My Top 10 Mac freeware apps

When I switched to Mac, 1 thing I was worried was the availability of freeware apps since I use many freeware apps in Windows. A lot of Mac apps are shareware, but the availability of freeware apps is not as bad as I thought. Here’s my Top 10 Mac freeware apps:
1. Firefox
Sure, Apple wants you to use Safari, but there is simply no substitute for the flexibility of Firefox and its extensions. Having used Firefox in Windows ever since it was called Firebird, the first thing I installed on my Mac was Firefox. Firefox 3 is an excellent browser. It might not be advertised to be as speedy as Safari, but it is secure, follows web standard, and extremely expandable with add-ons. Check my Top 5 Firefox add-ons.

2. XLD
Most users are fine using iTunes as their main CD-ripper and lossy encoder. However, iTunes was not good enough for me, considering I’ve been using EAC and Lame MP3 in Windows for years. XLD started as an encoder, and it supports .cue + wav image file, which is the way I backup my audio CDs. I used to use Max as the CD ripper on Mac, but now XLD will also function as a CD-ripper, able to rip a CD into a .cue + wav image file, and a secure ripper too! XLD uses the latest Lame MP3 encoder. Besides MP3, XLD also able to encode to AAC, Apple lossless, OGG, and FLAC. An excellent and must have tool!

3. MacMP3gain
The obvious Mac version of MP3gain, a utility useful in normalizing MP3 files. the Mac version has simpler GUI.

4. Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection
I’m using my iMac as my primary computer, but I also have a few Windows PCs. Wouldn’t it be great if I can control those Windows PCs without leaving my Mac? That’s what Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) is for. Simply enable remote desktop on the Windows machine, and you can log-in to the machine from MacOS. Note that remote desktop is only available in Windows XP Media Center & Professional, and Vista Business & Ultimate, not on XP Home nor Vista Home Premium & Basic. Another reason why I recommend people to get either Vista Business or Ultimate only. IMO, MS RDC is better than Leopard’s screen sharing function. In RDC, I can have sounds played from the Windows PC to be played on my Mac, set a custom screen resolution, and the Windows PC is locked while RDC is connected. Another note is that if you want to control a Windows PC without keyboard and mouse, make sure it is connected via ethernet. If the Win PC is connected via wifi, you have to log-in on the actual Windows PC first (to load whatever drivers necessary for the wifi card) before RDC can connect to it.

5. SuperDuper
SuperDuper is a backup utility. It can create a bootable image of your Mac’s hard-drive. Extremely useful for backing up. The free version is limited to creating a full image every single time, while the paid version will allow you to do a smart update (only backing up things that are changed), making the back up process faster. No biggie. I use the free SuperDuper to create a full image of my hard-drive once every couple months, while Time Machine does the daily backup.

6. Seashore
iPhoto is great to manage photos, and Apple’s own Preview app in Leopard is powerful enough to crop/resize pictures. But what if you just want to add some text on a picture without using heavy duty programs like GIMP/Photoshop? Windows have MS Paint, a basic image editing program. Seashore is a similar program for the Mac. It’s free!

7. Perian
Want to play Divx, xvid, AVI, and Matroska videos on the Mac? Look no further. Simply install Perian, and you can play those media in Quicktime. Simple and straight forward, unlike the official Divx codecs. Works in Frontrow too, but I find playing Matroska files via Frontrow is a bit dodgy and unstable.

8. XBMC
XBMC (XBox Media Center) started as a media player for a modded original Xbox. Now it’s a multi-platform Media Center app, available for Windows, MacOS, Linux, and even Apple TV. If you don’t like Frontrow, or want a more customizable media center program with better codec support, get XBMC. It is not as user friendly and the setup screens are a bit geeky, but its extensive codec support is worth it if you want to use your Mac as an HTPC.

