Mac OS X and Windows Software

Introduction

This page contains a list of the most useful Macintosh and Windows software I have found. As I have a Macintosh, this page will contain mostly Mac OS X software. I have included the Windows links as I find myself repeatedly needing to source Windows software for friends who run Windows.

Macintosh Software

I can recommend all of the following Macintosh software:

Adobe Acrobat is useful for viewing and generating PDF files. Mac OS X can generate PDF files on its own, so you might not find that this software adds much value. This is commercial software at about US$300.

Adobe Photoshop is an excellent image editor. Pricey at about US$400.

AppleWorks is like a miniature version of Microsoft Office. I don't use it much, but I find the drawing tool useful when creating diagrams. This is commercial software for about US$80.

BBEdit is the best text editor for the Macintosh. This is commercial software for about US$180. I use it all the time.

CocoaMySQL is an excellent tool for manipulating MySQL databases. Free, but donations are encouraged.

Drive 10 is software for analysing and repairing your disk. I haven't used it much, but it looks good. This is commercial software. I can't remember how much it cost me.

Eudora is an email client. This is commercial software, but you can use it for free if you don't mind seeing ads.

Fetch is an excellent FTP program.

FileMaker Pro is an excellent personal database product. I use it for almost everything. It costs about US$400.

FunnelWeb is my Literate Programming Macro Preprocessor. Runs under Classic and Darwin. For tekkies only. Free.

iChat is the built-in online chatting software for Mac OS X users. I like it a lot. The audio-visual (AV) version is great. Free with Mac OS X.

KeyNote is an excellent presentation software (a la PowerPoint). It has beautiful graphic design. About US$80.

MacCVS Pro 3.0a3 is the CVS client I use for version management. Free.

Microsoft Office seems hard to ignore because everyone else uses it, so I use it too. Microsoft Word drives me nuts, but Excel is great. About US$700.

MYOB AccountEdge 2 is accounting software which I use in my business. About US$400 I think.

MacPERL is a friendly free GUI implementation of PERL. Unfortunately, it is not yet available for Cocoa.

OmniGraffle is a tool for creating organisation charts, data structure diagrams, entity relationship diagrams and other such graphics where there one wishes to depict a collection of objects linked by lines. Highly recommended. About US$70.

OmniOutliner is a hierarchical list editor that is simple to use and excellent for things-to-do lists, document outlines, and lists of all kinds. Highly recommended. About US$30.

PGP is super-secure software that allows you to send encrypted emails and set up encrypted partitions on your disk.

Quicken 2004 is easy-to-use personal finances software which I use for my personal finances.

Retrospect is comprehensive backup software. I use it to backup onto tape.

Safari is the web browser I like best for Mac OS X because it is so clean and simple. Free with Mac OS X.

Stuffit Expander is an excellent decompression program. I think it comes free with Mac OS X.

Time Palette shows the time around the world and displays maps. It's also got a time matching calculator that I find useful for organising inter-continental conference calls. This is commercial software for about US$30.

Terminal is great for sshing to other computers. It's a good replacement for Nifty Telnet which I used to use.

Windows Software

AdAware removed Adware software on Windows. It is free, and you can upgrade to enhanced versions at a price. This software is recommended by Andrew Leppard of Rocksoft.

AVG Anti-Virus is a free anti-virus product. This software is used by the Rocksoft technical team.

Coffee Cup Free FTP is a simple FTP program. It's not as good as WS FTP PRO, but it has the advantage of being free. The two main disadvantages I have found with it is that it can't display or set file protections and it can't upload a whole directory tree in a single operation.

Emacs One of Rocksoft's programmers swears by Emacs for PCs. See also TextPad.

Eudora is an email client.

FileMaker Pro is an excellent personal database product. I use it for almost everything. This is commercial software that costs about US$400.

FunnelWeb is my Literate Programming Macro Preprocessor. For tekkies only. This software is free.

Mozilla is the non-commercial version of Netscape. Andrew Leppard of Rocksoft recommends it over Internet Explorer because Mozilla has tabbed browsing, image blocking and better security. In addition, the mail client has spam control.

Namo WebEditor is a web creation tool that one of my friends uses. It is about US$100.

Putty is a secure Telnet program. See also here. This software is free.

SmartFTP is an FTP client that has drag'n'drop and setting/getting of remote attributes. It is about US$30 for commercial use and free for personal and eucational use. Recommended by Geoff Nairn of Polycomp.

TextPad is a powerful text editor. Highly recommended by my Windows friends. This is commercial software that sells for about US$30. See also Emacs.

TweakUI is an unsupported free utility from Microsoft that allows you to tweak various hidden settings of Windows XP. This software is recommended by Andrew Leppard of Rocksoft.

WinSCP is an open source SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) and SCP (Secure CoPy) client for Windows using SSH (Secure SHell). Its main function is safe copying of files between a local and a remote computer. This software is used by the Rocksoft technical team.

WinZip is useful for creating and unpacking ZIP archive files. This is commercial software at about US$30.

World Watch is comprehensive time zone and world display software. This is a commercial product that sells for about US$50. One of my PC friends recommends it highly.

WS FTP PRO is a comprehensive and popular FTP program. I have used it and it seems very comprehensive. This is commercial software that sells for about US$60.

ZoneAlarm Firewall is an easy-to-use firewall. Choice Magazine says that this is the best firewall around, and I've heard good things from my Windows friends who have tried it. It is free. You can upgrade to a professional version at a price.

Ross Williams (ross@ross.net)
6 October 2003

Revised 7 October 2003.

Revised 8 October 2003.

Revised 1 March 2004.