I would like to share with you some of the FREE! software for mac that I have found. I mean, we have already spent shitload of our life savings to buy a iMac/Macbook and why should we spend more just to use these daily essential software? It’s not fair to consumer like us, and I definitely opposing on using pirated software as you have no idea if those software are safe to use or not.
Without further ado, please take a look at the list and I hope you will find these software useful.
Chat
- Colloquy is a really cool IRC application. I tested it and managed to load it for more than 1 day, no crashes at all. Best of all, it is FREE! I mean, IRC Networks offer free connection, so why should we pay for sub-par software? This application got the “Bubble look” [snapshot here. Just remember to select "Fiat" as the theme and you will have Bubble Chat 
] and they even have an IRC program for your beloved iPhone!
- For MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk, Jabar, QQ and all that chatting crap needs, you should download Adium. It is miles better than aMSN and galaxies away MSN Messenger for Mac. The damned MSN Messenger for Mac crashed on me every few minutes, go figure. And Adium offers Bubble Chat [picture here]
Office
- Neo Office - I tried it, and it is pretty slick, fast, and compatible with all the Microsoft document format such as .DOC, .XLS, .PPT, and etc. But the best thing is it is FREE! Now eat that, Microsoft Office and Apple iWork!
- Bean is another free office software for Mac. Unfortunately, I found Bean is not as feature-rich Neo Office.
Virtual Desktop - Virtual Desktop - For those of you who has yet to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, you can download this Virtual Desktop for the substitute for Leopard’s Space.
Image Editor - Not wanting to fork out thousands of dollars to buy Adobe Photoshop? Then head over to Gimp for mac. Gimp is actually started for Linux, then they ported it to Microsoft Windows. Now they even have one for us mac users! Yay!
FTP - Cyber Duck (don’t ask me why they call it a duck, not chicken) is so far the best FTP clients that I have used. Very stable, polished, and a lot of nice features for you to explore.
HTML - Okay, beside the obvious fact that you can use those document editors to save your work as HTML file. But for a dedicated and feature rich HTML editor, look no further than Smultron.
File Sharing - Always envy those Microsucks Microsoft having the Bittorrent clients? Well, envy no more. There is a very nice bittorrent client call Transmission available for us mac users.
DVD Ripping - Handbrake is a really good DVD Ripper. But I found Media Fork is by far the best DVD ripper around, providing very fast and reliable ripping. Beware tho. Both programs will take up your mac resources while ripping.
Windows - I know, sometimes you will still need to use Windblows Windows and the good news is, the new mac are using Intel so you can dual boot to Windows. The one option you have is to use Apple’s Bootcamp. Unfortunately, if you are not planning to upgrade to Leopard then you are out of luck as they have discontinued this application once they release Mac OS 10.5 Leopard (to get people to upgrade to Leopard, understand?) But dual-booting is a waste of time. I find that running an emulator (wiki here) is the best solution. Now, Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac is the best out there, but it will burn a USD 79.99 hole in your wallet. So the FREE! option you have is to use Q Emulator which can be very complicated to set-up. But hey, its FREE!!
I will update this post/list once I have more to share. If you have some free software for mac to share with everyone, please put a comment and I will update the list. At the mean time, enjoy these free software!
Recent Comments