A Guide to “Things Mac OS X” on the Net... (Apache, PHP & MySQL now on Webmastering page) (Other “Things Mac” pages: UNIX | eMail | Webmaster | Developer | Misc )

General Mac OS X Info Apple’s Mac OS X site Apple’s Mac OS X tips Getting Mac OS X Going – Tweaks, Tools, Tips & Links to get OS X going Mac OS X Tips and Tricks – Variety of topics; novice to advanced users MacGuru HQ: Mac OS X Tips and Tricks – Variety of topics; intermediate to advanced users Mac OS X Keyboard Shortcuts – From Apple; links to related info and shortcuts Tiger Secrets – Some useful tweaks for Tiger Mac OS X Hints Griffman’s OS X Collection – A collection of Mac OS X manuals and utilities Mac OS X Users Guide – Variety of topics; check out Articles area OS X Links – A links page Mac OS X Community MacNN Forums MacFixIt Forums Apple Discussions Omni Group’s Lists – Web browsable MacEnterprise – A community of IT professionals sharing information and solutions to support Mac’s in an enterprise Mac Software Collections MacUpdate Version Tracker (Mac OS X) FreeMacWare – Free Software for Macs Native OS X Apps Mac OS X Apps Mac OS X Developer Widgets – Apple’s collection of third-party freeware and demos Apple’s Downloads UNIX and Open Source – Apple’s Links Open Source Mac – Selected free and open-source software Ziff-Davis MacDownload – Software & Info Pure Mac – An index to Mac Software InfoMac – Shareware Archive c|net Shareware.com see also: Things Macintosh (Users) – for hybrid and classic-only Mac software collections Mac OS X Interface Script Menu – A handy AppleScript menu Drag Thing – Dock alternative; restore Trash to desktop TinkerTool – Customize Finder settings from the GUI instead of the CLI Jumpcut – Clipboard buffering/history (Open Source) Path Finder (SNAX) – Mac OS X Finder Pro? Drop Drawers – App’s, URL’s and clippings at your fingertips ASM – Adds an Application Switcher Menu to the right side of the Mac OS X menu bar piPop – Restores Apple Menu functionality sans menu (RealBasic app) ResExcellence Mac OS X Modifications – A page of many UI mods, tricks, hacks, etc. Quitling – Kill, launch, or relaunch processes from menu bar WindowShade X – Brings classic WindowShade functionality to Mac OS X. Note: Use with caution; some have reported system–wide problems after using this product. Unix “locate” (Find File) GUI’s Locator – Freeware GUI front-end for the CLI locate command (find file); nice interface SubRosa QuickFind – Another freeware GUI front-end for locate Look4 – Another GUI front-end for locate. Shareware; v1.1 is not as good as either the free Locator nor SubRosa Spotlight alternatives/enhancements EasyFind – Alternative to Spotlight; finds files, folders or contents without indexing Better Search – Search deeply in your HD for invisible directories, packages, etc. HoudahSpot – File search tool based on Apple Spotlight technology SpotLook – GUI for Leopard Spotlight; open-source project SpotInside – Preview result documents with highlighted search words FileSpot – Provides an enhanced interface to Spotlight (was MoRU) Mac OS X Utilities DiskWarrior – Everybody should have this disk utility Disk Inventory X – Shows sizes of files and folders in graphical “treemaps” PrefEdit – Inspect and edit preference settings for Mac OS X applications HexEdit – Inspect and edit binary files OpenLDAP, PostgreSQL and TCP Flow Recorder – Tips and instructions for installing these under Mac OS X Cyclone – Character set text converter (useful for web development, among other things) BurnX Free – Burn CD's with multiple sessions – Freeware Note: Rest of section largely obsolete since Tiger (10.4) Patchburn – Allows Mac OS X to burn with many third-party DVD or CD writers SCSI CD-RW Helper – Allows Mac OS X to use many SCSI CD–RW drives CronniX – A GUI cron front-end Skelton Key – Allows Apps to be run as root BatChmod – A GUI chown, chgrp, chmod, and it can Force Empty the Trash too; obsolete since Jaguar? Finder Fix – Hacking OS 9 Finder to run under Mac OS X Mac OS X Web Browsers iCab – Fast, lean and feature rich Safari – Apple’s AppleWebKit/KHTML based browser SafariBlock – A Firefox AdBlock clone for Safari Autocomplete Always On! – Patches Webcore (Safari’s HTML engine) to ignore the “autocomplete” flag so AutoFill works on more pages Safari Tidy – Validates webpages for (x)html compliance Cocoa Cookies – Utility to search (with regex) and delete (with undo) HTTP cookies used by Safari, Dashboard, NetNewsWire, Sherlock, Shiira, et al. DownloadComment – Saves URI in the Finder/Spotlight Comments PimpMySafari – Safari customizations Web