I’m debating a re-format soon and I was trying to think of a list of software I want to take with me when it’s done, this is a condensed version of that. My top 10 leopard apps i couldn’t live without!
In short it’s an application launcher. From a shortcut menu it tries to auto-guess what you’re looking for allowing you to not only launch apps but use functionality from within them. E.g. Play an album in iTunes or Open an FTP session in Transmit. Another good feature is the ability to bind hot keys to nearly any app/website/function. Its features are well documented (link) so I won’t go into them here.
Visit the Quicksilver website to download
Growl is a notification tool. It brings up a very nice looking notification box (customizable) to tell you what your various apps are up to. It’s compatible with all my everyday apps, Apple Mail, Safari, FF, Transmission, Twitterific plus lots of others and it can even tell you hardware updates like when your I.P. Address has been released or if it’s found an open wireless network. Very handy, especially if you’re a control freak!
Visit the Growl website to download
Changes the log-in background of your mac to whatever your desktop background is at the time. It’s a real one click solutions if your a designer/control freak like me (lol) it gives you a complete brand.
Visit the Desktop2Login website to download
This is another handy app for the control freaks in the room. It allows you to monitor your system (ram/cpu/network usage) from the system bar in osx. Great for keeping an eye on things!
Visit the MenuMeters website to download
A must have for any Photographer/Flickr user, Allows you to upload pictures to your account from your desktop, retain full control over titles, descriptions and privacy status.
Visit the jUploadr website to download
I can’t even begin to explain how much I hate this apps icon! haha 
but it is amazing at what it does. It can pretty much turn a dvd into ipod mp4 or avi in one click. Put it in your drive, select and bang! Really handy for keeping a backup of scratched disks or copying your films to your ipod.
Visit the Handbrake website to download
@Johan is to thank pointing out to me and @James Ling that this is in fact now available on the PC! My bad for not knowing, sorry bit of an apple fan-boy haha 
thanks for the input. Always welcome.
Check out the Replacement Handbrake Icon (thanks @James for this)
audio format converter. Converts nearly every major format. Most importantly, WMA to MP3, reclaim your music from Microsoft once and for all!
Visit the Switch website to download
Allows you to copy songs/video off your (or anyone else’s for that matter) ipod – really useful if you delete your tunes by accident (it’s happened) or if you want your mates.
Visit the Senuti website to download
A bit of no brainer this one but it still amazes me at how many people don’t have this app. It can play nearly every form of digital movie including those from mobile phones etc. It has a really handy playlist feature so you can slap in a bunch of films and not have to start the next one manually. The only downside is that it doesn’t work with apple remote (as of writing).
Visit the VLC website to download
As @Roy pointed out in comments Perian is a really cool plug-in for quicktime that enables most file-types etc. If you want to keep it apple, check it out.
This is the ultimate torrent downloader for mac, in my opinion, far more efficient than Azureus. You can set it to watch a folder (e.g. downloads) and then add torrents automatically as they are downloaded. No sooner have you clicked in FF has it started torrenting in Transmission. Also has a very handy bandwidth limiter (perfect for web based designers), you can cap your up/down speed at the click of a button. Great for when its FTP time!
Visit the Transmission website to download
Other free apps that I love and should have given more love are: Twitterific, Firefox, Cyberduck, Img2icns & Adium.
May 27th, 2008
4:29 pm
great post!
May 27th, 2008
5:37 pm
Very cool applications, I will try some of them!
May 27th, 2008
6:57 pm
Hmmm, I had no trouble using VLC with my apple remote last I tried (about a year ago).
May 27th, 2008
10:18 pm
@serenity, I think it became a problem in the upgrade to Leopard. I’ve heard rumors they are sorting it out soon, but rumors are rumors so who knows, hope so though!
May 27th, 2008
10:33 pm
Lol apple
enjoy your aids
May 27th, 2008
10:35 pm
@george you’re right, my Apple Remote packed in the day that I upgraded to Leopard. There is supposed to be a “fixed” version on the VLC website but I’ve downloaded it and haven’t noticed a change though!
I guess I have to stop being lazy in the time being and walk to the computer. hehe!
May 28th, 2008
3:43 pm
do you know, can you get any of these for pcs? thanks
May 28th, 2008
4:15 pm
@James Ling, to my knowledge the only one of these apps that’s available on the PC is VLC. Thanks for reading! George
May 29th, 2008
5:25 am
blah @ CyberDuck, YummyFTP is the best FTP software I’ve used. I think it’s the only software I’ve actually purchased. (I’m not affiliated with Yummy Software, I just think it’s awesome and if you have any problems, the owner, JD, answers your questions on the forum himself within minutes/hours of posting)
May 29th, 2008
9:31 am
@Jace havn’t tried Yummyftp yet but in my opinion one of the best FTP apps that you can buy is Flow FTP (http://extendmac.com/flow/) it’s amazing, intuitive… If apple was to make an FTP app, it would look & feel like this.
May 29th, 2008
2:17 pm
[...] hat eine Top-10 Liste der kostenlosen OS X Leopard Appliktionen erstellt, ohne die er nicht leben [...]
