The UNIX manual pages (man pages) contain a wealth of information, but you might not always find them easy to use while actually using the terminal. You generally will need to open a second window, one with the man page and the other with the actual command in it - this allows you to read the documentation as you work with the command without scrolling back in the history buffer.
manThor simplifies this process by opening man pages in the Finder. From here, you can print (nicely formatted), search for text, and easily flip between several recently visited man pages. Want to learn about the tcsh shell in UNIX? Use manThor to open the 100+ page man pages and print them out -- bingo, instant UNIX book!
Another simple but very useful utility. ShadowGoogle puts a floating text box on your screen. Click in the box, type a search term, hit enter, and your browser pops up with the Google search results page.
You can configure whether to look on the web, in groups, or for images via a hot-key selection, and you can also specify in which languages to restrict your searches.
ShadowGoogle has earned a permanent spot on my desktop. It's much easier to find the text box than to always go hunting for a browser window...
One highly requested missing feature (from OS 9) in OS X is the ability to "roll up" or "windowshade" a window. This reduces the window to just its title bar, allowing you to have a number of windows onscreen at one time with minimal clutter.
Unsanity's WindowShade X brings back this behavior with a vengenance. Using the power of OS X, you can actually turn any window transparent (or semi-transparent), allowing you to easily see what's behind it. There are other more traditonal shading options as well.
If you miss window shades from OS 9, WindowShade X is the only way I presently know of to get them back.
NetNewsWire Lite is one of a number of news collection programs that present news headlines from various sites (including this one) on your desktop. The interface uses a three-pane interface (site, headline, details) that makes it easy to decide which articles you wish to read.
You can also easily add additional sites to the program's selection if you know the news feed URL. If you spend a lot of time browsing the web for news and haven't tried a desktop headline grabber yet, NetNewsWire Lite is a good one to start with ... you'll be amazed at how much time you save by only reading what you want to read.
When I first saw this running on a PC, my jaw dropped. It is simply the most realistic looking screen saver I have ever seen. The light reflects and the fish move in an extremely fluid manner, gliding in front of and behind the various objects in the aquarium. If you haven't seen it yet, download it today just to watch the demo. It's simply amazing...
This great little application takes a dropped image (or collection of images) and creates high-quality Finder icons out of the images. That's all it does, and it does it very very well.
Update: Pic2Icon works perfectly with Jaguar for me, but some users have reported problems. The sugar cube team is working on an update to address these issues.
A free application switcher that displays a horizontal listing of running applications and lets you do things like force quit, hide, or show while switching between them. You can also specify whether to hide all apps when switching and/or bring one or all windows associated with the switched-to application to the front upon switch.
There are a number of GUI FTP clients. There's also the command line, a free FTP client. So why do I like Transmit? Basically, I like it for its simple, Finder-like interface and easy to understand feature set. It looks and feels like a great Mac application, and it does what I need it to do.
There are more advanced FTP clients (RBrowser comes to mind), but Transmit is everything I need wrapped in an easy to use and understand package.
OmniGraffle is a unique program. To label it simply a drawing program is to short-sell its features. It's not PowerPoint, either - you wouldn't want to use it to create a full-fledged presentation. But for things like floor plans, organizational charts, and network diagrams, it's hard to beat OmniGraffle.
The program works off a concept of a palette of pre-made objects. You drag objects to the workspace, join them with others using lines and arrows, and then move things around as you see fit. Objects joined by arrows will remain joined as you drag them about; the arrow re-routes itself as ncessary.
You can use the pre-defined object palettes, create a new palette with your own objects, or download palettes of objects from OmniWeb. Anything can be an object on a palette, including photographs. This makes it easy to create realistic looking network diagrams, for example.
You'll need a pretty potent machine to take full advantage of OmniGraffle (it's pokey on my iBook/500 at times, but works fine on the G4/733), but if you have the horsepower, it's a great program!
Quake3 is a First Person Shooter (FPS) game that follows the basic mantra of the genre: "If it moves, shoot it ... if it doesn't move, pick it up!"
When I have a few free minutes of time (rare these days, it seems), I fire up Quake3 on my OS X box and head out to the net to try to beat up on the PC users. Quake3's net play code is very smooth and makes online gaming a very positive experience (with a broadband connection).
There are newer games, but Quake3 seems to hold its appeal to me for no good reason I can really put my finger on...