Development with... Safari – Safari enhancements (mostly obsolete now) Ad Blocking for Firefox, Mozilla, Camino, and Safari – CSS based PithHelmet – Ad, Flash, Shockwave blocker for Safari (WebKit) Safari Bookmark Exporter Safari bookmarks Extractor Camino – Camino (formerly Chimera) Cocoa UI, Gecko engine; simple, small, fast CamiTools – Flash, image and script blocker; configure many aspects of Camino PimpMyCamino – Camino customizations Install a Flash-controlling extension in Camino – Adblock and other features Shiira – A Cocoa, Open source, Web Kit browser (mini version available as a Dashboard Widget) Bookit – Cross-browser bookmark sync tool Firefox – Extremely-powerful, yet ungraceful & awkward UI (Camino is a more Mac-like sibling); Gecko engine Pretty Widgets – Mac OS X-like theming for Firefox Firefoxy – Firefox fancy widget applicator Customizing Firefox – How to harness some of Firefox's power and improve the its UI (a little, anyhow) OmniWeb Mozilla – Open source version of Netscape Opera Macintosh Web Browsers – A compendium of browsers Spreadsheet Numbers – Part of Apple’s iWork suite Mariner Calc – Lean yet capable spreadsheet app; Excel file compatibility Tables – Cocoa app Mesa – Cocoa; icon-based interface; Excel compatible Audio/Visual Software Audio In – Great little App to capture audio input Audio Hijack, Detour, et al – Useful Mac OS X sound redirection tools xACT – GUI front-end to Shorten, shntool, monkey's audio compressor,flac and cdda2wav (with paranoia support) Flip4Mac – Play Windoze Media files (.wma and .wmv) in QuickTime Player or in a web browser Mapping Software GPSy – GPS communications and GIS mapping program TrailRunner – Route planning software for hiking, running, biking, etc. Quantum GIS (QGIS) – User friendly Open Source GIS (Geographic Information System) Macintosh Resources for GIS Wikipedia: Geographic information system Google Earth – Fly anywhere on Earth viewing satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings; even explore galaxies in the Sky GIS/GPS – Synopsis of various Mac GIS/GPS software Graphics Software Pixen – Designed for pixel artists; somewhere between a powerful Paint, or a simple, Photoshop. Open Source. Paintbrush – Bitmap image editor (like MacPaint); open source MacGIMP – GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) for your Mac GIMPShop – A more Photoshop-like version of GIMP Other Mac OS X Software Pangea Payroll – Open Source: calculate employee payroll taxes for small businesses Archicad – Architectural virtual design Undercover – Anti-theft software; transmits pictures of the thief MyMahj – A freeware MahJongg Solitaire game; similar to Activision’s Shanghai for Mac OS 8, but without the wonderful sound effects and dancing dragon Beer Making BeerAlchemy – Helps homebrewers create great beer AppleScript see: Things Macintosh (Developer’s Corner)

Apache, PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, HTML, CGI see: Things Webmastering Databases Bento – Personal DB from FileMaker FileMaker Pro – Great for beginners; not the best for web publishing however Frontbase – Relational DB DataDino – Tool to graphically visualize, edit and transport data between database vendors Open Database Connectivity in Jaguar – App’s can connect to different databases using the same set of ODBC connectivity protocols see also: Things Webmastering – for MySQL & PostgreSQL Data/Network Security HenWen – GUI wrapper for snort, a free Network Intrusion Detection System; scan for undesirable network traffic which a firewall may not block tripwire – DarwinPorts’ integrity assurance and intrusion detection tool radmind – tripwire/integrity checking: once a change is detected, can optionally reverse change Little Snitch – Monitors network I/O for illicit network activity (shareware) Security issues for Macintosh An Introduction to Mac OS X Security – Apple’s security overview page; additional links at the bottom ClamXav – GUI front-end for ClamAV open source antivirus engine XNmap – GUI front-end for nmap CheckMate – tripwire as a preference pane; compares MD5 checksums; not being updated anymore How to install and update the Checkmate tripwire Security Overview Security – An Apple Developer index page Home Network Security – CERT overview of security risks and countermeasures associated with Internet connectivity Common Criteria Tools – Internationally approved set of security standards PGP: Protecting Security Information – Apple’s public PGP key Apple Computer Product Security Incident Response see also: Things Webmastering – for network security Encryption