Readers Respond: What's Your Favorite Free or Inexpensive Software For the Mac?

Responses: 25

By Tom Nelson, About.com Guide

utilities - Disktracker, USB Overdrive, FinderCleaner (hard to find, now) games - Dinky Dungeon (free), Bee Cells, Kivi's Underground, Snood, Evolutionary War productivity - Cyberduck (free), Firefox (free), TextWrangler (free) graphics - Graphic Converter, DazStudio, Bryce multimedia - SWF & FLV Player (free), DivX Player (free), Flip4Mac Windows Media Components for QuickTime (free)
—Guest Jude

Why not add to your fabulous viewpoints on software a freeware program each week?.
—Guest Josh

Bean is a good-looking and effective text editor, right on the cusp of being a word processor. The developer is continually updating Bean, and he is very responsive to bugs and suggestions. FREE Combine PDFs is exactly what it sounds like. you can take PDF pages from this document or that, and combine the into a new PDF, or strip out pages you don't want in an existing PDF. You can add jpegs, even. FREE Monolingual is a wonderful utility for striping all the language localizations files from your Mac. It also will remove the processor architecture files for any or all that you don't need or use. I am on an Intel Mac, so I get rid of all those G3, G4 and G5 PPC architectures clogging up my Mac. Even though I run this once every 3 or 4 months, I always manage to clean 1-2 GB (that's GIGAbytes) of space. FREE
—OldRogue

Several apps spring to mind here. 2 that i use every single day are iSeek (an add-on to Safari from Ambrosia software) & SnapNDrag (a screen-shot app from Yellow Mug -cheap especially when you buy their bundle.) iSeek is a dictionary, thesaurus, Google, image search-engine. It is immediately & incredibly handy. It sits in my menu bar as a small Google window & is very easy to use & understand. SnapNDrag sits in my menu bar also. Its icon is very clickable, just waiting for me to take a foto of whatever is on my desktop. A window pops up & asks how or if i want the image saved. But it's in the clipboard anyway. So i can paste the image or open it in Photoshop Elements & give it any changes that i deem necessary. Date & Time affixed? Yep. Easily done. Cheap at twice the price. So, in my opinion, both these apps are "bargoons".
—Guest Jym O

Harmony Assistant is easy to use software for computer- music composition and editing. If you can read music or are learning, this beats any other music making software for Mac at only $85USD. The authors are very helpful in solving any issue fast. Also available is SW for music PDF to HA assistant. Exporting to make a CD is so easy too letting you easily share your tunes with others. Eric
—ejlmp

This is a great office suite for Mac based on OpenOffice. It's free (donations desired) and does almost anything you would want to do with MS Office.
—kvryland

I find I use ClipEdit quite often which is a great little free App. simple and works without a hitch. http://www.everydaysoftware.net Regards, Bill Paris
—Guest Bill Paris

I've been using Eudora Pro for almost as long as I've been using a Mac (well, once I moved on from AOL), and it's still my favorite email application. I've tried to like Apple Mail, but nope, can't do it. I just took a peek at the Eudora site for the first time in quite some time, and discovered I'm two versions behind. :D Story of my life. Anyway, Eudora Pro started off free, if I remember correctly, eventually moved to a paid version, with the option of a free ad-supported version, and then Qualcomm decided to take a different path and develop open-source versions. The newest version (8.something) is beta; older versions are still available for downloading if you don't want to risk a beta, but there's no tech support. (I've never needed any tech support for it, so don't let that stop you.) it's easier to use and better organized than Mail, and sorts and stores mail better. I use it for keeping notes of web research and stuff, not just mail. Great program. Kelly
—Guest Kelly Anderson

I really like EasyDraw 3.0 (http://eazydraw.com), a vector drawing program that is much easier to learn than Adobe Illustrator, although that doesn't mean you can master it in 30 minutes or less. :) EazyDraw's interface is colorful, but not garish, and easy to navigate. The tool palette is similar to many graphics applications, which makes it easier to jump in and get started. Like many programs, tools and functions are available from dropdown menus and from icons across the top of the workspace, so everything is easily accessible. A free demo is available. Pricing options range from $20 for a 9-month license, which lets you really try out the program without all the annoying reminders or limitations of a demo, to $95 for a download version, to $139 for a boxed version with manual. Molly
—Guest MollyK

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