Top apps for new Mac users

I had an enjoyable evening geeking out over Macs this evening with some colleagues from work who have just purchased their Macs. This means that I was actually one of the more experienced Mac users in the room, and I’m afraid I may have bored them rigid with “…and here’s another brilliant app / widget / shortcut…” Fortunately though they were very patient and tolerant and shared their own top tips for tools like Firefox, MAMP, iPhoto etc. It’s great how the built-in Mac software works together to do pretty cool stuff very easily. It’s also great to see how Mac switchers get excited when they find cool widgets and tools to play with that help them do the stuff they really want to do.

All great fun and very inspiring! Here’s a short list of the apps we looked at that I reckon are useful for new Mac users:

• Soundflower lets you route audio around within the Mac so you can record your Skype conversation for a podcast or record a commentary while demoing iTunes or Garageband etc.
• Evernote is a fantastic notes app that works on the Mac desktop, iPhone and the web that allows you to share notes and access them wherever you are.
• Voodoopad is a neat little self-contained wiki for capturing ideas when you’re not ready to think linearly.
• ScreenFlow is the must-have utility if you’re into making screencasts, demos etc.
• Mouseposé is also very useful for demos and screencasts if you need to highlight the cursor or want to show shortcut keys.
• MacTheRipper will deal with pretty much all the DVD backup and ripping you’ll ever need.
• Handbrake is the tool for converting DVD to pretty much any video format you can play on Apple hardware.
• Flip4Mac will allow you to play WMV files on your Mac.
• Time Machine in Leopard has pretty much made hard-drive backup an automated process, but SuperDuper is what you should look at if you’re in pre-Leopard mode or if you want a more literal copy of your harddrive.
• Audacity is an audio editor that allows you to trim up audio files, split them into sections using markers, process them with a variety of nice effects, and batch convert from one file type into another.
• MAMP allows you to “host” fully featured webpages locally in order to develop your website offline.
• Picturesque tweaks images for blogs, brochures  – changing perspective, adding borders, generating reflections etc.

EDIT: (More tools for consideration!)

• Cyberduck is an FTP client.
• iStatMenus provides in depth information about the status and performance of your Mac: Hard drive space, temperatures, memory, CPU use,  network activity etc. etc.  Provides dashboard. iStatPro provides similar information as a dashboard widget.
• Caffeine keeps your Mac “awake” while you’re watching a movie or chatting via webcam. Stops the sleep and screensaver mode.
• Seashore is a useful image editor that doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of Photshop Elements or The Gimp but is featured enough to be useful.
• Delicious Library isn’t really a necessary app, but it’s quite cool. Take pictures of the barcodes on your books, CDs, software etc. using the iSight camera and the Delicious Library will then store the image of whatever you scan in a virtual library. Track what you have!!