DigitalKamera - Zoom in on Technology

If you are a programmer or developer then the most important aspects is having the correct tools and applications at your disposal to get the job done. Same way if i talk about Mac then the Great thing about Macs is the easiness and the great user interface that streamlines your work. People misunderstands Macs as grossly overpriced fanboy stuffs, but after using Macs you’ll understand they are cheaper in the long run. For one reason or another, a lot of freelancers use Macs. It may be the raw power, the stability or they may just look rather – cool? Well, both of us know why that really is. It’s the apps! These applications can range from text editors with helpful features, to screen capturing software to display video and/or audio to a client or your users. Here’s a list of great little applications that the Mac-powered freelancer should consider. Below we have managed more than 40 essential and great applications for programmers or developers . Believe me they are really good at what they do…

Magnifique

Free application Mangifique quickly and easily swaps custom themes in OS X. Magnifique is surprisingly easy to use. After you install it, you can browse through a handful of available theme downloads to find one that suits your fancy. Once you’ve chosen a theme you’d like to try on, just download it via the Magnifique browser and apply it.

Price: Free!

Growl

Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X, it allows applications that support Growl to send you notifications.Growl offers you complete control over which notifications are shown and how they are displayed. You will not receive any notifications that you do not want, because you can easily turn notifications (specific ones or all of them) off. For instance, Growl integrates perfectly with Coda and lets you know when a file or folder has been successfully uploaded or downloaded, or if there was an error that occurred.

Price: Free!

BackDrop

Whether you’re taking screenshots/making a screencast and you want a bare background, or you prefer to work with as spare a workspace as possible but you can’t bring yourself to keep your desktop clean, Backdrop is a great tool. Just start it up and it automatically places a layer over your desktop and all your open apps. If it sounds familiar, we’ve mentioned Backdrop in passing several times, but we’ve never featured it. Backdrop is freeware, Mac OS X only.

Price: Free!

ServerSkine

Serverskine “instant access to all of your web server, domain name, and hosting accounts. It allows you to keep everything straight in a way that’s intuitive, easy and useful.” Another feature I like is the ability to send this info with Mail.app with the push of a button. When I have a new blogger come on, one button and they get all the info they need. If you are a manager that brings on new developers, this could be quite useful.

Price: Free!

Skype

While not limited to Mac OS only, Skype is a must have application for those who freelance or do any kind of work from home. Use it to make free calls to your boss or company, catch up with a client, or sit it on a video chat for a meeting.

Price: Free!

Snapz Pro X

Sapz Pro X is a quantum leap in video capture technology, adroitly capturing full motion video of anything on your screen at a blistering pace, complete with digital audio, and an optional microphone voiceover. Snapz Pro X makes short work of making training videos, producing product demos, creating tutorials, archiving streaming video, and anything else you can think of.

Price: Free!

BB Edit

BBEdit is the leading professional HTML and text editor for the Macintosh. Specifically crafted in response to the needs of Web authors and software developers, this award-winning product provides an abundance of high-performance features for editing, searching, and manipulation of text. It most certainly does not. Packed full of helpful features, including project management, BBEdit is the text editor of choice for many web developers.

Price: Free Trial, $125 per license, $49 for educational license.

Paparazzi

While Tiger does have the ability to capture screenshots, Paparazzi offers more when it comes to websites. With Paparazzi, you can take a screenshot of the whole website page, from top to bottom. You are not limited to just what is on your screen. This is pretty neat to see the overall layout of a page, and also handy for archiving purposes.

Price: Free!

MacLoc

MacLoc is a brilliant little app that does a simple thing in style — it locks your screen. And yes there are a 101 ways of doing this without getting yet another app on your macintosh. but I like the look of the icon — clean and crisp and happy to click lock my screen with MacLoc when I walk out for a coffee or a much needed break.

Price: Free!

Adium

Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more.

Price: Free!

TextWrangler

Panic’s coda seems to be great code editor with plethora of side applications built in. But we are talking about free stuffs, TextWrangler is free cousin of BBedit pro editor, it lets you edit and code HTML/XHTML, XML, PHP, JavaScript, Perl, Python, Java, ANSI C, C++, Objective-C, and much more.

Price: Free!

NeoOffice

Can’t afford Microsoft Office but want something equally useful, NeoOffice is the next best to look for. It works with Word and Excel docs, Powerpoint and even runs excel macros. Also the document is interchangeable with Mac Office, Windows Office and other Office alternatives. Openoffice is also another great alternative Office application for Mac.

Price: Free!

