Thursday, July 2, 2015

My Favorite Things on OSX

The lack of a proper package manger or app store makes setting up a new OSX install a pain. Here are links to my favorite programs to run on OSX.

Internet
Firefox -  is a free and open-source web browser that uses the Gecko layout engine to render web pages, which implements current and anticipated web standards.
Dropbox - is a file hosting service that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Allowing you to save your documents and take them with you no matter where your working from.
Transmission - is a BitTorrent client which features a simple interface on top of a cross-platform back-end.
Java - is the foundation for virtually every type of networked application and is the global standard for developing and delivering embedded and mobile applications, games, Web-based content, and enterprise software.
Flash - is a multimedia and software platform used for creating vector graphics, animation, browser games, rich internet applications, desktop applications, mobile applications and mobile games.

Hardware
Logitech Gaming Software - Lets you customize functions on Logitech gaming mice, keyboards, and headsets.
One Toolkit - Mac toolkit for unlocking, flashing, rooting the OnePlus One Android phone.
Android File Transfer - Browse and transfer files between your Mac computer and your Android device.
HoRNDIS - is a driver for Mac OS X that allows you to use your Android phone's native USB tethering mode to get Internet access.
360Controller - unofficial Xbox 360 controller drivers with an included preference pane for managing settings. For use on OSX 10.9 and above.
To uninstall the 360 controller drivers remove the following files and reboot your mac:
  • /Library/PreferencePanes/Pref360Control.prefPane
  • /Library/StartupItems/360ControlDaemon
  • /System/Library/Extensions/360Controller.kext
  • /System/Library/Extensions/Wireless360Controller.kext
  • /System/Library/Extensions/WirelessGamingReceiver.kext

Media
VLC - is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
Decibel - is an audio player tailored to the particular needs of audiophiles, supporting  FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Musepack, WavPack, Monkey's Audio, Speex, True Audio, Apple Lossless, AAC, MP3, WAVE and AIFF.
XLD - is a tool for Mac OS X that is able to decode/convert/play various 'lossless' audio files. The supported audio files can be split into some tracks with cue sheet when decoding. It works on Mac OS X 10.4 and later.
  • Place XLD plugins in ~/Library/ApplicationSupport/XLD/PlugIns 
Kid3 Tag Editor - audio tag editor can edit the tags of MP3, Ogg, FLAC, MPC & WMA files in an efficient way, convert between ID3v1 and ID3v2, set the tags of multiple files, generate tags from file names or vice versa and import from freedb, MusicBrainz and Disco
Google Play Music Manager - you can upload music from your computer to Google Play and then listen to your favorite songs on your mobile device or computer.

Mac Utilities
Quick Silver - is a fast and free Mac OS X productivity application that gives you the power to control your Mac quickly and elegantly. Quicksilver learns your habits, making your everyday chores simple and efficient.
Better Touch - is a great, feature packed app that allows you to configure many gestures for your Magic Mouse, Macbook Trackpad and Magic Trackpad
Clip Menu - is a freeware application that can manage clipboard history. Allowing you to save copied text and pictures in an easily accessible drop down menu from the Menu bar.
Disk Maker X - is an application built with AppleScript that makes it very easy to build a bootable drive for installing OSX .
Tuxera - Full read-write compatibility with NTFS-formatted drives on a Mac. Access, edit, store and transfer files hassle-free.
Keka - is a file compression software for OS X, that specially implements p7zip (a 7-Zip port) among others.
Xee3 - is an streamlined and convenient image viewer and browser. It is similar to Mac OS X's Preview.app, but lets you easily browse the entire contents of folders and archives, move and copy image files quickly, and supports many more image formats.
Atom - is a free and open-source text and source code editor developed by GitHub for OS X, Linux, and Windows with support for plug-ins written in Node.js, and embedded Git Control.
  • Atom reports anonymous usage using Google Analytics, to turn off this "feature" go to Settings>Packages and search for Metrics. You can disable it with the toggle switch.

Productivity Software
Libre Office - is a free and open source office suite, developed by The Document Foundation. The file formats of Microsoft Office are well supported, though some layout features and formatting attributes are handled differently in the application or are not entirely supported in the filters.
Gimp - is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image retouching and editing, free-form drawing, resizing, cropping, photo-montages, converting between different image formats.

Miscellaneous
Simple Comic - Simple Comic is an open source freeware comic book and manga viewer for Mac OS X supporting reading both directories of images and comic book archives.

Disable Spotlight
sudo mdutil -a -i on

Remove the Spotlight Icon from the Menu Bar
sudo chmod 600 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search

Enable TRIM SSD Support on OSX 10.10.4
sudo trimforce enable