Top 10 Shareware
Apps of 2004
09 January 2004 Justin Williams Skip to comments
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A lot of great software was released in 2004. Justin Williams takes a few moments to highlight ten of them.
Mac OS X Panther comes with a lot of functionality out of the box. You have the OS itself, but also the iApps: iCal, iTunes, iPhoto, etc. Even with all this bundled functionality, there are still spots in the Macintosh that could use a bit of tweaking or enhancement. That is where the third party developers come in. The Mac has as plethora of low cost, high productivity applications that are designed by indepenendent developers. Some are utility applications such as third party FTP clients, RSS Aggregators, etc. Others are utilities that extend the functionality of the Macintosh desktop experience.
To start off 2004, we have compiled a list of 10 utilities we think will give you a boost of productivity to begin the year. These are all applications we use every day. This list is in no way inclusive of every great shareware application for the Macintosh. These are just tools that we would cry, beg, scream and pout if we didn't have. If you are looking for a certain type of tool, the best resource you can have in your bookmarks is MacUpdate. They update several times a day and list almost every Mac OS X application there is.
Transmit
Cost: $24.95
Transmit is the best FTP application on the market. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and is used to transfer files to and from remote servers. I use Transmit daily to update my personal Web site and MacZealots itself. Transmit has some unique features that made me pick it out of the crop of FTP clients. Rendezvous support is one of the main things I enjoy about the application. Using Rendezvous, Transmit can sniff out FTP servers on your local network, so you can easily connect to them. The application also has a built-in text editor, so you can easily edit a file remotely on a server. This is useful if you just need to change a line or two in an html file. Panic also gives the option to set a third party text editor such as BBEdit or SubEthaEdit.
LaunchBar
Cost: $19.95
How many times have you had to do a mouse sequence such as Macintosh HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor or something similar? While you could easily put utility applications (or every application for that matter) in your dock, that can turn very messy. LaunchBar lets you easily access applications, bookmarks, addresses, etc. by just a simple key command. You can then type in a few letters of what you are searching for, and it will find it. The best part of the LaunchBar experience is that it will learn what you are searching for. For example, I type in mw when I want to launch Microsoft Word. I only had to do this a few times and LaunchBar was trained to understand what I wanted.
NetNewsWire
Cost: $39.95
NetNewsWire is the RSS Aggregator for the Mac. An RSS Aggregator basically removes the fluff from the Internet and gives you straight content. Users simply subscribe to an XML/RSS feed in NetNewsWire, and when new content is published, it is parsed in the application. This is seen often in Weblogs but has trickled into more mainstream Web sites in recent time. Ranchero's NetNewsWire comes in two flavors: Regular and Lite. The Lite version is just a plain aggregator without all the bells and whistles. The Regular version includes a weblog editor, notepad and customizable appearances among other things. I don't know how I used the Internet before I discovered RSS and NetNewsWire.
Visit The Ranchero NetNewsWire Homepage.
PodWorks
Cost: $8
PodWorks is a utility that you may not use every day, but when you need an easy way to transfer music from your iPod to another Mac, it is well worth every penny. PodWorks reads the iPod's internal database to get its metadata, which makes it perform a lot better than other iPod extraction utilities. When I go home for a weekend, I usually only take my iBook and iPod. If I want to burn a CD for the trip back up to Purdue, I just extract the songs I want using PodWorks and then burn the disc on my iBook. I also use PodWorks to play music directly from my iPod through my iBook's speakers. Very useful, very cool.
CSSEdit
Cost: $24.95
CSSEdit may not be for the average Mac user, but anyone who does Web development and fiddles with style sheets knows that it can be a pain to tweak them. CSSEdit tries to make the process a bit easier with its point and click settings, live previews and grouping. If you are more hardcore, you can jump into the source view and edit just like you would in a normal text editor. As an added bonus over the text editor though, CSSEdit offers automatic intendation, syntax highlighting and auto completion. Another useful feature is the ability to extract a site's CSS file so you can learn how others use CSS on their sites. I use this feature often to quickly pull the CSS from my personal site so I can copy/paste classes to another stylesheet and then just edit the coloring.
Check Off
Cost: Free
Check Off is the ultimate tool for the list maker. It sits in your OS X menu bar and slides out giving you a place to create a checklist of things you need to do. You can group the items by category, use labels and export the task list to the iPod. You can attach a file to a task. I use this feature with schoolwork. I have a group labeled homework, and if I have a paper or other type of assignment, I attach it to my Check Off item so I can easily access it. Version 3.0 of the application will be released as open source.
Cocktail
Cost: $11.95
Cocktail is a tune up for your Mac. It allows you to do a plethora of things to your Macintosh, be it customize the Dock, schedule Cron jobs, remove those nasty .DS_Store files or enable Disk Journaling. Cocktail divides the application into five categories:
- Disks
- System
- Files
- Network
- Interfaces
You won't use Cocktail every single day, but it will make keeping your Mac in top-notch shape a lot easier by putting advanced functionality a mere button click away.
SubEthaEdit
Cost: Free
Formerly known as Hydra, SubEthaEdit is the ultimate collaborative text editor. Using Apple's Rendezvous technology, users can share and edit the same document all in realtime. Yes, realtime. Each person's changes are highlighted with a color of their own. At MacZealots, we use SubEthaEdit often when we want to collaborate on an article or press release. You can set a particular set of permissions to access to a file, or just allow anyone full controll or guest access. SubEthaEdit features colored syntax highlighting, indenting and integration with Apple's Project Builder and xCode. The syntax highlighting is supported for Cocoa, C++, C, CSS, HTML, Java, Javascript, Perl and many other languages.
