Essential Software for OS X

Some packages are dependent on others and the order of installation has been reflected in the following list.

1. Firefox: Like many of you, this is my browser of choice and is the first application I install. Grab the latest version from the Firefox download site.

   I also install the following Add-ons for FireFox:

   • Foxmarks: This is an add-on that syncs your bookmarks across multiple computers. I highly recommend it.

   • FireBug: An invaluable tool whether I'm working on my website layout or performing a vulnerability assessment on a web application.

2. Xcode: Next up is Xcode, Apple's development environment for Mac OS X. I always grab the latest version from Apple's Developer Connection website. Installation is straightforward, just launch the installer contained in the .dmg and follow the prompts.

3. Xquartz: Due to bugs that were introduced during software updates of the pre-packaged X11 app I ultimately chose to use Xquartz instead. So far I've been happy with the stability and reliability.

4. iTerm: iTerm is an open source (GPL) terminal emulator that I choose to use in place of the OS X Terminal utility. You can download it from their sourceforge site, I normally grab the "recent binary build from CVS".

5. MacPorts: MacPorts (which I highly recommend) makes installing and maintaining numerous software packages a breeze. The project has a well written MacPorts install guide

   One minor issue I had was that the installer didn't properly edit my .profile to add the necessary directories to the PATH environment variable:

   MBP:~ dave$ echo $PATH
   /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin
   

   The quick fix is to edit your ~/.profile (or create one if it doesn't exist) and add the following line:

   export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
   

   Restart a new terminal session to have the change take effect:

   MBP:~ dave$ echo $PATH
   /opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin
   

6. Subversion: This is an open-source revision control client and is necessary when I want to build applications from source. It can easily be installed via MacPorts.

   sudo port install subversion
   

   Update: 08/01/2008 - Subversion failed to install for me and threw the following error, configure: error: No awk program found. It's a known issue and the workaround is simply to rerun the install command.

7. BBEdit: To date this is my favorite text editor for the Mac, even with it's higher price. You can grab a demo from their website to decide if its for you before plunking down the cabbage.

8. Snapz Pro X:
   http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/

9. Pixelmator: http://www.pixelmator.com

10. Chicken of the VNC: As the project's website describes; "Chicken of the VNC is a VNC client for Mac OS X". It has been very reliable for me.

11. Tunnelblick: A great little graphical OpenVPN client for OS X. You can grab it from Tunnelblick's Google Code project page.

12. Remote Desktop Connection Client: For those times that I need to administrate a Windows machine RDC 2.0 does the job.