For no particular reason, here’s a very long list of applications that I’ve installed on my PowerBook since April. Some useful, some less so – but I love reading lists of other people’s software, so here’s mine. And this is also a riposte to my mindset of up until March, which was that I couldn’t switch to a Mac because there’s no software available. Rubbish – I haven’t found anything that I can’t do with a Mac that I could with a PC, but much, much more besides.
Everyday stuff
Safari – the fastest browser that I’ve found on the Mac. Tabbed browsing, decent bookmark management, stable and pretty standards-compliant. As much browser as I need.
Mail.app – it took a while to get used to it after using Outlook for so long, but having done so it does everything I need it to.
iCal – not so fond of this – the interface is not as intuitive as it should be, and the way it handles tasks is below-par. That said, I tend to use the Calendar application on my Axim more than this anyway.
Address Book – growing on me. I like the way it deals with multiple numbers and email addresses per contact, and the ability to switch address formats by country is quite clever.
Ecto – the best offline blog client bar none in my humble opinion. Although now I’ve discovered the joys of the Wordpress bookmarklet, it might not get quite such heavy use.
iSync – about the most robust sync client I’ve used so far. Irritating in the way that it needs to load all 900-odd contacts from my Axim before syncing, but that said the sync is pretty good.
Keychain – a bit of an unsung hero, this one. I’ve taken to using it to store all kinds of bits of information, and being able to drag it onto a keychain drive is neat.
Office – more by necessity than intent, because given a choice I’d far rather be using OpenOffice. But until they get the Cocoa interface sorted out, Office will have to do.
Missing Sync – the best (and only) way of synching a PocketPC with a Mac. But it works.
Shrook – a news aggregator with a four-vertical-column layout, which for some strange reason I find the most intuitive. Also has a ‘goto the next post’ key combination, although Apple-J is contributing nicely to my RSI.
SubEthaEdit – on the face of it, a text editor, but one with all kind of funky goodness buried inside. Like collaborative editing using Rendevous (not that I’ve ever used it), and HTML/PHP syntax colouring. Very cool icon, too.
Transmit – nice FTP client, which integrates quite neatly with SubEthaEdit. A fairly standard two-pane layout that would be improved with a better tree view and the ability to change the filenames via a keystroke, but apart from that it’s good stuff.
iTunes – perfect in every way. Except that I haven’t got an iPod 
Fileshar-y chatty networky stuff
Acquisition – ahem. A P2P client, not that we engage in that kind of activity, you understand.
Adium – IM client which compensates for one or two irritations with a cute duck icon.
BitTorrent – self-explanatory, I hope.
Colloquy – IRC client, for the odd occasions I feel the need for IRC chat.
Limewire – see Acquisition. Much the same.
Obsessive list-making and organising stuff
Bibdesk – an open-source Endnote, for keeping track of my references. Not actually used this for building a bibliography, but that’s because I don’t write academic papers much these days.
Freemind – a java-based mind mapping app, which sort-of-replaces MindManager, the one PC application I really miss.
OmniOrganiser – an outliner which came bundled with the PowerBook. Nothing special, but occasionally useful.
VoodooPad – a clever idea which doesn’t get much use – a personal wiki. Great if you like that kind of thing, but then that’s what I’ve got a real wiki and a blog for.
Creative stuff
Photoshop – not much you can say about this, except that I haven’t got around to installing the GIMP yet…
CSS Edit – clever style-sheet editor that’s getting progressively less use as I get more familiar with CSS syntax. Useful if you can’t remember things, though.
Denim – a sort of outliner-cum-HTML wireframing application. Intutitively it feels like it should be useful, but I just don’t seem to work that way.
Dreamweaver – becoming more and more of an irritation, partly because it’s hideously unstable and clunky, and partly because it makes my screen whine. Much of raw HTML coding I do in SubEthaEdit these days anyway.
OmniGraffle – a Visio-style vector graphics package. Don’t use it much, mainly because the freebie version that came with the PowerBook is rather crippled, and I’m too tight skint to upgrade to the next version.
SnapNDrag – I don’t know why, but I can’t figure out the screenshot-taking capabilities of OS X, so this is a useful utilitiette. Makes screenshots.
Other browsers
I was amazed by the sheer number of alternative browsers available for OS X, besides Safari and the quite-frankly-awful Internet Explorer. Including Camino, Firefox, OmniWeb, Mozilla and Thunderbird. Although Safari does everything I need it to do…
Techie stuff
CocoaMySQL – very nice GUI front-end for MySQL. For those occasions when PHPMyAdmin isn’t enough.
Fink Commander – a GUI front-end for Fink, scary Unix stuff.
Hex Editor – because we all need to hack hex some time or other.
iTerm – terminal emulator which does nice tabbed things.
Remote Desktop Connection – a suprisingly good Terminal Services client for OS X which allows me to remotely administer a Windows 2000/XP box. Much, much faster than VNC.
KisMac and MacStumbler – wifi stumbling clients – mainly used for checking if my base unit has fallen off the air again, and sniffing my neighbour’s hotspot.
VNC Viewer – VNC client, now largely forsaken in favour of Remote Desktop Connection.
VirtualPC – an unusably-slow PC emulator. Don’t see the point, quite frankly.
Stuff I can’t see the point in
Konfabulator – pretty, but why?
LaunchBar – nice idea, but personally I find it easier to remember where icons are than alternative keystrokes. But then apparently this changes people’s lives, so what do I know?
Utility stuff
MacTheRipper – DVD ripper. Not that I rip DVDs, but on the basis that this is probably going to get banned any day now, I figured I’d download it anyway.
Safari Bookmark Exporter – occasionally useful, particularly when it came to moving bookmarks from PC to Mac via Mozilla. These days I tend to blog links rather than bookmark them, in any case.
OnSync – will sync Address Book entries via Bluetooth with Ericsson mobiles. Eventually – it’s a neat idea but not very fast.
TinkerTool – because I can 
X Resource Graph – to measure exactly how f*****g hot my PowerBook runs.
XBench – to measure exactly how f*****g fast my PowerBook runs.
Misc apps
All of which I feel should be useful, but have either not got the time or the patience (or both) to get my head around. Includes Curio, DevonThink, Knowledge Tank, Mind Fortress, NoteBook, NoteTaker, Pyramid and Tinderbox. I really don’t get Tinderbox.
