10 Freeware Applications Every Mac Should Have

[inferno1321]

I found this article very interesting. Read it here on this site:

10 Freeware Applications Every Mac Should Have | Travis Reynolds and thought it was interesting.

[Mr. Mayor]

Inferno,

I remember reading that one awhile back... I have about half of those apps already installed... great article... thanks for posting it!

Have you tried all of those apps?

[madmacmat]

humm... ok, used some of those quite HEAVILY (quicksilver) but eventually decided to buy LaunchBar... it was worth the money (see my review on site)

but the rest?....Firefox? Naaa, not on a Mac with Safari running much smoother... video conversion? rather niche product i think... ITunes rating? The prog really is nice but a must? I honestly don't use the evaluation feature of ITunes... is it just me ,then?-)...

[Mr. Mayor]

mat, interesting that you bring up FF and Safari.

On my MBP, I've found lately that FF runs much quicker and smoother than Safari. I recently downloaded the lastest version of Firefox (Firefox 3, release candidate 2) and it works like a charm.

You can download it here: Firefox web browser | International versions: Get Firefox in your language

[madmacmat]

OK, You just made me curious... I'll give 3.0 a shot... just to prove for meself that all is well in my little world ;-)... mind You, I am the guy with the oooold PowerPC architecture... so we'll see how FF deals with THAT... I'll post about that...

[Mr. Mayor]

haha... oh i'm sure it'll handle it fine. Let me know how it goes.

[ipodtoucher]

I love to use Firefox more than Safari. Don't get me wrong, I love safari, but when I go to Facebook in Safari my internet connection dies. Haha I have no idea why So I just use Firefox hahaha

[Mr. Mayor]

I'm with you ipodtoucher... for some reason lately my Safari is really lagging in performance in comparison to FF... at least that's what I've noticed lately. I usually end up in FireFox these days.

[madmacmat]

Ok.... So I instantly after the suggestion of the Mayor downloaded FF3beta and am still giving it a hard time on my PB...

Up until now I am not fully decided whether I will completely stay with it or switch back to Safari (or even take the Camino route?)....

Summary so far:

+ FF is at least as fast as Safari

+ as the ipodtoucher mentioned, it is really highly customizable... all the integrated plugins really seem to blend over with the core structure- the community behind this is REALLY strong- I liked that idea in my PC times already...

+ with the standard skin I for the first time have the impression that FF is somewhat integrated into the OS- which is very nice!

+ I always were a fan of the pictures embedded in the tabs- much better overview than just writing
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- I am missing the keychain support- while I know that Camino offers it I am a bit reluctant to take that road... FF3 runs like crazy on my Mac... is there a way to make my keychain passwords work for FF?

- this is no real negative point, just stating that You can't have both on my PB- many bells and whistles AND a fast opening browser (from off state)- while I can fully anticipate that this of course is not possible it bugs me still...

The biggest nudge for me is Keychain support, though... when they integrate that, I'm bought.. um, sold, that is ;-)

[roalgumo7]

I like both safari and firefox, firefox a bit more tough, I've tested page loading on both, and don't know why firefox loads faster than safari, and I say "don't know" because safari is supposed to load faster html or something...