Top 40 best Mac software apps, utilities and games

Here’s a quick and neatly annotated compendium of 40 of the best Macintosh graphics, game, utility, productivity, video, browser, iTunes add-ons and Internet applications available. Most of these of products are free or offer free demos, plus there’re tons of links to Blorge’s huge review and best of libraries.

Graphics editors, utilities

” Photoshop Elements 8, demo (form), $79.99
“” Includes automagical image and photo touchup tools not found anywhere else
“” The full version of Photoshop is just so much overkill for the vast majority of users and Adobe’s Creative Suite pricing is absolutely absurd

” Graphic Converter 6.5, 82.8Mb, shareware, $34.95
“” Can do around 85 percent of what Adobe’s Photoshop and Elements do for a lot less money
“” Very, very nice slideshow functionality

” GIMP 2.6, 90.3MB, free
“” The open-source community’s answer to Photoshop
“” Another 85 percent solution for the budget minded Mac user

” Print Shop 2, no demo, $69.95
“” An image editing and layout app that does all of the basic graphic manipulation stuff, plus tons o’ clipart and scores of poster, flier, optical disc label, etc templates

” Font Viewer 6.2, 3.3MB, shareware
“” List, view and print your fonts (priceless)

Productivity software

” NeoOffice 3.0, downloads page
“” This is the best by far implementation of OpenOffice on the Mac and includes Mac-only features, such as Services support, floating tool windows, trackpad gestures and OS X grammar checking.
“” The most recent release also includes NeoOffice Mobile, which allows you to save documents in the cloud and view them on any computer or even the iPhone

” iWork ’09, download page
“” iWork is 95 percent solution with a free, 30-day trial
“” Excellent OS X + iLife + cloud integration
“” I’ve stopped using MS Office, choosing to use iWork, NeoOffice instead

” OpenOffice 3, 171MB
“” The first native OS X version of the world’s favorite open-source alternative to MS Office
“” A great choice if you’re equipping Macs, PCs and Linux boxes

” ThinkFree Office 3
“” Windows, Linux and (PPC, Intel) Mac compatible productivity suite
“” Designed for the road warrior with cloud storage/sharing tie ins

” Microsoft Office 2008, demo (form)
“” No, MS Office is definitely not free ($149.95 and up), though there’s a 30-day trial and it’s hard to beat the market leader for compatibility, features

Read Mac Blorge’s full Microsoft Office alternatives round up.

Mac utilities

” 1Password 3, 13.4MB (beta, $39.95)
“” Snow Leopard compatible, demo available
“” iPhone, iPod touch (App Store, $39.95) version available

” Roxio Toast 10 (from $79, no demo available)
“” This optical disk burning and video content repurposing (i.e. VIDEO_TS to iPod) tool owns the market because it’s the best
“” Creamy smooth point and click goodness found throughout this powerful app

” AppDelete 3.0, 1.8MB (demo)
“” Just dragging an app to the trash to delete it can leave behind an unpleasant residue of preferences, plugins, helpers and other forms of digital toe jam that might come back to haunt you later

” DiskWarrior 4.2 (no demo, $100)
“” Not cheap, but if you’ve got a drive going South, this tool is the gold standard for saving your digital bacon

” Fetch 5.5, 17.4, demo, $29
“” There are lots of free FTP apps, but Fetch is easy-to-easy and has a full set of powerful features that’s hard to beat
“” See also: Top 5 FTP clients for the Mac, Top 5 FTP clients for the Mac

Video

” VLC Player 1.0, 41MB
“” The video codec Swiss Army knife will playback just about any and all video formats, and is necessary companion for Handbrake and Fairmount DVD (below)

” Handbrake 0.9.3, download page
“” A DVD ripper able to create just about any format except VIDEO_TS, requires VLC Player’s codecs to function

” MacTheRipper 3, download page
“” All purpose DVD ripper that does output VIDEO_TS folders. Can handle most of the encryption methods used by the movie studios

” Fairmount DVD 1.0, 10.1MB
“” Enough with the DVD rippers already? Well, for better and worse, no single application can handle all of the formats and encryptions employed
“” Easily the most convenient, straight to re-encoding DVD ripping app available
“” See also: Metakine’s Fairmount is a better way to rip DVDs

