Here are several really useful free/cheap Mac apps that I’ve come across recently:
- Macfusion (free). Lets you mount remote filesystems over SSH or FTP, and access them through Finder. Far nicer than using the ssh command in Terminal, or a third-party FTP client. Depends on MacFUSE. Notes:
- Finder does already provide FTP access (via “Connect to server…”), but it’s read-only.
- In order to have write access over SSH, you’ll need to do the trick described here to map your local username to the username of your SSH account.
- I find it convenient to place a link to Macfusion.app in Finder’s toolbar.
- Arrange (about $7). Brings to Mac the excellent ‘aero-snap’ feature of Windows 7 (plus a few other nice features).
- TotalFinder (about $10). Brings Google Chrome-style tabs (the finest GUI innovation in years!) to Finder.
- Spark (free). Lets you assign custom keyboard shortcuts. Really stable and powerful. Doesn’t look to have been updated for a couple of years, but still works fine on Snow Leopard.
- VirtualBox (free). Run Windows or Linux on your Mac – and no need to dual boot. I’m staggered by how well this works.
- BibDesk (free). I use this to manage my PDF library. Very powerful and customisable.
Comments on: "Some useful Mac apps" (2)
On Mac OS X Lion, don’t use MacFUSE; use OSXFUSE instead.
The Arrange app I mentioned above no longer seems to work. BetterTouchTool does the job now for me instead.