The Best Freeware for OS X

Presented: January 24, 2006

by Christian and Sarah Coll
Alias Media and Support Services

The following is a list of the freeware presented by Christian and Sarah Coll as the best freeware for the Macintosh Operating System X:

ViewIt

What is it?

An image viewer application. An alternative to iPhoto. Does the same sorts of things as iPhoto, but, in addition, can support a larger number of formats, although not as easy to use as iPhoto.

Where to get it:

www.hexcat.com/viewit/index.html

NeoOffice

What is it?

A suite (i.e. collection) of applications that do several business-related jobs. An alternative to Microsoft Office, or Appleworks.

Where to get it:

www.neooffice.org

Mouseposé

What is it?

A mouse location program. If it's hard to find your mouse, you can turn on this application, click a button on the keyboard, and Mouseposé will "highlight" your mouse pointer so that you can immediately locate it.

Where to get it:

http://boinx.com/mousepose/

iLabel

What is it?

Application which easily creates and prints mailing labels, business cards, or similar repetitive tasks. Although can be considered as freeware, you do get badgered regularly to pay the shareware fee.

Where to get it:

www.brunoblondeau.com/ilabel

Frozen Bubble

What is it?

Fun, colourful one or two-person game.

Where to get it:

www.frozen-bubble.org

Google Earth

What is it?

A 3D interface to the planet; combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.

Where to get it:

www.earth.google.com

Thunderbird

What is it?

An email application; an alternative to Mail.

Where to get it:

www.mozilla.com

Firefox

What is it?

A web browser; an alternative to Safari or Internet Explorer.

Where to get it:

www.mozilla.com

VLC

What is it?

A multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3 ) as well as DVDs, and VCDs. Could be useful to open and play some of those strange attachments that people send you.

Where to get it:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc

Adium

What is it?

An instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, ICQ, iChat and more. An alternative to iChat, for "chatting" to those people who don't have Macs.

Where to get it:

http://www.adiumx.com

Burn X Free

What is it?

An alternative to the CD burning application that comes with OS X. Lets you use "sessions" so multiple burns can be done in the same disc (CD only). It also has the ability to erase a CD or DVD.

Where to get it:

http://www.hernansoft.com/products.html

Teleport

What is it?

A simple utility to let you use one single mouse and keyboard to control several of your Macs. Simply reach the edge of your screen, and your mouse teleports to your other Mac!

Where to get it:

http://www.abyssoft.com/software/teleport/

x11

What is it?

An implementation of the X Window System that makes it possible to run X11-based applications in Mac OS X. Based on the open source XFree86 project (the most common implementation of X11) X11 for Mac OS X is compatible, fast, and fully integrated with Mac OS X.

Where to get it:

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/x11formacosx.html

Taco HTML

What is it?

A full-featured HTML editor and PHP editor distributed as freeware. As an HTML editor, Taco HTML Edit empowers its users to rapidly create their own web sites. It is designed exclusively for Mac OS X and has many advanced features including spell checking, live browser previewing, PHP previewing, syntax checking, and much more.

Where to get it:

http://www.tacosw.com

Fugu

What is it?

A Mac OS X SFTP, SCP and SSH Frontend. Fugu is a graphical frontend to the commandline Secure File Transfer application (SFTP). SFTP is similar to FTP, but unlike FTP, the entire session is encrypted, meaning no passwords are sent in cleartext form, and is thus much less vulnerable to third-party interception.  Fugu allows you to take advantage of SFTP's security without having to sacrifice the ease of use found in a GUI. Fugu also includes support for SCP file transfers, and the ability to create secure tunnels via SSH. 

Where to get it:

http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/