Gabe Jacobs Blog

Acquisition is for the P2P lover. Out of all the P2P apps out there, Acquisition has the best UI.

Adium is the best multi-service chat client. If you use many accounts such as Aim, Jabber, Yahoo, Bonjour or MSN, then Adium is right for you. If you just use Aim or .Mac, i would use iChat.

AppDelete is basically the free AppZapper. It is the uninstaller that Mac OS X forgot. AppDelete is an application that will uninstall the application you choose and any associated items (files and folders) that belong to that application.

Its always fun trying new browsers other than Safari and Firefox. Camino is a fun one to try. This browser takes the power of Mozilla’s rendering engine with a slick Cocoa UI. It is very fast, looks great and fits in seemlessly with OS X.

Colloquy is the best IRC client. I occasionally use Colloquy to connect to Chris Pirillo’s chat room.

FTP can be needed a lot, especially when making websites. Cyberduck is your free FTP solution. I like Transmit by Panic a little more than cyberduck, but it costs $29.95.

Right now, I’m using Eclipse to code a Blackjack Java game for my Comp-Sci class. If you’re coding Java, you need eclipse.

HandBrake is a very well known DVD ripper for Mac OS X. The best thing about HandBrake is that you can rip your DVD’s with iPod/iPhone presets so that your DVD can go right on your device when it’s done.

*It goes without saying that you should only use Handbrake for DVDs which you are licensed to do so.

Jaseeq allows you to search, listen and download songs from Seeqpod. It is against the law to download these songs. Although SeeqPod does not host content it encourages the adherence to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Courts have repeatedly held that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the doctrine of Fair Use shield search engines from liability. More information is available from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA). So it may be legal to listen to the songs on seeqpod, but it is probably illegal to download the songs…

NeoOffice is the open-source and free replacement for Microsoft Office/Apple iWork. If you have heard of OpenOffice, this is the same thing, but native on Mac OS X.

NetNewsWire is the best RSS reader/organizer for the Mac and it recently became free. NetNewsWire also syncs up with NewsGator so you can have your RSS feeds wherever you go, even on your iPhone.

There are a lot of video formats that QuickTime doesn’t support. Perian gives QuickTime native support for all of the popular video formats.

QuickSilver is my favorite app on my computer. Yes, I said it! Quicksilver is one of those apps that I could not live without. After a fresh install of OSX, Quicksilver is the first app that I install on my Mac. QuickSilver is a app launcher. It is extremely fast and makes any app only a few keystrokes away. It is much faster for launching apps than Spotlight and it can be set up to feel as though it is part of the OS. No dock icon, no menubar icon. All you have to do is hit the keystroke, and there it is! Ready to serve.

Don’t have Photoshop? Don’t have Pixelmator? Seashore is your answer. It’s basically a better Microsoft Paint for Mac OS X.

While iPhones/iPod Touchs are not meant to be unlocked, iPods are. Senuit is iTunes spelled backwards…ISNT THAT AWESOME! Anyways, Senuti is by far the easiest/best way to transfer songs and videos from your iPod to your computer. It’s as simple as that.

Shiira is a very interesting browser. It is based on web kit and written in cocoa. It is not as good as Safari, but worth a try.

Sixtyforce is an emulator that runs Nintendo 64 games on your Mac. If you love MarioKart…download Sixtyfrorce

Skitch is another one of my favorite apps on my computer. Skitch is an application for creating snapshots, editing and drawing on those snapshots, and then sharing those snapshots across the internet. Once you sign up for Skitch, you get your own personal space where all of your snapshots are stored. It’s easy, free and awesome. Skitch also recently came out of private beta, so now it is open to everyone. Enjoy.

The free version of Skype allows you to make calls from your computer to other people on Skype. This is really nice, but you can also use Skype to call to phones…that costs money though (AND THATS NOT WHY YOUR HERE!)

Spaz is my favorite Twitter Client. It is built on the new Adobe Air and runs very well. A lot of people like Twitteriffic (not free), but I find Spaz’s UI more intuitive.

StuffIt Expander is an essential for every Mac. Once in a while, your going to get a compressed file that cannot be opened without StuffIt Expander (.rar.tgz.zip.gz.tar).

There are many ways to download youtube videos and put them on your ipod. I would go as far as to say that Tooble is the fastest and easiest way.

TotalTunes Control is basically the free CoverSutra. TotalTunes Control gives your control of your iTunes, wherever you are on your Mac. You can create shortcuts for all your needs such as pause, play, next song, search, etc. With TotalTunes Control you will never have to open up iTunes again.

If your into torrents, Transmission is perfect for you. It is very lightweight and after recent updates, very powerful. Transmission is the best BitTorrent client for Mac OS X.

VLC Media Player is very similar to QuickTime, but supports a ton of codecs that you have never even heard of! It’s good to have it just incase.

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Growl is a very robust notification system for your Mac. It works with a ton of applications. Of course, notifications are good for you to keep up with what your system is doing without having to switch between applications.

Songbird is an open source jukebox and media player that “promises to be the Firefox of media players.” Songbird is great because if you browse to a web page that has a podcast or music linked to it, Songbird automatically finds these files and offers to add them to your library.

Sometimes Activity Monitor just doesn’t cut it. iStat-Menus monitors your entire system right from your menubar, with 8 separate and highly configurable menu extras. You’ll always know exactly what’s going on inside your Mac!

If you want to customize your Mac, Onyx is for you. OnyX is a maintenance, optimization, and personalization utility for Mac OS X. OnyX allows you to run miscellaneous tasks of system maintenance, to configure certain hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, Safari, Dashboard, Expose.

Gimp is your photoshop replacement. GIMP stands from the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Gimp can do almost anything Photoshop can do. The only problem is, it’s a hassle to install. Before your install Gimp, you must install X11 from y

our OSX DVD. This can be a pain…

If you do not want to install X11 for Gimp and you cannot afford Photoshop or Pixelmator, LiveQuartz is for you. Although it is not Photoshop killer, it gets the job done.

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