” DivX 7, 28MB
“” Free version includes popular codecs used by many commercial and (*cough*) alternative video content distributors
“” Get the full $20 version, which is superb for compressing 720p and 1080p hi-def video

Games

” QuakeLive, free registration required
“” A real, full-featured first-person shooter with online team play
“” See also: Mac games: Getting hot n’ sticky with QuakeLive

” Civilization IV, limited function demo, $49.95
“” For my money, still the best turn based real-time strategy game ever
“” Expansion packs, rabid user community, add-ons galore

” Call of Duty 2, 665MB, $49.95
“” Not the freshest title out there, but still a truly awesome FPS

” Klondike Forever, 4.8MB, free
“” Fast, smooth and beautiful
“” See also: Mac games: Best free solitaire games for Mac OS X

” Bgblitz Backgammon 2.6.2 (13.2MB), nagware
“” Includes powerful game learning, tournament and stat keeping tools
“” Available for Mac (PPC, Intel; OS X, Classic), Linux and Windows
“” See also: Mac games: 5 great backgammon games for your Mac

Browsers

” Safari 4 (free, form)
“” Super fast, great new features (TopSites, Cover Flow, etc) and the creamy smooth goodness that only comes from Apple

” WebKit (free, nightly build)
“” The open-source underpinning of Safari and the hands down performance leader

” Stainless 0.7 (free, 618K)
“” Sick of waiting for Google bring Chrome to the Mac? This browser features parallel sessions, great search options and wicked fast speed

” Firefox 3.5 (free, 17.2MB)
“” It’s relatively fast and quite compatible, but the big attractions are add-ons and plugins; do it all
“” Check out the thousands of available add-ons for Firefox

” Camino 2.0 beta 4 (free, 15.7MB)
“” Tired of Safari’s bloat and Firefox’s cruddy user interface? Get Gecko goodness wrapped in a delicious Mac UI.

” Flock 2.5 (free, 23.1MB)
“” Does FaceBook, Twitter and a bunch of other social networking thangs without plugins, and it’s Mozilla-based
“” Development of this browser seems to have stalled, but it’s truly unique vis-a-vis integrate social networking functionality

See also: Top 10 + 3 best Web browsers for the Mac

More internet goodness

” Thunderbird 2, 18.7MB, free
“” Mozilla’s stand-alone email client, probably the best app for creating and editing .html email

” Transmisions 1.7, 5.1Mb, free
“” Not the fanciest BitTorrent client available, but well featured and rock-solid stable

” NetNewsWire 3.2, 5.1MB, free
“” Without a doubt the rest RSS reader for the Mac
“” See also: iPhone app: NetNewsWire 2.0 plays well with others

” Adium 1.6, 21.4MB, free
“” The free does almost every IM protocol known to man IM client

” AOL Radio 2.0, 648, free
“” Scores of free internet radio stations, dozens of genres
“” Use up very little disk space, RAM
“” See also: AOL brings streaming radio to iPhone

iTunes visualizers, add-ons

” Ultragroovalicious, 144K
“” With its unique eye melting OpenGL 3D effects, Ultragroovalicious explodes the Mac OS X visualizer scene with fresh new styles unlike any before. Psychadelic imagery from math magic reacting to your music
“” Limited free demo, $10

” Dr Glitter Music Visualizer, 1.47MB
“” Explore the finest fractals and spirals with Dr Glitter, the ultimate fractal visualizer for iTunes
“” Freeware

” TunesTEXT, 500KB, free
“” A Dashboard Widget that gets, displays lyrics; Plays well w/ iTunes Dashboard Widget

” itunes alarm, 596K, donationware
“” Turns a Mac into a fully featured alarm clock

” iPod.iTunes, 1.8MB, $39.90
“” The top rated utility syncing music to and from an iPod
“” iTunes 9, iPhone OS 3.1 compatible

See also: Mac software: Top 10 best iTunes plugins and add-ons, Mac software: The 10 best, most awesome iTunes visualizers

So, what did I miss? Do have a better alternative for one or more of the more than two score applications, utilities and games listed above? Share a comment and link below…