Visit the SubEthaEdit Homepage
WeatherPop
Cost: $8
WeatherPop is another menubar application that lists the current weather and a three - to five-day forecast. It allows you to also setup additional locations, so that you can see what the weather is like in other cities. I usually want to know how the weather is back home as well as what it is at Purdue. The new 2.0 version includes a screen saver that will display what the weather is like outside your main location. The pro version also allows you to have backup data sources so that if one goes down, it can access another. The "Lite" freeware version of WeatherPop only supports cities in the United States, covered by the National Weather Service, and supports any number of cities you define as favorites.
VLC Media Player
Cost: Free
VLC is a cross platform video player that plays DVDs, VCDs, DivX and almost everything else. VLC plays almost everything. If there has ever been a time when you tried to play a video in Quicktime and it wouldn't play because you were missing a codec, all you have to do is open it with VLC Media Player, and it will most likely open. VLC is also able to play streaming content. The application is in constant development and each revision brings performance improvements, new features and support for new codecs. Give it a try today, you might like it. We do.
Justin Williams is founder and chief author for MacZealots. He switched to the Mac almost five years ago hasn't looked back since. When not blogging or coding, you can find him watching copious amounts of TV. Justin can be reached at
Reader Comments (16)
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#1) On January 9, 2004 4:25 PM
MPlayer OS X definitely deserves a spot in the list. Check it out. http://mplayerosx.sf.net/
#2) On January 26, 2004 10:12 PM
How many of these little “free” apps come with the hidden cost of giving someone a window into your system, browsing habits? How many will result in an increase in pop-ups? How many are commercial spyware for marketing purposes?
“Ain’t nothin’ free kiddies.”
#3) On January 26, 2004 10:17 PM
0. This is the Mac. Not Windows.
#4) On February 8, 2004 1:34 PM
“How many are commercial spyware for marketing purposes?”
This made my day. ROTFL ! :-)
#5) On February 8, 2004 3:17 PM
Rather than using WeatherPop, one can use the open-source Meteorologist, which supports most of the features of WeatherPop without insisting on purchase or crippling the feature set.
Some things are still a little weird, but I’ve had almost no problems with it.
#6) On February 8, 2004 3:30 PM
I was going to put Meteorologist on the list, but since it is no longer actively developed, I decided against it.
FWIW, I use it still only because I am too poor to pop $8 on WeatherPop. :)
#7) On February 8, 2004 4:48 PM
Well, to each his own, but I really like the customizability of Meteorologist as opposed to WeatherPop. The no-spending-$8 thing is nice, but I think more to the point I wasn’t comfortable with what I could do with WeatherPop anyway.
#8) On February 10, 2004 6:06 AM
nice list :)
more great apps are iCDc (cd info editor) and StreamripperX (records internet radio streams)
#9) On February 13, 2004 5:28 PM
KeyXing (keyboard launcher, beautifully done)www.lumacode.com, Ittec (FinderPop for X, on steroids)www.balancesoftware.com.
Both cheap, fast, and indispensable.. :-)
#10) On February 18, 2004 4:29 AM
PodWorks isn’t bad, but I prefer iPodRip myself, but I have yet to discover any iPod “helper” (ie: hack) that is fully functional, and does 100% of what I want 100% of the time with 100% success.
#11) On March 19, 2004 7:51 PM
Hi! I know I’m posting this quite late in this articles lifespan, but regarding the blurb you’ve written for launchbar: instead of doing all that mouse clicking to get to your utilities or applications folders, have you tried: Apple+shift+u for utilities and Apple+shift+a for applications … These are quick and easy shortcuts that everyone should know.
#12) On March 31, 2004 12:49 PM
If you love LaunchBar, then you must check out this gorgeous piece of freeware: QuickSilver
http://blacktree.com/apps/quicksilver/
#13) On October 10, 2004 10:14 AM
Best of 2004? In January? Don’t you mean best of 2003? Unless you’re coming back from the future… It’s pretty clear that Quicksilver (mentioned in a comment above) is one of the most-loved pieces of Mac software in 2004, but it’s not on your “2004” list. Maybe it should be titled “must-have software for 2004.”
Also, maybe it’s me, but how are Transmit or (the full version) NetNewsWire shareware? Traditionally, “shareware” meant not just low-cost, but that payment really was optional. If an app stops working after 30 days, that’s a demo, not shareware. (And QS is not just shareware, but is actually free.)
#14) On October 10, 2004 1:03 PM
CaptainFTP is probably by far the best FTP client for the Mac. Transmit tends to get slower the longer it is open (never really checked, but I’m assuming it’s a memory leak). And CaptainFTP has some nice features not available in Transmit, add to that the number of updates to each over the last year… Also, Keyboard Maestro is amazingly useful. When I am on a computer without it I’m lost (All of my F keys do something - next song in iTunes, or go to the finder and hide others, or just switch to a specific app, set energy saver to sleep my screen in 1 or 20 minutes, etc).
#15) On November 9, 2004 3:37 AM
It’s not necessarily software, but I’d include the “wiPod” from http://BayAreaFreeFi.com (or any of the http://MetroFreeFi.com partners: Boston, Chicago, Colorado, Indianapolis, New York, Ohio, Portland, Seattle, and San Diego, etc.)
The wiPod is an iPod-based field guide to free wireless hotspots around the country.
#16) On October 5, 2005 4:01 PM
I downloaded the VLC media player and I must say it is superb - a job well done and somethingt that everyone needs! It can be what you want it to be - for me its a simple mp3 player that works well.