On this page I have a list of applications that I believe to be helpful when it comes to productivity, organization, and maintaining ones own operating system.
Mac OS X
Productivity
Quicksilver - An amazing application that lets you do just about anything on your Mac with the help of plugins, but most will use it just as an application and folder launcher.Overflow - A window based application launcher that is brought up with a single hotkey making your apps quickly available to you.
BackDrop - Ever find yourself needing to take a screenshot of anything on your computer but have to change your desktop wallpaper just for that purpose? Well here is the solution for you. Backdrop puts any color or image you want for a temporary background while you take your screen captures.
Organization
Delicious Library - Have a lot of movies, cds, games, and books? Well with this application, you can catalog all your media so you know exactly what you have of each media type.iPhoto Library Manager - Do you take a lot of photos? If you do and you use iPhoto, you may have noticed how it can become difficult to manage all the photos that iPhoto can store. With this app, you can have separate libraries to better manage your photos.
Yep - Yep is like iPhoto for your PDF’s. It gives you easy access to all your PDF files and even lets you tag them based on the content.
System Maintenance
AppZapper - Not very many applications have uninstallers on the Mac and when you want to get rid of them, for the most part you can just drag them into your Trash and delete. But there are still remnants of those applications on your system. AppZapper finds all the files associated with the application you want to delete and puts them in the Trash for you.Onyx - This is a great application that lets you configure a lot of system settings, clean up your OS to make it run faster, enable certain developer mode features, and more.
Pathfinder - I can’t speak for other Mac OS X users, but to me the Finder is rather lacking in features this day and age. Leopards Finder is going to be better, but at the moment it is still a bit weak on features. Pathfinder is the solution to those that feel the way. It gives you tabbed browsing so that you no longer have to have multiple Finder windows open. There are many more features that you can read about on the website.
Xslimmer - With the introduction of the Intel Mac’s, there are now three types of applications: PowerPC, Intel, and Universal. The PowerPC application type is for the older Mac systems like a G5, G4, etc. Intel applications are intended just for the newer systems with the intel chips like the MacBook Pro. Finally we have Universal applications that will work for either system. Because of this ability to work with both, there is a lot of extra code residing in the app that increases file size and can potentially cause a slight slow-down in performance. Xslimmer removes all that unnecessary code from the Universal app and makes into an Intel or PowerPC for your specific machine. As their slogan says, it’s the friendly way to right-size your apps without losing functionality.