Quicksilver

Quicksilver is a single key launch application that lets you perform tasks and searches rapidly. Just assign shortcut keys to frequently used applications, files, folders and tasks. Its quite similar to the Mac OS X applications LaunchBar and Butler but the interaction is tad different.

Price: Free!

Xylescope

Xylescope is great for fine tuning the CSS for your sites. The web, html and css views let you find that little bug that’s been troubling you. Have all the source code organized and shown in a way that makes you want to code, and code, and code…

Price: Free!

CSSEdit

CSSEdit is the best looking CSS editor for the Mac out there. You can edit it, preview it, extract. It chops, slices, even dices. It can even play along with AJAX. Design beautiful, innovative and fast-loading web sites… with a beautiful, innovative and fast app. CSSEdit‘s intuitive approach to style sheets and powerful previewing features will make you deliver awesome standards-based sites in no time!

Price: Free!

FileZilla (Open Source)

FileZilla is a fast and reliable FTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface. It is a very well known open source FTP program that runs on most operating systems. Simple, easy to use, and works as it should.

Price: Free!

CyberDuck (Open Source)

Cyberduck is an open source SFTP (SSH Secure File Transfer) and FTP browser licenced under the GPL. It has been built from the ground up with usability in mind, having the same consistent graphical user interface for both SFTP and FTP browsing. Multiple connections are supported. Drag and drop is supported consequently for transferring files between server and client. A transfer queue keeps track of the pending file transfers and supports resuming of both downloads and uploads. A simple bookmark manager ensures manageability.

Price: Free!

Snipply (Open Source)

Snipply is an Adobe AIR application used to organize chunks and snippets of code into separate categories. If you have used Code, it is similar to Coda Clips. I prefer to keep my larger code libraries in Snippley as it is very easy to use and doesn’t clutter my clips. Best of all it is absolutely free!

Price: Free!

Komodo Edit (Open Source)

If you are looking for a powerful free and open source text editor that runs on any platform, then Komodo Edit might be the one for you. Primarily focused on dynamic web languages, Komodo Edit comes with many features and customizable plugins to help you get the job done.

Price: Free!

Eclipse

Eclipse is a very popular IDE that has become the tool many programmers prefer to use. There are many Eclipse Plugins as well that support different web and computer languages. No matter what language you program in, Eclipse can most likely accommodate you.

Price: Free!

Capture Me (Open Source)

Capture Me is a flexible screen capture and recording utility for Mac OS X which features a floating capture window, several saving options, and resize ability. To use the program, drag and resize the floating window to cover the area you want to capture. Then click in the window to capture the screenshot. You can resize it, copy it to the clipboard, and save it in a variety of formats and locations.

Price: Free!

Panic’s Coda

This is the diamond in the rough! It provides everything that EditPlus had and a bunch more, integrating Panic’s Transmit FTP application; a Terminal window; a sexy Editor with all the features I love; a browser window (Safari); a CSS Editor (which I’ll never use, although it’s cool); and a development Book library. Wow. Awesome stuff. Or as Panic puts it:

Price: Free trial, $99 for regular license.

Forklift

Dual pane file manager and FTP/SFTP client for Mac OS X. ForkLift is designed to be the fastest, most powerful file manager for the Mac. Connect to FTP or SFTP servers, manage your Amazon S3 account or your mobile devices over Bluetooth. All these features are beautifully integrated into a sophisticated, yet easy to use Cocoa based interface. Dual-pane view will dramatically increase your productivity along with state-of-the-art features like live preview, spring loaded folders and any-to-any workflow. All this to be topped by tabs, to keep your workspace nice and clean.

Price: Free!

Devonthink

Devonthink is a database application. You can store any kind of document in it. From text and images to MP3s, keep track of all your data in what every way you see fit. Organize, reorganize. DEVONthink stores your documents, scanned papers, email messages, notes, bookmarks, etc. in one place. Access live web pages seamlessly from within DEVONthink to review, extract further information.

Price: Free!

jEdit

jEdit Built-in macro language; extensible plugin architecture. Dozens of macros and plugins available. It also auto indent, and syntax highlighting for more than 130 languages. Plugins can be downloaded and installed from within jEdit using the “plugin manager” feature. Every other feature, both basic and advanced, you would expect to find in a text editor.

Price: Free!

Download jEdit

iBiz

iBiz is a very powerful invoicing and time-billing application. Unlike the past two, it has a ton of features, letting you have all the information you need. Add to that advanced networking as well as iCal and Address Book integration and iBiz is something a freelancer who wants to track his income really needs.

