TechoCrunch

k.e.b

Once you own a Mac and start working with it, you’ll be astonished with the amount of workflow and productivity possible with it.The workflow can mainly be attributed to the great interface design and clutter free Mac OSX.

But still Mac OSX lacks certain features and some built in apps aren’t upto the mark, that’s where 3rd party applications comes into play. Being a productivity buff, I hate wasting time and seriously i don’t like applications that don’t have a great interface.Previously i mention few free applications for Windows that increase productivity. Today lets go ahead with some few great 3rd party Mac applications that will let you work faster and do more work in less time(atleast they worked for me)

Quicksilver is the all-in-one app launcher. Quicksilver brings in Search with it which is quite faster then Apple’s Spotlight, besides that manipulating files and data, running scripts or sending e-mail are piece of cake with quicksilver.

Camino is like Firefox for Mac. Thou there is Firefox for Mac, i would still recommend Camino as its really fast compared to Firefox! It renders pages using the same engine that powers Firefox. Camino has great looks, not bloated like the Safari, less memory usage then Firefox.

Anxiety is a light-weight ToDo application, that lets you manage a little task list, Anxiety is for you. It uses Mac OS X Leopard’s technology to sync tasks between iCal, Mail, and Anxiety. Anxiety is free, and available at anxietyapp.com. Anyone who loves Mac should use Anxiety.

iWork is a cheap word processing, creating presentations, and spreadsheet alternative to the pricey Microsoft Office. iWork is a great application from Apple, the key things are Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. Thou it doesn’t beats MS Office in terms of productivity yet still for $79 its gives you a nice price to usability ratio. NeoOffice is a free office alternative if you don’t have money for either of the two.

OmniFocus is the ultimate GTD application for the Mac. People who love GTD will love OmniFocus. Its a tad costly for a GTD application, it demands $79.95.

NetNewsWire is one of the most popular RSS reader for Mac! Recently it became free, previously it cost $29.95. Its almost works similar to the Feed-demon application for Windows, only the interface is Mac style. NewsFire is another free alternative RSS reader.

iClip is copy and paste made easy for Mac. You can copy and paste almost anything with iClip, and also has history feature to look back at the most recent things that you have done. Bad thing is that it will cost you $29.

AppDelete is another interesting application. It deletes the application you choose and any associated items (files and folders) that belong to that application, thus minimizing clutter and cleaning up your system from junk. Best part its free.

Text Expander great app for anyone who deals with writing long articles, codes etc. It lets you create simply shortcuts for you most used phrase etc. For example, if I set “u” to expand to “you” or say “ilu” to ” i love you” etc. you can even setup your email signatures and almost anything. It cost about $29.95, Lets face it! this wonderful application can save you hundred of dollars in the long run.

Skype is a free VOIP application. You can call other skype users for free, or anyone around the world on a regular phone for an extra fee.

Photoshop CS3 is the ultimate image editing tool. Photoshop is the best image editor in the world, only if you can pay that heft $600+ price, it demands! Pixelmator is a cheaper alternative to Photoshop. Most of us can’t afford hundreds of dollars on an application like Photoshop. For $59 it give Photoshop run for its money.

Skitch is the awesome screenshot application for the Mac. Skitch allows you to take screenshots (and snaps from your iSight), and add little drawings or text onto them, then upload them to Skitch.com, Flickr, your FTP server, or .Mac or another to share with your friends! Skitch is free.

TextMate is the best text editor out there for Mac. Whether you are a coder, writer you’ll appreciate the usability and the workflow. Costs you about $63 a piece. Free alternative Text Wrangler.

Ecto, still one of the best blogging client for Mac and well worth the $18 dollar price.It supports a wide range of weblog systems, such as Blogger, Blojsom, Drupal, MovableType, Nucleus, SquareSpace, TypePad, WordPress, and more.

Coda is ultimate everything. Its a text editor ,FTP client,CSS cum code editor,terminal, books organizer and much more. It cost $79, but its well worth that as it integrates your workspace without any distractions like switching between apps.

Here is my typical geeky list of Mac applications that i use on my Hackintosh (hell i still don’t own a Mac, but i hope ill get one till winter) , but I’m sure there are lots of hidden gems out there. Most of the applications are paid, but many of them do have free alternatives. It is always said that Windows applications are costly and this and that. For your kind advice Mac applications are much costlier then Windows applications.

If you think there are better applications out there, shoot in a comment I’ll be glad to include your submission. Hope you liked it.

If you liked this article, please bookmark it in del.icio.us or Stumbleit . Thanks!

Pranjal