Lately it seems like everyone I know is switching to the Mac. I actually kind of miss the days where I was the lone Mac evangelist in the room. However I suppose it will be a good thing in the long run that Mac adoption is up. More Mac users mean more people developing great applications for the Mac.

In the mean time many of these new Mac owners are experiencing the joys of switching to a new OS. Several noob Mac owners have asked me the same questions lately, how do I ____, and what are some of the best Mac applications. A good place to start with how to questions is at Apple’s find out how site. They will answer most of the how to questions, but what about a run down of the best apps for your new Mac. That list is here, broken down by categories:

• Apps for everybody
• Video
• Web Development
• The World Wide Web

Apps for everybody

AppZapper

AppZapper touts itself as the uninstaller Apple forgot, and in my opinion they are correct. The idea behind OSX is that you really don’t need and uninstaller. Most of the time you can just drag the application to the trash and be done with it. However this does not always remove preference files and other hidden application files from your system. AppZapper does. Just open AppZapper select the application or drag it into AppZapper, then select zap. Then you will be greeted by a ray gun sound as the app is swiftly removed from your system. This is a must for any Mac owner from the start. AppZapper is not free, but it may be the best 12.95 you will spend on an application.

Quicksilver

“Act without doing.” Quicksilver is an app that is hard to explain in depth. They say its “A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.” Most users however use it as an application launcher, or as a replacement for a spotlight search. Press control space and quicksilver pops open. Then start typing the application or file you want. The results appear almost immediately. Let me give you an example. Control+Space+F+Enter opens Firefox on my computer. That would have taken me a little longer to find and open the application from the application menu or in the dock. Bottom line, this application saves you time. Quicksilver doesn’t stop at an app launcher, it can be set up to control most of your system. Check out their docs. I also use it to control iTunes with a couple of key presses. Quicksilver is free and should be on every system.

Disc Inventory X

Are you starting to run out of disc space? If your like me you ask yourself, where is all of this space going. It can be tough to figure out what is eating up space on your system, luckily Disc Inventory X makes it easy. Disc Inventory X visually displays a representation of the space taken up on your hard drive. It displays this information in little color coded boxes. Each color represents a different type of file. For example clicking on the red cube may represent an application on your system. You can click on the larger cubes to figure out what it taking up the most space. Then you can figure out if it is something you can part with. On my drive most of the space it taken up with video. I sometimes forget to delete videos I am not longer using, and Disc Inventory X makes it easy for me to find the unwanted videos and remove them. Disc Inventory X is another free app to check it out.

Carbon Copy Cloner

Carbon Copy Cloner is another app that has to do with your hard drive. If you are a good little Apple fanboy/girl then you are using Time machine on a regular basis and have no worries in the world. But what if you do do regular backups or your Time Machine backup fails? What if you want to reinstall your OS and want to make a bootable backup of your current drive? Carbon Copy Cloner can help you with all of these. I can’t tell you how many times I have had a drive start failing on me where Carbon Copy Cloner saved my life. Carbon Copy Cloner can make a perfect clone of your drive. “Clone, synchronize, backup. Schedule and forget it. Try it ’til you trust it.” Great news about it is, Carbon Copy Cloner is free.

Stuff It Expander

By default Mac OSX comes with it’s own zip/unzip software built right in. But there will come a time that you will run across an extension that you will not be able to unarchive. Trust me you will need it so go ahead and get it. StuffIt Expander can decompress files and folders in many compressed file formats, such as .rar, .sitx, .sit, .tar, .tgz, .zip and more StuffIt Expander free edition is really the one you need. If you find you need other formats and more features they offer an deluxe edition at a cost.

Video

VLC

VLC or Video LAN Client. VLC media player is a cross-platform media player and streaming server. VLC will play just about anything you though at it. It easily plays VIDEO_TS & VOB files, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, and stranger formats like MKV files. I use it all the time to play video files in formats that wont play in QuickTime. It has a very good de-interlace and well as surround sound decoder. VLC is free so get it on all your systems.

VisualHub

VisualHub is the "universal video converter for the Macintosh." Visual hub can convert just about any video file you through at it. For example I mentioned earlier I receive MKV files from time to time. If I want to stream these files to my 360 they need to be in a format that the 360 can understand. VisualHub perfectly converts these files while keeping the quality as well as the HD resolution. VisualHub also has presets built in that make it easy to convert your video into the format you need. You can also select the option to stitch several videos together so they play as one video file. I use VisualHub daily. If you want to try out the small version for iPod check out iSquint. iSquint is free and will give you a taste of what VisualHub can do. VisualHub is $23.32 and for me has been worth the money time and time again.

