Wait, this blog isn't about Macs...what gives? I recently had to install apps onto 2 different Mac laptops (well, one was actually a Hackintosh), but it got me thinking of a list of apps that I've loyally used throughout the years and cannot do without. It's a combination of office/work and personal apps. Some go back a bit in time, some are more recent. So here goes:
Aqua Data Studio
This is an awesome multi-RDBMS querying tool. It supports SQL Server 2000/2005, Oracle, MySQL, DB2, among others.
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
Despite competing tools from Apple and OpenOffice, this is still the best product suite for the workplace if your workplace is married to Microsoft Office products. Excel, Word and Powerpoint are fully compatible with the Windows versions, but IMO Keynote is still a better piece of presentation software.
Evernote
The best notetaking app EVER. It does tagging, text recognition and indexing of PDFs and images. It allows you to e-mail images and images, clip from your web browser (via plugins or bookmarklets) to your notebook as well. It's available in various platforms - Windows, Mac OS X, web, iPhone, and Windows Mobile.
Eclipse
Okay, IMHO not the best IDE, but the best one available that's free on the Mac and probably has the largest number of plugins/extensions available for an IDE. I'm not a fan of the UI though.
Safari 4 (beta)
Beats the pants off IE, better than Firefox though it lacks a proper plugin architecture, but it catches up to Google Chrome.
Firefox
One of the most flexible browsers out there with a great plugin architecture, which makes it one of the most versatile tools out there.
Microsoft Messenger 6/7
I actually have both installed. I have Messenger 7 to have the current version, but I use Messenger 6 to utilize our company's IM servers.
Remote Desktop Connection 2
This is essential for connecting to remote machines. Why have a virtual machine when you can remote to your work desktop or other servers who can do all the heavy lifting?
VMWare Fusion
Essential if you want to have a full Office suite or any other applications that are only available on Windows, such as MS Project and Visio. Yes, there are Mac alternatives such as FastTrack and OmniGraffle, but there's nothing like the real thing.
Google Desktop
Yes, Mac OS X has Spotlight, but I love the speed of Google Desktop.
TweetDeck
The essential Twitter client for all Twitter power users. Available as an AIR app, this app is not specific to Mac OS X.
Yammer
The corporate alternative to Twitter.
Dropbox
I use this to synchronize documents across my various Macs. It basically uses a hot folder to synchronize via Dropbox's servers to push and pull files. I have symlinks in the hot folder that point to my regular Documents folder so I don't have to move or migrate my existing document folder structure to accommodate the hot folder.
Mozy
The simplest, easy-to-use online backup service. The first 2 GBs are free.
Quicksilver
One of the most essential app launchers. It's fast and it has a really good plugin archtiecture.
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