14 MacOSX essential applications

Of course when it comes to macs and great applications, I can't omit what Apple is giving us for free ( iTunes iPhoto iMovie iDVD Safari Mail)... There are also the sedentary 800 pounds gorrillas that I use all the time in my business and leisure, from Adobe (photoshop, illustrator, acrobat) and from Microsoft (Excel, Word, Powerpoint)...

Besides, here are the applications that I use, mainly from shareware or freeware origin. There are equivalent products out there, but at some point I decided to stick to these:

• GraphicConverter: helped me hundreds of times in the past 10 years. It's still a reference in the Mac world
  
• Proteus (instant messenger on steroids, setting )
• iPulse: nice looking monitor for my G5, my favorite skin being "The Eye"
  
• Acquisition: cool peer to peer software, non invasive
• Launchbar: I know Tiger now has it. Launchbar must have saved me hundreds of hours
  
• Synchronize!Pro: I love this backup program
• Firefox: I use it a bit more than Safari. I merely use IE at all
• TextWrangler: best text editor for free. Little brother of BBedit
  
• HandBrake: to rip your DVDs
• MacJanitor: to cleanup your mac of the mess left behind; a healthy habit
• VLC: to play all kinds of movies files formats
  
• Transmit: to cover all my FTP needs. I never editi usually in a ftp utility. But with this one, when it comes to quick fixes or short release cycles, it's really great. Allows you to edit with your favorite text editor. Plenty of power tools (like synchronization) that I 'd rather NOT use :)
• FinderPop: sounds familiar? great Finder utility to map volumes from any place. Now ported on MacOSX. It's like meeting an old friend.
  
• DiskWarrior: I was about to forget this last one, although it's one of the best utilities to salvage disks and corrupted files structures. Succeeded where all others failed. A must!
  

That's about all I have in my Applications folder. I will write another post at a later date about my internal prefered open source. Buy choosing Unix BSD, Apple grasped many jewels.