International PGP Page – Encryption for the masses OpenPGP Alliance – The OpenPGP Consortium Mac GPG – Based on GnuPG (OpenPGP) The GNU Privacy Guard – GnuPG (OpenPGP) MIT distribution site for PGP – Freeware, resources, links MacPGP – A commercial PGP Security issues for Macintosh eMail see: Things eMail – includes SPAM countermeasures News Readers MT-NewsWatcher – A descendent of John Norstad’s venerable NewsWatcher; now carbonized for X NewsWatcher-X – A carbonized version of John Norstad’s venerable NewsWatcher Halime – Mac OS X news reader technology preview (under development, but worth keeping an eye on) Screen sharing/remote control Chicken of the VNC – Mac OS X VNC client (Free/Open Source) VNCThing – Mac OS X VNC client (Free/Open Source) Virtual Network Computing (VNC) – View/control a computer anywhere on the Internet (Freeware and commercial) WakeOnLan – Wake up other computers remotely Timbuktu – Remote control for Macintosh and Windoze (Commercial) Apple Remote Desktop – Can also act as a VNC client (Commercial) RealVNC – Multi-platform VNC clients (Commercial) VNCViewer – Mac OS X VNC client (Free/Open Source) VNCDimensions – Mac OS X VNC client (Freeware) TightVNC – Java based VNC client for Mac OS X (Free/GPL) OSXvnc – Mac OS X VNC server (Freeware) VNC – Eclectic VNC info from Tao of Mac Xvnc - securing your vncserver – Covers Mac OS X, Linux and Windoze Making VNC more secure using SSH – General overview; CLI oriented Change firewall rules for system Sharing services – Using Tiger’s built-in VNC server via SSH Simple but effective speed-up tip for VNC Networking/File Transfer (e.g. SSH, sFTP, FTP) Fugu – A Mac OS X SFTP, SCP and SSH Frontend Cyberduck – A Mac OS X FTP and SFTP client; open-source (GPL) SSHKeychain – GUI Keychain management for SSH Keys, and SSH Tunnels MacSSH & MacSFTP – Secure Telnet applications (freeware/Classic & shareware/Carbon) RsyncX – rsync with HFS+ support through either CLI or GUI Radmind – (remote administration daemon) a collection of Unix command line tools to manage file systems of multiple machines Synk – Sounds like (but may not be) rsync with a GUI frontend RBrowser – Commercial graphical FTP/SSH/SFTP client osXigen – A feature-rich sharware FTP/SFTP client (Cocoa) FTP client comparison – from Indiana University; links, descriptions and chart CaptainFTP – Freeware and Shareware versions of a graphical FTP client Transmit 2 – Commercial graphical FTP/SFTP/SSH client (Cocoa) Gideon – A sharware FTP/SFTP client (Cocoa) Interarchy – Commercial graphical FTP/SSH/SFTP client (formerly called Anarchie) Fetch – Commercial graphical FTP client Net::SSH::Perl – Perl client interface to Secure Shell AlmostVPN – A Preference Panel for managing ssh tunnels SSH Tunnel Manager – A CLI tool to manage SSH Tunnels. It can set up many tunnels, each containing many port redirections see also: Things Macintosh (Users) – for classic Mac software Technical Mac OS X Info Mac OS X FAQ – Technical news and support Mac OS X man pages “Well Known” TCP and UDP Ports Used By Apple Software Products Customizing Mac OSX Key Bindings – Customize your keyboard Ukelele – Unicode Keyboard Layout Editor Set newer portable Mac’s sleep mode – Works for newer iMac’s too Hibernate on your non-brandnew Mac – AKA “Safe Sleep” Command Line Interface (CLI) UNIX Development on Mac OS X – Unix underpinnings and Developer info CLIX – Terminal alternative Change Short User Name – How to & freeware script ManOpen – Open source; Unix “man” page GUI viewer see: Things Unix for Terminal.app, general CLI and regular Unix related info Packages and Ports Mac OS Forge – Open source components specific to Mac OS X; Apple and third party projects Darwin Ports – Package management system Port Authority – GUI front-end for DarwinPorts GNU Darwin Fink CVS Information Mac OS X: Version Control with CVS – Discusses CVS on Mac OS X In Sync with CVS – Using CVS for personal use, and to sync data on multiple computers Version Control on Mac OS X – Discusses CVS primarily as it applies to programming projects Ximbiot - CVS Wiki – CVS usage information CVS For New Users – Intro to CVS CVS Documentation – Overview, Use, FAQ’s, etc. Subversion – Intended to succeed CVS; supports Meta data GUI front-ends for CVS MacCVSClient Concurrent Versions Librarian LinCVS MacCVS Pro CvsGui Version Control on Mac OS X, Part 3 – Discusses some GUI front-ends for CVS X Window System (aka X11) Note: As of Tiger (10.4) X11 is a Mac OS X Installer option X11 for Mac OS X – X11 from Apple XFree86 on Darwin/Mac OS X – an X Window System for Mac OS X; rootless, open source XDarwin – Mac OS X specific implementation of XFree86 (X window server) OroborOSX – Adds Aqua features to XDarwin OroborOSX/Apple X11 comparison – Comparison of Apple's X11 and OroborOSX XFree86 – X Window System for a variety of platforms Backup Software Time Machine – Comes with Mac OS X Leopard Retrospect – Advanced Backup software (commercial) Super Duper – Popular drive cloning app (shareware) RsyncX – GUI for rsync Personal Backup X – (commercial) Running Apple's Backup Without a .Mac Account – Circa: 2002 “Dr. Mac’s” Guide to Mac Backup – Mostly good advice

