Essential applications for Mac OS X

Recently I installed from scratch a couple of machines, and as long I were needing my applications I generated this list of essential ones:

Quicksilver

Free. Quicksilver is a launcher. When you call Quicksilver through the key combination Ctrl+space and you start typing, it suggests an application, document or file that contains that letters you typed in any place. Then you can open it, send it by email, reveal it on Finder and a long long etc... There are a lot of plugins to integrate it with more applications. See the overview for more info
quicksilver

Virtue for Tiger

Free. Virtue completes the missing virtual desktops in Mac OS X. Being a Linux user it is difficult to work without it. There are other applications doing this, but no one like virtue.

Virtue

Mail.appetizer

Free. A configurable and elegant notify window for incoming email with message preview. In the preferences you can specify for what Mail folders you should be warned when a new mail arrives. Let's imagine you receive tons of mail daily and you don't want to be distracted, then you activate Mail.appetizer only for the folder "Bosses"

Mail.appetizer

Textwrangler

Free. Textwrangler is a plain text editor for programmers. It has many interesting features such as syntax highlighting, remote edition (FTP/SFTP), strong search options, diff, encodings, etc...
If you want power there is a commercial version called BBEdit which I recommend. TextranglerHomepage

You can also use Smultron, Subethaedit (both free), TextMateTextMate or Skedit (commercials) just to mention some

textwrangler

Cyberduck

Free. Lovely duck! My preferred ftp/sftp client. It has an easy and intuitive interface and allows you to edit remote files in your local editor as if they were in your very own machine. When you save them, they are uploaded back to the server.

Cyberduck

NeoOffice

Free. Who ever needed word? This is a port of the original OpenOffice with aqua menus and the key combinations for mac. The main problem I find in OpenOffice under X11 is the keyboard usage.

neooffice

TeXShop

Free. For writing true documentation with LaTeX

Texshop

Adium

Free. More ducks, this is a multiprotocol instant messenger. It works simultaneously with Jabber, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, GoogleTalk and many others... It is a pleasure to do tabbed chat :)

Adium

SizzlingKeys

Free. Do you listen music? With SizzlingKeys you can jump between songs without using iTunes. A translucid window will be displayed with the art cover, song, and artist name every time there is a change.

If you go to Yellow Mug, it's worth to download a second free application called SnapNDrag letting you take screenshots and save them in the format you want.

SizzlingKeys

Textpander

Free. Textpander puts text snippets on the fly whenever you enter their corresponding predefined abbreviations.
E.g: I define ssign as a snippet with my full signature, so wherever I type ssign I'll get:

Best regards,

Albert Lombarte
Fake street 33,
Barcelona
Textpander