From AV
Time and time again I have been asked for recommendations for Mac software. Well, here it is. These programs should work in Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.x) If you are using an older version of Mac OSX your mileage may vary.
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AbiWord
AbiWord is able to read and write all industry standard document types, such as OpenOffice.org documents, Microsoft Word documents, WordPerfect documents, Rich Text Format documents, HTML web pages and many more.
Adium
Adium is a popular free instant messaging client for Mac OS X. It allows you to connect to Yahoo, GoogleTalk, MSN, FaceBookIM, MySpaceIM and many more all in the same chat program.
Audacity
Audacity is a free audio editor. You can record sounds, play sounds, import and export WAV, AIFF, and MP3 files, and more. Use it to edit your sounds using Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited Undo), mix tracks together, or apply effects to your recordings. It also has a built-in amplitude envelope editor, a customizable spectrogram mode and a frequency analysis window for audio analysis applications. Built-in effects include Bass Boost, Wahwah, and Noise Removal, and it also supports VST plug-in effects.
Celestia
Celestia is a free real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in three dimensions. Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. All travel in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit. [edit]
Firefox
Firefox is the light-weight version of the Mozilla browser. Designed for speed in loading and page rendering, it only includes the web-browser aspects of Mozilla. Although still in the early development stages, Firefox is a must have for the any computer user.
HandBrake
HandBrake is one of the easiest ways to rip your movie collection for viewing on an iPod Video. You can encode DVDs or VIDEO_TS folders directly to a wide variety of open, compressed formats.
Miro
Turn your computer into an internet TV. Miro works well for HD content, you'll find lots of video that looks beautiful in fullscreen on even the largest displays.
OneButton FTP
OneButton FTP is a graphical FTP client for Mac OS X with a strong emphasis on simplicity, drag and drop usability, and file queuing. It allows you to easily transfer files to and from remote servers, such as the ones hosting your website, simply by dragging files to and from your computer.
Seashore
Seashore is an open source image editor for Mac OS X's Cocoa framework. It features gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for both text and brush strokes. It supports multiple layers and alpha channel editing. It is based around the GIMP's technology and uses the same native file format.
Show Desktop
Show Desktop is a small program that will minimize all windows to show your desktop. It can reside on the dock or the menu bar.
Smultron
Smultron is a free text editor for Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 which is both easy to use and powerful. It is designed to neither confuse newcomers nor disappoint advanced users. It should work perfectly for a whole variety of needs - like web programming, script editing, making a to do list and so on.
Stellarium
Stellarium is an desktop planetarium for your computer. It displays the skies in realtime exactly like what you see with your eyes, binoculars, or a small telescope. Stellarium is also used in planetariums and is also very simple to use, which is one of its biggest advantages: it can easily be used by beginners.
Thunderbird
Thunderbird is Mozilla's next generation e-mail client. Thunderbird makes emailing safer, faster and easier than ever before with the industry's best implementations of features such as intelligent spam filters, a built-in spell checker, extension support, and much more.
TuxPaint
TuxPaint is a great drawing program for young children, it's simple, easy to use interface, fun sound effects and tips offered by Tux, help to make the creative process as engaging and entertaining as possible. TuxPaint may be simple, but it's also feature packed, you can paint with a variety of different brush shapes, add text in a number of styles and sizes, apply cool effects with the magic tools, and use stamps to add clipart style pictures to your drawing.
VLC Media Player
VLC - Video Lan Client is one of the most powerful multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. You can also use VLC to stream audio or video from your computer to another over your LAN or the Internet.




