Following on from the “Top 10 FREE Windows Programs You MUST Download” article, I thought I’d share my personal thoughts on the top 10 free applications for Apple Macs.  This is not an exhaustive list, just my ten personal favourates of applications that are put to good use on Macs.  Comments and suggestions are welcome, if there’s something I’ve ommited that you think should be here then by all means let us know!

1) OpenOffice.org

Like the Windows and Linux versions, OpenOffice is a free, fully featured, office suite.  It doesn’t stand up to Apples own iWork suite, or even to the equally excellent Microsoft Office 2008, but it is free and it does offer full compatibility with Microsoft Office documents.  Since version 3 it’s also been a native OS X application, rather than a port from the Linux version, meaning that it’s performance and reliability are right up there with the premium office suites for Mac.  You can download OpenOffice here.

2) FileZilla

If you’re a Mac user, chances are you have at least dabbled with online media, be it with online photo albums, web design, streaming video or anything else that requires the transfer of files to a remote server.  If that’s the case you’ve probably used FileZilla.  Filezilla is an FTP client, arguably the best such application available for Mac.  The free download enables you to login to remote servers and browse, edit, delete and add files.  It sounds simple enough, and FileZilla makes it feel simpler still.  It’s fast, reliable, easy to use and has a great user interface, just what’s needed when getting your own website up and running.  In fact, it’s so good that we used it to upload this site to our hosts server.

3) Afloat

If you’ve ever used Windows at home you may well have found the “always on top” view in alot of applications.  In Windows this does exactly what it says on the tin: it keeps the selected Window on top of all the others allowing you to keep an eye on it while you work on other things.  This is a feature that has always been missing from OS X, but no longer.  Installing Afloat will add this feature to most Mac applications where it will be a menu option to “keep afloat”, i.e. keep the application on top of all other applications.  Great for watching TV shows in Quicktime while you work or for when you need to copy information from one window to another.

4) Perian

Perian is a plugin for Quicktime that enables it to handle the vast majority of media types.  Quicktime has always been cursed with only supporting Apple file formats (as well as a few of the most common formats) but with Perian you can flawlessly playback almost any media file type within Quicktime, without the need to install any specific codec packs or poorly written media players (we’re looking at you, DivX).  A great little plugin that you won’t ever notice.

5) Google Earth

Many people look at Google Earth and snigger “yeah, but what is it actually for?”.  With earlier versions this may have been justified, but version 5 is a goldmine of information; pubs, clubs, retaurants, businesses, 3D buildings, photos, landmarks, route planning, reviews, hotels, car parks, the list is almost endless.  If you ever venture past your own front door, Google Earth is a must.  In fact, if you don’t venture past your own front door it’s probably even more useful, just go and download it, thank me later.

6) XBMC

There was no chance I was going to write an article about free software applications and not mention XBMC.  Like the Windows and Linux versions this free media center is absolutely essential.  If you own an Intel based Mac the installation should be painless.  Regular updates are made to the software which just require you to download and install over the top of your old installation.  The default RSS feed from the XBMC team will even tell you when a new version is available.  Quite frankly, XBMC is the media browser that Apple should have made when they ended up with Front Row.  Until they realise the error of their ways and have a re think, you can download XBMC from here.  You can even use your Apple remote to control it, pair this up with a Mac Mini connected to an HDTV and you’ve got yourself a media center.

7) Sun VirtualBox

Many people need to run Windows on their Mac’s.  Boot camp is the most straight forward option, but it means allocating a reasonable chunk of your hard disk to Windows and having to reboot when you want to switch between the two environments.  There are also “paid for” applications for virtualisation in Parallels for Mac and VMware Fusion.  Both great products but with noticeable price tags as well.  The only free solution to run a virtual Windows PC on your Mac is VirtualBox from Sun.  It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the others and the performance doesn’t quite match them either, but it does give you a free basic Windows virtual PC within OS X (providing you have a valid Windows license of course).  There’s even some very basic 3D graphics support, but I wouldn’t bet on playing the latest games through it.

8) Skype

OS X already has a very adequate video conferencing suite in iChat, but unfortunately it only allows you to converse with either other mac users or those who use Google’s IM service.  Far more people use Skype because it’s available across multiple platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux, Windows Mobile, iPhone, other smartphones).  Performance is comparable to iChat in the latest version, in fact Skype also has other features such as online phone numbers, call plans and voicemail which will allow you to do away with your home phone completely (though these are subscription services).  Definitely worth a download, even if you haven’t used the product before.

9) Steam

This Windows gaming download service made it’s debut on Mac on the 12th of May and although it’s still in it’s infancy it looks fairly promising.  For those unfamiliar with the concept; Steam is basically a catalogue/download service for PC games.  You open an account with them, and when you see a game in the catalogue that you like you purchase, download and play it.  Once purchased on your account you can download the game for personal use as many times as you like, you can also back up the games onto DVD’s or your hard disk to save you having to download them again if you have to rebuild your system.  Now on Mac, the catalogue isn’t as large as it is on Windows, but hopefully this will encourage developers and publishers to look at the Mac as a gaming platform in future.  Whats more, until May 24th you can download Valves “Portal” for free on the Steam Mac client.

10) Microsoft Messenger

By far the most popular Instant Messenger client in the UK is Windows Live Messenger, well, on the Mac it’s called Microsoft Messenger.  Don’t worry, you can still use your Windows Live login to chat to and share files with your friends.  The current version doesn’t support video chat, which is a shame, but the beta version of the next release does contain video chat capabilities so hopefully sometime soon these features will be included.  You can download Microsoft Messenger for Mac here.