Top Applications worth buying on a Mac

Here is a list of applications which I’ve bought for the iMac running OS X. These are essential applications for me -used everyday- being milked for every penny spent. Given the amount of commercial and shareware applications available for OS X platform, it is very difficult to make a studied choice. I trial’d quite a large number of software before actually bought these applications. This adds to my previous list of favorite Leopard applications.

VMWare Fusion

I almost always have to connect to my Office VPN and work with Microsoft Outlook. Switching back and forth with the Fusion’s Unity feature is extremely productive. VMWare happily runs an instance of Ubuntu also for me. It is yet to crash or freeze on me. Fusion definitely falls under the essentials category for me.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac

The group photo merge tool is what created the initial interest on Photoshop elements 6. This program is so feature rich that I have made it a habit to learn a new trick every day!. PSE6 for Mac is Photoshop on essential steroids. My only gripe is the lack of the photo management tool as available on its Windows counterpart. But for now I have settled with iPhoto for Photo Management and use PSE6 as the external editor to edit the photos. The ‘Guided mode’ for carrying out main tasks are great for beginners like me.

Apple iWork ‘08

As usual, Keynote was the selling point. I am a complete convert from powerpoint to Keynote. The wow factor you can generate in the audience with a Keynote presentation is unparalleled. I also bought the KeyNotePro Themes for that extra oomph ;) Pages needed some time to get used to and it works effortlessly with new Microsoft Office documents formats too. Ability to generate QuickTime Videos and PDFs are great for portability between PC and Mac. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac ran way too slow for me and crashed many times.

1Password

SplashData has been my digital vault for many years on the PC. I found a greater replacement in 1Password. It syncs passwords and fills the forms automatically on the iPhone too. 1Password consistently syncs your confidential digital data with many different browsers on the Mac. I found it to be completely dependable and essential.
Leap

I am not a fan of the Mac Finder. It is too dumbed down. Leap fills in that void. It is not exactly a file system explorer. It works on top of the spotlight to bring you the digital contents as quickly and efficiently as possible. The tagging system is pretty much strong too. I do most of file/doc handling with Leap.
Little Snitch

The silent firewall which tracks software ‘calling home’ or making ‘unwanted’ outgoing internet connections. The default firewall of OS X is good to avoid anyone taking control of your Mac from outside. But Little Snitch supplements it to have complete peace of mind. Essential.

WireTap Pro

Records everything - Internet Radio, WebCast Audio, Skype talks - everything. It offers greater control over the recording process too.

Speed Download

DownThemAll firefox extension does the download quite well. But Speed Download does it even better.

MegaPhone

Helps me extract the Call/SMS history from the iPhone and manage the Music and Notes on it directly. Very useful for me to make the monthly telephone bills consolidations.

Pixelmator

A Great digital image manipulation program. But after the PSE6 for Mac arrived, I’m using Pixelmator lesser.

Ecto
The new Ecto 3.0b44 beta is comparable in stability and features to Windows Live Writer. Liked Ecto better than MarsEdit becasue of the RichText/WYSIWYG editing environment and nicer image handling.

Here is the pricelist of the above mentioned softwares:-

Vmware fusion - 59.99
1Password - 34.95
iWork ‘08 - $79.00
KeynotePro Themes - $34.95
Little Snitch - - $ 24.95
Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac - $89.90
ecto - $17.95
Leap - - $34.95
Pixelmator - - $59.00
Speed Download - / - $25
MegaPhone - - $19.95
WireTap Studio - - $30