9. Truecrypt
Heralded as the best and free encryption program. It’s also available for Windows and Linux.

10. Handbrake
Need to encode videos for your iPod? Handbrake is perfect for the job. It has presets fro PSP, PS3, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, etc. It uses x264, a free H.264 encoder, which I find to be pretty fast. It can create chapters that is compatible with iTunes and iPods, useful for long movies, concert videos, etc. The only downside is that I have yet to find a reliable DVD ripper for the Mac. Handbrake itself can rip DVDs, but I find to not work on most commercial DVDs I have. IMO DVDfab Decrypter to be the ebst DVD ripper, but it’s Windows only.

 

MacOS X 10.5 Leopard impression, part 3

Finder: I wish I could set certain folders on certain view mode. For example, I prefer most folders to have columns view, but my Documents and Pictures folders would be better using cover flow. Nope, I have to switch manually depending on where I’m at. Annoying.

Preview: This is probably one of the most useful apps in the OS. Why? You can crop and resize images with it. You no longer have to run iPhoto or download other software to do simple things like cropping and resizing. There is also a feature called instant alpha. I haven’t really played with it, by the idea is to be used for getting rid of backgrounds, something that was usually only doable in advance photo editors.

 

MacOS X 10.5 Leopard impression, part 2

When using Leopard, I find that certain things make more sense compared to Tiger. Stacks is a welcomed feature. Although it is easily emulated on Tiger, Stacks keeps the desktop clean. The translucent menu bar has drawn many criticism, but the translucent effect can be turned off now with the latest update. Many don’t like the 3D dock either, but I prefer the dock to be on the side so it’s a non-issue. I still think Windows’ Start menu is quicker to start apps, rather than starting Finder (kinda like using Windows Explorer to find and start your Apps). In general, the aesthetics are great and nicer compared to Tiger. Small things like rounded menu edges and higher resolution/better contrasted icons are pleasing to the eyes.

A new feature in Finder that I find very handy is that now Finder can list all networked computers on the sidebar. Definitely provides easier access compared to Tiger’s Finder. This also works great with my Windows Home Server unit as all the shared folders are automatically listed. Tiger’s Finder feels like a big hassle now. Network drives connectivity are maintained, even after putting my Mac to sleep. However, Leopard still doesn’t mount networked drives automatically unless you specifically assign them as a start-up item. I missed Windows’ ability to just map a networked drive into a drive letter.

Frontrow now uses Apple TV’s interface. Although it looks better, it only shows thumbnails of videos. Frontrow in Tiger will show a preview of the videos. The same alias trick can still be used to allow Frontrow to read files from any other locations in addition to the local media folders. Works great streaming videos from my Windows Home Server. Also since my HP WHS unit has iTunes server capability, music streaming via Frontrow has never been easier.

All this network capabilities are great, but it makes me wonder about security. Well, guess what, the firewall is NOT enabled by default in Leopard. Although there is probably a very low chance of attacks on Macs, not enabling firewall by default is not nice, considering XP SP2 has its firewall enabled by default. Also, Leopard’s firewall has a quite confusing interface. There’s only 3 options, allowing all incoming connection, blocking everything except essential services, or application firewall. Do a search on Google and there is a lot of controversies and discussions about Leopard’s different approach of firewall. Well, choosing the second option made all my networked shares disappear in Finder. Picking the 3rd one made them appear again. We’ll see how effective/intrusive this is on a daily basis.

I used a trial for .Mac to transfer my email, address book and calendar from my Macbook, and it works flawlessly. Still not sure if it is worth the subscription fee though.

Overall experience of Leopard seems very smooth. Performance seems to be very snappy, even on my old Core Duo Mac mini with only Intel’s GMA950. In fact, IMO MacOS seems to be the only OS where the general GUI experience doesn’t fell to be slowed down by the stupid integrated graphic. I have a WinXP PC with the same GMA950 integrated graphics, and I felt performance issues with the regular GUI response compared to a PC with a dedicated graphic card. It doesn’t help that most PCs with integrated graphic have low end processors too. Maybe it’s the dual core.

