We’ve all seen these lists at forums and blogs but we decided to make our own. So here’s is a list of our top ten free applications for Mac. Note that they aren’t in any particular order, i.e. the first is not necessarily better than the last.

AppleJack – Homepage

Our top choice of maintenance application. Every Mac user should have AppleJack installed. It’s simple, quick and does a very good job at cleaning up your system. Boot up in single user mode, run “applejack auto”, wait a few minutes, and you’ve got a clean and stable system.

QuickSilver – Homepage

Man, install QuickSilver and you’ll never go back. It’s a bit hard to explain what it actually does because it does so damn much. It’s most basically used as an application starter, kind of like Spotlight, but it’s potential is huge. You can do almost anything with this baby. Use it for a week and you’ll feel handicapped without it.

VLC Media Player – Homepage

THE media player for any platform. Handles anything you throw at it, including DVD media, and it’s fast. I’ve personally been using it for years and nothing even comes close to competing with it. Screw those codec packs, here’s the world famous VLC.

Adium – Homepage

The instant messenger client for everything. MSN, Yahoo, AIM, it’s all supported. And boy is it customizable. You can put a skin on anything and theme it any way you like. Another application that every Mac should have installed.

Skype – Homepage

Another awesome instant messenger. Text, video, audio, this one has it all; cross platform. You can even use it to make and receive regular and mobile phone calls. Skype offers cheap rates to anywhere in the world and of course free computer-to-computer calls. I used it when I was studying in the US to call from Mac to PC and computer to landline.

Carbon Copy Cloner – Homepage

You might not use this one as often as the others, but is does a damn good job when you do. Carbon Copy Cloner is a backup and cloning utility that is very easy to use. I’ve personally used it to copy my Mac OS installation to a new hard drive.

Firefox – Homepage

Firefox is the most overrated web browser on the internet. Compared to Safari, it looks like garbage and render in slow-motion. So why is it on the list? Because sometimes Safari doesn’t work. E.g. Safari can’t handle certain blog editors but Firefox can. Safari can’t use StumbleUpon, Firefox can. So even though I’d pick Safari or Opera any day of the week, sometimes Firefox is necessary.

Transmission – Homepage

The hand-down best Torrent client for Mac. It might be missing some features, like the ability to choose which files to download, but nothing beats it. It’s simple, stable, fast and lightweight. And it looks good in the dock, too.

The Unarchiver – Homepage

The built-in decompresser doesn’t cut it and StuffIt Expander is slow, buggy and bloated. The Unarchiver is the solution. It’s fast, lightweight, and handles almost anything. The whole GUI basically consists of a progress bar, which is the only thing you need to unpack some files.

Cyberduck – Homepage

Cyberduck is definitely the best free FTP client you can find for the Mac platform. It’s fast and has an easy to use GUI. If you’ve got a few dollar to spare, then you can buy the best of the best; Transmit. However, Cyberduck does a great job for no dollars at all.

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