Improving Apple’s Applications

Posted on September 20th, 2006 by Brian Stucki

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I love the software that comes with Mac OS X. I think most people do. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be some improvements. Here are the freeware apps I use to enhance Apple’s software. These are usually the first I recommend to new Mac users.

Mail.app

Letterbox - Takes advantage of the widescreens on most Macs by showing your mail in three columns.
Mail Act-On - A great way to file emails quickly.
Mail.appetizer - An automatic heads-up display when new mail arrives. It provides an option to turn it off while Mail.app is active.

iCal
iCal Events Widget - This widget lets you take a look at your calendar without having iCal open.

Address Book
Tapdex - Let’s you access your address book with a keyboard short-cut. As soon as the person is found, the window will expand with the info. Also, selecting a number of address will enlarge the text on the screen.

iTunes
Sizzling Keys - Shortcuts to do everything. Forward, back, pause, stop, etc.
iTunes Links - The little arrows next to the songs will jump to that artist or album in your collection rather than on the iTunes Music Store. This is reversible.

Quicktime
Windows Media Compenents for Quicktime - will let you want Windows Media files in Quicktime. It also offers support for in-browser videos.

iChat
Chax - Does just about everything you’d want to be done in iChat. Enables tabbed chatting. The two most useful ones for me is automatically resize buddy window to show online buddies and accept incoming chats automatically. The latter is a great feature.

iPhoto
KeyWord Assistant - The quickest way to tag your photos with keywords. I have all of my photos tagged so I when I search “Grandma Stucki” in spotlight, all of the photos come up of her. It’s quite impressing when you show others, and gives you a fast way to check out all your photos.

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...from May 18, 2007...