I have not tried Time Machine. Have to buy an external drive first. 🙂

Leopard is a nice aesthetic upgrade from Tiger. Although it draws many criticism, there are just many small pleasant things that contribute to the better overall experience. Tiger is still a fine and solid OS, but Leopard will give you a smoother Mac experience, even on the same hardware.

 

MacOS X 10.5 Leopard impression, part 1

My Leopard Mac is up and running. Installing the OS was probably the easiest and smoothest OS install I’ve ever experienced. I chose a clean install. During the start of the installation, the program did a forced self-check integrity of the DVD, similar to Ubuntu’s CD test but not optional. It takes quite a while since I have a notebook DVD drive. After that, the setup is straight forward and easily understandable.

The nice thing about MacOS installs is no drivers installs! Yup, since Apple controlled the specs of most Macs, pretty much all the drivers are included in the OS. So no need to hunt down drivers, F6 installs, etc etc. Once the OS install finished, the system rebooted, and voila, the sleek welcome video started. The next step was to simply run software update and install all the patches and updates.

I notice a funny behavior of Apple’s patches. The first run of software update only contained updates to 10.5.2 and few other patches. After installing all of them and rebooted, a second run of software update revealed a whole different set of patches, incremental. A bit different than windows where Microsoft pretty much put out almost all the hundreds of patches on a first run of Windows Update.

More impressions next.

 

Using UMS DAP with iTunes in Mac

For those that are using Macs, the most logical choice would be to use iPods as your digital audio player (DAP). Well, what if you don’t want to use iPods? You can always use any DAPs that are USB Mass Storage compliant (meaning can be connected to any modern OS without needing additional driver/software), and doesn’t require a special software to transfer music (eg. pure drag-n-drop). Example of this kind of DAPs* are most cheapo flash players, Creative flash players, Sony NWZ series, PSP, rockbox enabled DAP, etc. Using these DAPs are easy, since they will show up on Finder just like an external drive/memory card. Drag-n-drop your music, and you’re done. Easy right? But what if your library is managed by iTunes, and you already have a perfectly auto-cycling smart playlist? Transferring these tracks manually won’t update their tags (last played, and playcount). What to do?

Apple scripts to the rescue. I found this website that hosts many kinds of Apple scripts for specific situations. There’s one that will add a specified number to the playcount tag on selected tracks (called Add or subtract Play Count), and there’s one that will update the last played tag of selected tracks to a specified date (New Last Played Date). Perfect! 🙂

So how do use these scripts? If you follow the readme included with every scripts, there will be a script menu shown in iTunes. First step is to create a smart playlist that you’ll use. Then disable Live Updating (important, especially if the criteria for the smart playlist depend on the playcount and last played tags). If you don’t, since we’re going to apply the scripts in 2 steps, the set of tracks will already be different the moment you use 1 of the 2 scripts. Next is to run those 2 scripts (in my case, I set to add +1 to the playcount, and set the last played to today’s date). You’re free to drag-n-drop the tracks to your DAP. The next time you want to transfer fresh tracks, simply enable live updating and iTunes will refresh the smart playlist with new tracks according to the criteria.

Of course, the beauty of iPods are their automatic syncing. There another Apple script based utility called iTunemywalkman. It basically syncs a/multiple iTunes playlist(s) to a UMS device. I tried it, and it delete my ratings on the tracks. Weird, so user beware. For now, manually copying the tracks have to suffice for me. I’m sure somebody can/already created Apple scripts to automate the whole process.

So there you go. You can use your choice of DAPs, and still use iTunes’ powerful smart playlist feature.

*Note that iPods are not these kind of DAPs (unless you use rockbox) because even though it is a UMS device, it requires iTunes (or 3rd party software) to transfer music.
**Note: Of course, non-iPod DAPs will not be able to play iTunes DRMed tracks. Simple put a criteria not to include tracks with Protected kind in the smart playlist. iTunes+ tracks (non-DRMed AAC) will play fine on any AAC supporting DAPs.