9 Essential Free Software for New Mac Users

So you just made the big switch? I mean from Windows PC to Mac OS X. Well, I just did a month ago. And one of the things that you’ll surely miss after taking the big leap from Windows to Macs is of course the software available. I’ve spent several days downloading and installing Mac software, both free and paid ones. So, here’s what I got, a list of essential software that every new Mac users should have.

Adium

We all need to continue communicating to our online buddies whether they are PC or Mac users. I sorely missed GTalk, my sole chat facility in my previous desktop and notebook PC, so I immediately scoured around the web to find the best chat platform – I found Adium, an open-source chat software that you won’t have a problem running on your new Mac.

What’s so good about Adium X is the fact that it integrates all your chat account. So, not only did I get my GTalk buddies but my Yahoo Messenger and even Facebook buddies on the Adium chat window.

Textedit

I know you’d miss Windows Notepad on the Mac. I did actually. It’s a good thing the Mac comes bundled with its very own, and as equally useful Note-taking software called Textedit. Textedit is a no frills, no shrills straight-out text editor for your Mac. And if you want some formatting features, the software gives you basic tools for changing font color, sizes and styles. Textedit also allows you to save your file into various format including Microsoft Word 2007 .docs format.

TweetDeck

If you’re a heavy Twitter user, you’d definitely want to have a desktop client for your Twitter account. There’s quite a lot of them available right now. But look no further than TweetDeck – possibly the best Twitter desktop client so far. TweetDeck is robust, sleek-looking and so light weight that you can just let it run in your desktop background. It also allows multiple Twitter account setting so you can see your all your Twitter updates without switching applications.

QuickSilver

The Mac’s Finder utility is useful and cool tool for accessing all your files, downloads, documents and essentially everything that is on your Mac HD. It’s the Windows Explorer of Mac users. While it may be useful for one-tier file structure, it becomes tedious once your file structure gets deeper with sub-folders and sub-directories. So, QuickSilver offers a better solution.

Quicksilver lets you find what you need quickly and easily through the use of keyboard shortcuts. It also hides in the background whenever you are not using it.

GIMP for Mac OS X

Although the Mac’s default image management software, iPhoto is good enough for handling your digital photos as well as for some image editing requirements, there will still come a point when you would want a powerful image/photo editor in your Mac. Well, you can always buy the expensive Adobe Photoshop, but if you run out of budget after buying your precious Mac – GIMP offers a free solution.

GIMP is a popular Photoshop alternative used by many who doesn’t want to spend too much on an image/photo editing software. It mostly does what the Adobe Photoshop can do.

Ecto Desktop Blogging Software

I’m not really fond of desktop blogging software before, but when I found out about Ecto, I decided to give it a try. I was surprise to find a great-looking, sexy desktop blog application that runs fast when connected to my blogs.

Ecto is an easy-to-use desktop blogging software that supports various blogging platform including Blogger, Srupal, Movable Type, TypePad and WordPress. It’s also a native Mac OS X app so you can use the default Mac editing options when composing your blog entries.

Audacity

If you think that you’ll be doing some recording and sound editing on your Mac, Audacity could help you achieve this task. Audacity is a free, easy-to-use and multilingual audio editor and recorder that lets you record live audio, convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs, edit Ogg Vorbis sound files, as well as MP3, WAV or AIFF sounds, cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together, change the speed or pitch of a recording and more.

Skim

If you would be working with PDFs on your Mac, you need to have a good PDF reader. Skim for OS X is a good app to use since it is not only a PDF Reader but a note-taker as well. It lets you read and annotate PDF and view them as well. Skim also lets you highlight text, take snapshots, create presentations with transitions, magnify documents and add bookmarks.

NeoOffice

Alright, you’re already using a Mac but you might still be missing Microsoft Office and you don’t want to spend additional bucks to get Microsoft Office for Mac. No worries, we’ve got a free open-source Microsoft Office-like software for your Mac. It goes by the name – NeoOffice. It is based on OpenOffice.org and brings with it integrated native Mac features and also allows you to import, edit, and exchange files with of course Microsoft Office. Honestly, I haven’t installed this app yet on my Mac as I have no particular need to word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software. Perhaps later.

These are just some of the essential Mac Softwares that every new Mac user should have on their new Mac. If you have other suggestions, feel free to tell us by leaving a comment.

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