Best OSX 10.5 apps
 

I'm trying to get the best applications for OS X 10.5 (Leopard). I'm relatively new to it, and I want to make the most of my Mac. I'll list which apps I'm using now, and maybe you guys can recommend some to me.

Good Shit

Web Browser : Firefox
I've been using Firefox since it was called Firebird, and it makes me feel like I never left Windows. Firefox still has my preferred balance of features and simplicity compared to any other browser currently out there.

File Browser : Path Finder
I've barely scratched the surface of this app, but I'm already pleased. It has a lot of features that a power user such as myself was longing for after leaving behind Windows Explorer. The ability to sort search results by path is enough reason for me to use it.

Instant Messaging : Adium
Seriously the best IM client I've ever used. Has all the features that I enjoyed in Trillian and Pidgin (the Windows counterpart), but with an extra coat of sexy. Also the app stability seems pretty solid. I'm not so sure about its file transfer capabilities, but there always seem to be problems with that and multi-protocol clients (perhaps firewalls as well).

BitTorrent Client : Transmission
Simple, robust, and effective. I like the "turtle" mode which allows you to turn bandwidth throttling on and off with the click of a button. It may not have as many features as uTorrent, but it has everything I need and more.

Music Player : iTunes
I hate to say it, but iTunes does everything I need for basic music listening right now. The smart playlists allow for a lot of flexibility too. Also, it's really the best choice for syncing with my iPod. While I don't trust iTunes to play nice with my original files that I downloaded from #gamemp3s, etc.; I have it set up to automatically copy files to the library to use for playback. Then I can modify the contents and whatnot to perfectly sort and group my music. With all my HDD space, file duplication is not an issue.

Video Player : VLC
My favorite video player is the one that actually PLAYS MY DAMN VIDEOS. I also have DivX Player, but I think I got that before VLC and I don't know if I even need it anymore. I still use DVD Player for watching DVDs.

Not Sure

Text Editor : TextMate
I just downloaded this as a replacement for TextEdit, but I haven't tried it out yet. In Windows, I used EditPad Pro, which kicked ass.

FTP Client : FileZilla
FileZilla seemed great on Windows, but the OS X version seems lacking in comparison to its brethren. I'm having problems getting it to edit files with the right apps too. It hasn't given me any real problems, but I may want to try some alternatives. It's still better than any other FTP client on Windows though, and there are a lot of features I like.

??? : Quicksilver
I've been using this for a while, and honestly the only thing I've found it to be useful for is to assign hotkeys to my computer. Sometimes it just crashes or hangs and the hotkeys stop working. Everything that I can do with Quicksilver I can already do with Spotlight. While Quicksilver has the ability to perform different actions on the files you find, I haven't found a need for this feature so far.

Future

Office Suite?
I need an office suite. What do you recommend? Has OpenOffice gotten any better in the last couple years? I need something to read and write files from Microsoft Office 2007 and earlier.

File Renamer?
For Windows I used ReNamer. It kicked ass because you could save lists of RegEx and other rules to rename files. Is there anything like this for OS X?

Music ripping and encoding?
On Windows I used Exact Audio Copy and Multi frontend (w/ LAME, etc.). Does anything as good exist for OS X?

MAX is likely the closest equivalent to EAC you'll find for OS X.

For text editing, Editra is a free python based developer's text editor with all your expected text manipulation functions (syntax highlighting, block folding, regex search and replace, column editing mode) and an extensible plug-in interface (including a Projects plug-in that adds IDE-style project management).

On the BitTorrent side, you should know that uTorrent has a Mac OS X port available now. You might check that out.

Vine Server is a excellent free VNC server that offers more flexibility that the built in Screen Sharing services of Leopard, including on-the-fly JPEG compression, and adjustable bit-depths.

If you like to geek around in the Terminal, MacPorts is a must-install. Even though OS X 10.5 is fully certified UNIX, and is fully POSIX compliant (meaning for many *nix sources you can download and build them without modification to the source), MacPorts makes building and installing *nix software faily straitforward with both a command line interface (port install packagename) and a GUI front-end for package management. MacPorts installs everything in a separate /opt/ directory, keeping the main unix filesystem clean and making MacPorts removal utterly painless.

MacFUSE is another consideration if you have a need to read/write from NTFS volumes. Its a port of the Filesystem in Userspace project, and allows you to mount all kinds of filesystems which are then made available as if they were like any other volume.

Wrong and wrong, sorry but I'm a huge fan of iChat. When you give it the Chax plugin it's so much better than Adium in that it actually looks nice. And functionality-wise, I think it's all you need (when you add Chax that is.)

It's not free, but that's never a problem. Transmit is probably the best FTP client still, with Flow at a close second. I don't use FTP besides coding though, so I just use the FTP browser inside of Coda most of the time.

Besides word processing, I don't really use any of the Office programs. Therefore, I like Bean. It starts up probably 10 times faster than Word does.

Uh, can't you just use Automator?

Quicksilver is essential, don't be ridiculous. Growl is pretty essential too.

For coding (on the web, at least), Coda is the clear winner on OS X. With Transmit built in, project management, versioning, built-in reference manuals, a CSS editor, among many other things, I really can't see why anyone would use much else.

For IRC chatting, I use Colloquy just because. Although it's been giving me a lot of grief lately with some nickname stuff.

Adium is by far the best chat program for mac. An I use X-chat Aqua for IRC. Does everything perfect except I can't bold text.

I'd stick to transmission over utorrent until it gets out of beta.

I'd also use Transmit for FTP.

Huge fan of Toast for mounting images, burning dvds/cds/blurays.

Looking at the screenshots on the Chax site, I still prefer the way Adium conversations look. I don't know how the functionality compares though.

Goddamn son, I've only been using OS X for a few months. Don't expect me to know everything. I'll try searching for some examples of how to use it for renaming though. Thanks.

Then give me some examples of how essential it is, you fucking spook. :mad:

Yeah, I installed that when I installed Adium. I don't know if it's hooked up to Firefox though (or maybe I just don't notice it). Is there anything I have to do in order to associate it?

I'll check out the other apps you and ElectricSheep recommended. Many thanks!

Additional Spam:
Yeah, that's my line of thinking as well. Also, Transmission seems to do everything I need right now.

I'll definitely try out Transmit as well.

I've been using A Better Finder Rename for doing RegEx renaming, but the program seems loopy lately (maybe because I have the trial version), and the full program is overpriced. Surely there's another RegEx renaming program for Mac OS X?