Essential Applications

Since there really isn't any Mac OS X-native alternative right now (NeoOffice sort of works, but it still doesn't act or look fully native). Virtual PC was bundled with Office, but I've had very little reason to use it after the first year or so, and I've since moved on to the Intel platform and started using Parallels. I might switch to Fusion some day, but only time will tell.

Besides those and some of the utilities I mentioned above, my current list of "essentials" is:

• Quicksilver - this is the way to use a Mac via the keyboard, and you'll wonder why Apple hasn't integrated it into the OS yet.
• Remote Desktop, available here, together with the RDC Launcher (which lets you run more than one Remote Desktop session at once).
• Citrix Dashboard widget, which I use to work remotely.
• A VNC client. I've been using VNCDimension for a while, even if it doesn't fix international keyboard issues.
• Adium for instant messaging (MSN and Yahoo, plus a lot more). It integrates seamlessly with Address Book, so you'll never lose your buddies' contacts.
• Colloquy (if you happen to hate IRC as much as I do, this makes it bearable).
• Skype for the occasional conference call and file transfer (Adium works too, but not across all firewalls).
• Growl for desktop notifications of all sorts (new mail, IM, you name it). It's now bundled with Adium, and it installs itself if you configure Adium's "new message" notification to use it.
• Firefox for web development. I use Safari for everything (and it is my default browser), but Firefox's XUL Extensions make it more useful for debugging web applications, and it is handy for those sites that don't like Safari for whatever reason - however, if you don't do web development and just want a fast Mozilla-based browser, Camino might be just the thing.
• Thunderbird for reading my e-mail when traveling (Mail.app doesn't support SOCKS properly, so I need a mail application that does).
• Virtue for virtual desktops (even with Exposé, I like to keep some windows in view at all times and have separate desktops for mail, coding and remote sessions).
• MenuMeters to keep track of network traffic and CPU usage.
• NetNewsWire Lite for a few RSS feeds - I use newspipe and Mail.app for most of my news reading, but CVS commits, link blogs and machine-related stuff (like logfiles that I convert into RSS) need something with a dock icon.
• Tofu for reading long documents and web pages. Makes for much easier reading when you're tired, since the column display lessens eye movement.
• VoodooPad Lite for drafting text and making notes (or as your very own XML-based personal Wiki and script archive).
• TextMate as an all-singing, all-dancing text editor with a built-in mini-IDE and Subversion support.
• Flip4Mac's free plugin to open Windows Media files in QuickTime and Safari (check out Perian as well).
• VideoLAN for opening any sort of media.
• Witch for Windows-style Alt-Tab switching.
• SSHKeychain to manage my SSH keychain and tunnels.
• CyberDuck for FTP and SSH file transfers..