May 29th, 2008
5:45 pm
I really couldn’t stand VLC, I never could get it to work right and it kept crashing. But I found Perian. Perian is a Quicktime plugin that lets you watch anything in Quicktime (Except WMV which require WMVPlayer).
http://perian.org/
May 29th, 2008
5:45 pm
Dude I have Leopard + VLC + Apple Remote -> definitely works. It’s epically good
May 29th, 2008
5:48 pm
@Roy, Perian is very cool. But one of my main reasons for using VLC is the ability to stack playlists. Really handy if your doing work, you can just set off a load of digg nations or whatever & I can just zone in and out as i get about my business
. But yea Perian worth a bump! i’ll put it in the post!
May 29th, 2008
5:49 pm
@Adam ahh maybe I need to upgrade? I’ll have a look and check, thanks for the update!
May 29th, 2008
5:49 pm
@James Ling and/or George:
Handbrake is also available for PC.
Can’t wait to I have enough money for my first Mac. (Macbook Pro
)
- Johan
May 29th, 2008
6:03 pm
@Johan thanks for that mate, updated the post!
May 31st, 2008
5:15 pm
This is good — my list is very similar, but I didn’t previously know about Switch, which looks like a great application to have. Thanks.
May 31st, 2008
5:40 pm
Thank you for presenting your list of top 10 indispensible apps that not only do a great job but have the bonus of being freeware as well.
I was curious to see how many of your apps were those I had been
familiar with and was very surprised to learn that despite my tech proficiency I had known only 4 out of 10. Your contribution is most
appreciated.
June 1st, 2008
5:40 pm
I use iStat Menus, but I’ll check out MenuMeters. Thanks for an excellent list of great applications.
I second the recommendation of Perian and Flip4Mac. And if you chat, AdiumX. Still looking for a burning application as good as K3b, though. Or Nero express, for that matter.
June 4th, 2008
9:08 am
thanks for your nice asisstance
jasmine celion
cool-hotstuff.blogspot.com
June 4th, 2008
5:44 pm
With your Transmission program do you use any form of IP blocker? If so which?
June 4th, 2008
5:55 pm
@Steve, I would recommend >>Vidalia<<, keeps you anonymous on the web, is fast & reliable.
June 4th, 2008
11:22 pm
these aren’t half bad, i guess i should start trying new things.
June 5th, 2008
4:52 am
PTH Pasteboard for multiple clipboards is great. i use it daily and it sits quietly in the menu bar.
June 6th, 2008
10:45 am
You’re not the only one who dislikes the Handbrake icon. A few people have designed their own replacement. Takaaki Kato’s effort is probably the best. Check it out: http://samuraicoder.net/handbrake_replacement_icon
June 6th, 2008
11:45 am
@James, very nice replacement! will put it in the post later this afternoon. Thanks for your input.
June 6th, 2008
12:44 pm
Top 10 (free) apps I can\’t live without | Blog | Geenius | nerdd.net…
\r\n10 free handy Leopard applications to make your life easier…\r\nThis is the ultimate torrent d…
June 6th, 2008
2:31 pm
LOL@the D&B tracks in your playlist!
June 6th, 2008
3:15 pm
Great list! I do agree that those are really useful apps.
June 6th, 2008
3:16 pm
macfag, lol.
June 8th, 2008
9:17 pm
Why would you reformat with OSX, you idiot.
June 8th, 2008
9:25 pm
@Ryan, thanks for your kind words
had my mac for 2 years & I figure by deleting everything i can filter all the old files (tiger system files & previous versions of adobe etc software)… I’m hoping to reclaim at least 10gb of lost space. Cheers, post again soon (…or not)
June 8th, 2008
11:15 pm
@George just thought I’d say, I do the same thing.
I can never quite figure out just *where* all that space has gone!
and @Ryan good to know that constructive criticism is alive and well on the internet… as usual!
June 11th, 2008
9:03 pm
[...] Top 10 (free) apps I can’t live without | Blog | GeeniusSome must-haves on this list for sure. [...]
June 13th, 2008
5:19 am
Great Post
June 15th, 2008
1:21 pm
I prefer using miro (as a bit torrent) then Transmission. On my mac it downloads faster.
June 16th, 2008
1:03 am
[...] Top 10 (free) apps I can’t live without | Blog | GeeniusSome must-haves on this list for sure. [...]
July 4th, 2008
5:14 pm
[...] Helper – Can strip out FLV’s from flash players e.g. youtube (i convert it with isquint) & generally makes downloading web videos [...]
August 3rd, 2008
11:18 am
nice list, thanks for sharing.
November 11th, 2008
10:03 am
Great post!
December 30th, 2008
7:06 am
I have never seen a Mac user decide to “reformat”. This is behavior befitting a Windows user, or on the rare occasion (when you can find someone that isn’t full of B$) that of a Linux user.
Honestly, if you are going to do anything different, it’d be to switch platforms, but why reformat? It serves no purpose for the Mac user, since everything looks the same ALL THE TIME. Don’t get me wrong, the Mac interface is great, but other than changing OSes I could see no reason for a “reformat” for you.
December 30th, 2008
7:08 am
An addendum to the previous comment:
You should just delete everything. Saves the trouble of loading that 10GB of stuff.
January 1st, 2009
8:54 am
Senuti isn’t really free, it’s a 30 day trial
January 2nd, 2009
1:54 pm
@zero-kill – it depends how you use your mac, I test drive a lot of software and often loose track of where things are installed, re-formatting allows me to cut the chaff & remove all the temp files from my hard-disk. You would be suprised how much HD space you can claw back from a format, even with a mac.
@Aliyah366891 sorry, at the time of writing Senuti was free