Okay, so a couple of years ago I bought a Mac and felt regret. While there were moments of being overjoyed e.g. seeing my photographs with more vivid colors, iMovie editing, iChat, and a unix based OS; for the most part, I felt less productive. My #1 frustration was lack of synchronization with my SmartPhone. And many of my desired applications weren’t either as good or available. So I went back to the PC. But that regression only lasted for a year.

Recently I decided it was time to upgrade my PC. I was very frustrated the other day when I was trying to leave the house but Internet Explorer took an hour to upgrade only to find it wasn’t as good as Chrome and ultimately looked like a rip off of FireFox. This drove me to go buy a new Powerbook for my personal computer.

With my new PowerBook, I can honestly say, I don’t feel any regret… YET. In fact, my only regret was that I did not buy a larger hard drive because I am installing so much goodness.
Here are some of the awesome tools I have found:
  • Think or Swim (Up to you how much money you make or lose) My day trading app is on the Mac, I thought for sure I would have to keep my PC for this one.
  • Dupin ($15) – Yes, finally something to get rid of my duplicate songs in iTunes
  • TinkerTools (free)- Opens up the hidden controls on the Mac
  • Chmox (free) – Helps me read online books with .chm extensions
  • Stuffit Expander (free)
  • Senuti ($18) – To pull my songs off my iPod and onto my new computer
  • Vuze – For Bittorrents
  • Little Snitch ($29.95 – works for 3 hours in demo mode) – to tell me what my network is up to and block communication I don’t want. This has been awesome when you are on sites that have a lot of callbacks to advertising firms etc. Also this a great tool to identify a potential worm or virus.
  • TextMate ($59) – Simple text editor for code
  • Site Sucker (Donation) – To help me in my consultancy work. I can easily archive a client’s old web-site for later reference. Also it is great when I am trying to learn. I can easily look at someone’s web code
  • VLC (free) – Media player
If you have any other great tools like these, let me know about them. I would love something as good as TextMate for cheaper.