Price: Free!

Thunderbird

Mac OS X comes with Safari, it’s good, it even comes with Mail. Mozilla Thunderbird is a fully featured, secure and very functional email client. It lets you handle mail efficiently and with style, and Mozilla Thunderbird filters away junk mail too.

Price: Free!

Carbon Copy Cloner

Before TimeMachine, Carbon Copy Cloner hold the backup utility crown. Carbon Copy Cloner still it rules for creating backups. Timemachine sorely lacks the bootable backup feature, until it gets it Carbon Copy Cloner will have my heart and soul.

Price: Free!

RooSwitch

Roositch is a great application whose features make it quite unique. The core feature is application data profiles. You can then switch through these profiles, basically letting every application support multiple users. Developers can create custom user profiles for testing their applications while other users can have “home” and “work” profiles.

Price: Free!

On The Job

On The Job is an application designed to help you track your time and expenses, and bill your clients by easily and quickly creating professional invoices. On The Job is straightforward and easy to use letting you focus on what’s important.

Price: Free!

Man Hour

Man Hour is a simple and flexible time tracking program. With this you can Easily set how much to charge per hour depending on the time of day, day of the week, and calendar date. Now you can Start recording when you start work, stop recording when you stop- Manhour automatically tracks how much time you’ve spent working and calculates your fees using your custom rates.

Price: Free Trial, $9.99 per license.

TextMate

TextMate brings Apple’s approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike. Another nice feature is the price is a bit lower than that of Codas.

Price: Free Trial, $55 per license.

MAMP

Most recent Macs come with everything that MAMP does, but by downloading and installing MAMP you can get your own local server up and running in under 5 minutes. In case you were wondering, MAMP stands for Mac, Apache, MySQL, and php/perl/python, whatever your server side language of choice

Price: Free, additionally a paid version ‘MAMP Pro’ is available for $55.00.

TextExpander

The customizable typing shortcut utility that saves you time! A utility that helps you type more efficiently and accurately. TextExpander watches what you type and inserts predefined snippets on the fly whenever you enter their corresponding abbreviations.

Price: Free Trial, $29.95 per license.

DropBox

Dropbox is an application that creates a special Finder folder that automatically syncs online and between your computers. It allows you to both backup files and keep them up-to-date between systems.Even better is that you get a 2GB account for free, which should be plenty to backup those files you can’t afford to lose.

Price: 2 GB free, $9.99/month for more space.

LaunchBar

LaunchBar is a smart and powerful, keyboard driven productivity utility that lets you access and control every aspect of your digital life. Whatever you want to get done on your Mac – with LaunchBar it’s only a few keystrokes away.

Price: Free until Apr 1, $32 per license after that.

Money³

Money3 featuring a new interface, with upgrades to inventory, invoice tools, budgets and reports. The financial application is geared towards personal and small-business accounting, with tools for financial management. Version 3 adds a new interface, with better design, grouping, use of color, display of commands and a new cover-flow view. New invoice styles have been added, with support for multiple currencies in financial math calculations.

Price: Free Trial, $39.00 per license.

Versions

Version control is very important for anyone involved in development, and Versions makes it super simple to maintain. Even if you have never worked with subversion, Versions is a breeze.

Price: Free Trial, $53 per license.

Espresso

Your cup of coffee has been the thing that gets you out of bed, the smell of creativity, the taste that makes your day. Now, Espresso delivers something better than a caffeine boost: a web editor with style. It is currently in public beta and requires Leopard. Check out all of the features offered on the homepage. Espresso is not a bunch of apps thrown together. Instead, we looked at the needs of web developers and streamlined their workflow into one gorgeous, focused app.

Price: Free to try, pre order for $80.00. Discount for CSSEdit users.

AppFresh

AppFresh helps you to keep all applications, widgets, preference panes and application plugins installed on your Mac up to date. All from one place, easy to use and fully integrated into Mac OS X. Also Helps you to keep all applications, widgets, preference panes and application plugins installed on your Mac up to date.

Price: Free!

Emacs

Emacs is a text editor of legendary power and configurability, but it also has an enormously complex user interface. Based on GNU Emacs, Aquamacs integrates perfectly with OS X thanks to its specially adapted user interface. One advantage of it is: no matter what operating system you run Emacs on, you’ll always get the same interface. The big problem: if you use a number of applications on your Mac, one of them is Emacs, you’ll have to switch gears when you switch to Emacs. An Editor for Text, HTML, LaTeX, C++, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, and more.

Price: Free!