Handbrake

Want to convert any DVD into a portable format. Handbrake is the application you need. Insert your DVD of home movies. Select the quality and settings you need and press start, and you will be off to the races. Just like VisualHub, Handbrake contains presets that are already configured to give you the best quality for whatever you will be viewing the video on. Some of my favorite presets are AppleTV, Xbox360, and the PSP. I recently took a trip to Hawaii, in which I converted several home movies to be played on my PSP. I have to say that the quality was amazing on the PSP. Even better than applications specifically made for the PSP. Handbreak is free and a great app.

Perian

Perian, is a great app that makes QuickTime even more useful. They call it the swiss-army knife for QuickTime. Lets face it QuickTime is a great media player, but it can’t handle all the formats and codec’s you through at it. For example DivX wont play by default in QuickTime. Perian add the ability to play more codec’s in QuickTime. Actually it is very rare that I have a video that wont play in QuickTime with the help of Perian. In those case I use VLC. Perian is a free preference pane and is something I add to every one of my Macs.

Web Development

MAMP

MAMP is the One-click-solution for setting up your personal webserver. The abbreviation MAMP stands for: Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP. I use it for any Wordpress local install. I have used similar systems on Windows and I have to say that MAMP is much more trouble free.With just a few mouse-clicks, you can install Apache, PHP and MySQL for Mac OS X. MAMP is free.

CSSEdit

MacRabbit, the makers of CSSEdit, make incrediable applications. If you are anything like me, a CSS nut, you will love CSSEdit. CSSEdit is by far the best CSS editor on ANY platform. I give lots of credit to CSSEdit as this program is one of the major reasons I learned CSS. The program made it easy to grab any website and play around with the CSS, and see how they did it. This way of learning helped make me the CSS guy I am today. However this program is not just for CSS noobs. It has many featured that Dreamweaver can’t hold a candle to. I have talked about it before on previous posts, the XRay and Inspector tool makes it easy to find the element you want to update and quickly edit it in real time. The preview uses web kit to give you not only a preview, but how it will actually look in Safari. CSSEdit is roughly $46.00 and is very much worth the price. Also check out Espresso coming soon from MacRabbit as well.

Cyberduck

Now that your have your site ready to go your need a great FTP client. Cyberduck is my favorite FTP/SFTP solution on the mac. Cyberduck is a powerful open source FTP and SFTP client with an easy to use interface. If you can find your way around the finder, Cyberduck should be a breeze for you. I like its easy drag and drop functionality. Cyberduck includes support for multiple FTP connections, resume-able downloads, recursive transfers, bookmarks, and folder synchronizations. It is solid and always works great for me. I recommend Cyberduck to anyone. Cyberduck again is free, one of my favorite words.

The World Wide Web

Firefox

Safari is great. It is fast and comes already on your system. However, if you want more from your web browser, try out Firefox. Firefox extensions alone are a reason enough to make the switch. The extensions give you the ability to add rich features to the browser, and customized how you like it. Firefox has extended support for key shortcuts, such as switching between tabs, live bookmarks and as well as getting a nice speed bump with each version. I did a very popular post last year about my favorite Firefox extensions that is worth a look. Firefox is free and worth a try.

NetNewsWire

Looking for an easy-to-use RSS reader for your Mac? NetNewsWire is the mac daddy of RSS feed readers. NetNewsWire has a familiar three-paned interface. The best part about NetNewsWire is that you can sync your feeds for free using NewsGator. This is great if your like me and am always on a different computer. The interface is clean and simple and comes with several themes built right in. If you want to control your look a bit more, you can create your own theme or download themes others have created from across the net. If you find yourself on a PC (heaven forbid) they have a version for that too. Keep track of all your feeds on whatever system your on. NetNewsWire is free.

Adium

Adium is all your instant messaging needs rolled up into one nice package. If you’ve used Trillian you will love Adium. Adium is an instant messaging application that can connect to AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Jabber, ICQ, iChat, Google Talk, and more. Adium has a very simple and sleek interface. If you like to chat with several people at once, you’ll like Adium’s tabbed messaging feature. A single window can contain several conversations in separate tabs, kinda like Firefox or Safari. You can also update Adium’s functionality and appearance as there are a library of add-ons. Did I mention Adium is free?