Wordsmithing & OCR

Word Processors (General Purpose) Nisus Writer – Multilingual word processing; Mac-only; commercial Mellel – Multilingual word processor; designed for scholars, creative and technical writing; Mac-only; commercial Mariner Write – “Powerful, yet streamlined word processor”; Mac-only; commercial AbiWord – A free word processor; Mac/Lin/Win; open source Word processing – Synopsis of various Mac word processors Word Processors (Creative Writing) Montage – Screenwriting software; Mac-only; commercial Storymill (nee: Avenir) – Novel writing software; Mac-only; commercial Scrivener – Virtual writing studio; integrates outlining, storyboarding, research and writing; store and cross-reference your research; Mac-only; commercial Storyist – Story development tool for novelists and screenwriters; Mac-only; commercial Jer’s Novel Writer – Simple word processor with support for creative writing projects; Mac-only; commercial CopyWrite – Project-oriented manager “for writers of all kinds”; Mac-only; commercial Celtx – Pre-Production software for film, video, theatre, and animation; Mac/Win; free, open source Manuscript – Specialised word-processor for writers; Mac-only; shareware Final Draft – Designed for writing movie scripts, television episodics and stage plays; Mac/Win; commercial Word Processors (Layout) Ulysses – Text editor for creative writers; Mac-only; commercial TeXShop – A LaTeX based editor for Mac; some assembly required; GPL Text Editors TextForge – Worth a look; Open Source Tex-Edit Plus – A Carbon text editor; well supported (except the author is currently on hiatus until Jan, 2009) SubEthaEdit – Collaborative text editor Smultron – Cocoa based Text editor; open-source TextMate – Cocoa based Text editor; shareware Writeroom – “Simplicity of a typewriter”; full-screen writing environment; shareware mi – Text editor for HTML, programming, etc.; freeware Jedit – Cocoa based Text editor; shareware CSSEdit – CSS editor; shareware Tag – “Intuitive” XHTML editor; shareware Carbon Emacs – A Carbon/OSX distribution of GNU Emacs

Office Suites NeoOffice – OpenOffice for Mac OS X; “has integrated dozens of native Mac features” OpenOffice (Aqua) – Free and open productivity suite; native Mac OS X interface; an alternative to Microsoft Office OpenOffice (X11) – Use this for Tiger or earlier, or if you need an “official OpenOffice release” Bibliography Management EndNote – “Bibliographies made easy” is the claim Sente – Commercial; Citations and abstracts organized in an iTunes-like interface BibDesk – BibTeX-bibliography manager for Mac OS X. Designed to organize and use bibliographic databases in BibTeX .bib format Outliners MyMind – Outliner and “Mind Mapping” software; Donationware FreeMind – “Mind Mapping” software; free OmniOutliner – Commercial OCR Readiris Pro 11 – Commercial OCR OmniPage Pro X – Commercial OCR VueScan – A flatbed and film scanner program with OCR ABBYY FineReader 5 Pro – Commercial OCR Clara OCR – Open source; POSIX X Window System GUI, and a Web interface GNU Ocrad – Open source for Unix-like OS’s; not a GUI Mac application! Dictionary Software Make Tiger's Dictionary roar – Tiger’s system-wide Dictionary Note: Rest of section largely obsolete since Tiger (10.4) DICT.org – DICT client, server, databases, protocol, etc. MacDICT – DICT client OmniDictionary – A Mac OS X client for network dictionary servers Spelling & Grammar Grammarian PRO X – Grammar checker Spell Catcher X – Interactive Spell Checker (works with some Carbon apps too)

Other pages in the “Things” series are:
Things UNIX – for Mac OS X CLI related, UNIX tools, Terminal.app, general UNIX, etc. Things eMail – Mac OS X eMail clients, server info, and SPAM countermeasures Things Webmastering – for Webmasters, Server Admin’s, HTML, CGI, etc. Things Macintosh (Developer’s Corner) – resources for Macintosh software developers Things Macintosh (misc) – hardware, shopping, news, vintage (including OS 8-9), etc.
This page was last updated on 3-September-2008