but beware -- I've tried building this before, and had it crash OS X, requiring a reboot to recover.  Others have apparently experienced this as well.
• Eavesdrop - http://www.baurhome.net/software/eavesdrop/index.html
  

• Personal
• Dock - For laptops, I like to make the dock auto-hide, for more screen real estate, and put it on the left side of the screen instead of the bottom.
• International
• Formats tab: There was some technique I used here so that I could display the date in the right of the menu bar in the format "Thu Oct 11 10:56:42 PM", but I've forgotten it right now.  Document it when I find out what it was.
  
• Input Menu tab: I only enter letters with accent marks over them occasionally (usually when entering names of artists and composers from other countries in iTunes), but when I do, I like to have the "Show Character Palette" choice available in the input menu on the right of the menu bar.  Check "Show input menu in menu bar" near bottom, then "Character Palette" and "Keyboard Viewer" near the top.
• Security: I haven't used FileVault much yet.  Check "Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver" for laptops, or machines in an environment where you don't trust everyone to use it.  Also "Disable automatic login", "Require password to unlock each secure system preference", and "Use secure virtual memory".
• Spotlight: Check Spotlight menu keyboard shortcut, but change it to Option-Space, because (I've forgotten reason right now - I think I used Cmd-Space for some other program in X11 like emacs, and I didn't want it to do Spotlight for that).
• Hardware
• Bluetooth: Disable it if not planning to use any Bluetooth devices.
• Keyboard & Mouse
• Keyboard tab: I check "Use the F1-F12 keys to control software features" on a laptop, so I can more easily use F1-F12 for emacs keybindings.  Also click on "Modifier Keys..." button to change Caps Lock to behave like another Control key.
  
• Trackpad tab: Disable "Trackpad Gestures: Clicking", check "Ignore accidental trackpad input".  I usually attach an external mouse when using a laptop for any length of time.
• Keyboard Shortcuts tab: I usually disable most of these, because I don't want them to interfere with emacs keybindings.  I do like to enable Cmd-` for "Move focus to next window in active application", and enable Spotlight, Expose, and Dashboard keyboard shortcuts, although I only use Spotlight ones much.
• Sound
• Sound Effects tab: I find "Pop" to be the least intrusive alert sound, and I turn the Alert volume down to about 50%.
• Internet & Network
• .Mac - set it up for my .Mac account.  So far I've only used Sync'ing between a couple of Macs for iCal and Address Book.
• Sharing
• Services tab: On a laptop, I typically only enable Remote Login.  On a home desktop, also Windows Sharing and Printer Sharing.
• Firewall tab: I feel a tiny bit safer enabling the firewall, even though that means I need to occasionally enable ports for some applications, and it isn't always obvious that this is needed when you try out the application if it is not one on Apple's firewall list already.  I enable iTunes Music Sharing, Network Time.  If I plan on running Warcraft III, create entry "Blizzard" which enables TCP ports 4000, 6112-6118, and same for UDP.
• System
• Accounts: Here is where I create the administrative account mentioned above, and disable "Allow user to admininster this computer" for the everyday-use account.  For laptops, I change "Login Options" so that there is no automatic log in, Display login window as "Name and password", check "Show the Restart, Sleep, and Shut Down buttons", and everything else is off.  For a 'public use' machine in my home, automatically log in as the everyday-use account, display login window as a list of users, and enable "Show the Restart, Sleep, and Shut Down buttons" and "Enable fast user switching".
• Date & Time
• Date & Time tab: Set date & time automatically using Apple's time server.
• Clock tab: Show the date and time checked, in the menu bar, digital, with seconds, AM/PM, and day of the week.