Top Macintosh Utilities

Please note that this post is from 2007. Evaluate with care and in light of later events.

From Lifehacker comes a list of Top 10 Macintosh utilities:

It’s not always the full-blown software applications that make the biggest difference on your computer; often it’s the small do-one-thing-well utilities that enhance our computing experience that much more.

• MagiCal (calendar)
• MenuMeters (system monitor)
• Ejector (disk dismounter)
• AppDelete (software uninstaller)
• RCDefaultApp (file associations)
• Hazel (autmated folder actions)
• GeekTool (desktop overlay)
• Growl (system notifications)
• Text Expander (text substitution)
• Quicksilver (keyboard interface)

Here’s a few of my personal favorites:

Preview.app, the most ubiquitous, most useful, most under-appreciated application on my Macintosh. I use it everyday, all the time, for all sorts of image types, from PDF to TIFF.

Makes for a much more attractive battery display, taking up only a sliver of space instead of an elephant-sized chunk. Available from: http://www.orange-carb.org/SBM/

Another favorite of those who wish to view their video without worrying about format or anything else. Regardless of the format, VLC just works. Available from: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Newly available for Mac, Mozy is still technically in beta. At first, it gradually reduced the size of my data stored remotely… a few megabytes less each day… but in the last few weeks, it’s been rock solid. It’s nice to know my key documents are automatically stored off-site, several times a day. (I also irregularly back everything up to a local server, too, just in case.) Get it from: http://mozy.com/mozy/macmozy