Dan's favorite Mac OS X apps & utilities

So I recently mentioned two great Mac OS X DVD ripping and encoding apps. I realize there are several other applications and utilities which I immediately install on any Mac I use. Some I've talked about before. Here's the whole list with sporadic commentary. I'll turn these into URLs when I'm not feeling so lazy but you can jfgi using their names and "Mac OS X" in the meantime.

Or use versiontracker. The comments are useful if you ignore the trolls and patheticly uninformed comments.

HandBrake and ffmpegX - see that previous post.

Dasher Daemon - menubar geek system monitor; network bandwidth usage monitor, cpu, disk activity, memory usage, etc.

NetNewsWire Pro. Awesome Mac RSS newsreader. It:

• has just about every feature I could want in a newsreader
• it's architecture is excellent in terms of allowing you to choose what other apps you want to have it call for performing related functions
• it integrates with NewsGator, so I can stay synchronized across:

1. my Macs
2. Windows machines at home and at work
3. my RAZR cell phone
4. whatever Microsoft SmartPhone I end up getting for work so I can start trying it out with our Exchange 2003 upgrade.
5. and whatever other machines I happen to use that aren't one of the above, as long as it has a web browser
   

Speaking of the web and cell phone - I use Opera Mini on my RAZR. Go get Opera Mini right now if you have a cell phone with web access. I guarantee Mini is better than the browser that came on your cell phone.

Bittorrent. Great for getting those iso's.

Firefox of course. Have I blogged about the Firefox extensions I use? These aren't necessarily the very best in the world, but they're the ones I use. Firefox extensions:

1. Sessionsaver
2. Del.icio.us
3. TabColor
4. Logmein.com

iLove iLife but iJust don't iUse iMovie or iDVD or iWeb or iGarageBand that much. iWish iHad more iTime to iDo iThat. Of course iDo iUse iPhoto and iTunes aTon.

Activity Monitor. It's in your Utilities folder and I run it as a startup (login) item.

Google Earth rocks. Everyone who has a computer and is interested in looking at the planet they live on should have it. Very happy there's finally a Mac version. Thanks!