Best little known Mac Apps and Games

Most Mac users have Microsoft Office and Adobe Suite installed on their system, few explores the lesser known applications and tools. Many of these softwares can improve your productivity and are not bloated with useless features. Here are a list of them that I recommend:

Apps

• MacJournal - A word processor can be an overkill these days, especially for writing blogs and notes. MacJournal is powerful enough for most people for their writing needs. It can post to most the blog sites and archived them in categories on your Mac. The new version supports embedded media so you can add images, sound, video, pdf, etc onto the page. After trying a few blogging apps, I decided to use this for all my blogs. It is the only one with a mature and well-developed interface, others are lacking especially in formating text functionality.
• DevonThink - The Mac platform is full of good looking apps that promises much but ends up being superficial. Many of the document managers are just 'Super Finder', using OSX's built-in features like smart folders, tagging and Spotlight to create a new variation of workflow. Most uses a database library to store the contents which poses a risk factor if it gets corrupted. I tried a dozen of them and they are either unstable or just couldn't justify their worth. Eagle-filer, Together, Soho Notes, Yep, Leap, Yojimbo, etc, I ended up going back to plain old finder with Spotlight as my navigator. If you structured the folders in proper hierarchy and keep files in tidy order, you can use smart folders to gather them easily or use Spotlight to find them. Devonthink is the only doc manager with an advantage, it uses AI to classify the imported documents. The recommendation here is only for researchers who need to work with references, as this could very well be the only app that can do the job. For home users, just stick to Finder and Spotlight.
• Curio - They should give this the Mac App of the year award. Its a feature-rich software with so much functionalities that it can be a little overwhelming. After familiarizing with it, you will still be in awe of what it can do. It is best described as a creative management software. It is a brainstorming, journaling, mind-mapping, document manager with a scrapbook interface. It can also replace Powerpoint for doing presentation. Circus Ponies Notebook is the closest competitor to this app, but looks like a dwarf next to Curio. Notebook is prone to crash, Curio - a mammoth software with so much complexities has never crash on me once. This is the definitive creative swiss army knife, no other software presents so much in one package for managing ideas.
• iVideo - This app is advertised as the iPhoto for video, however you don't need to import those huge videos into the library, the files can be left where they were which makes it similar to Google's Picassa. You can rate and categorize the videos just like iTune, it suports video playback but you are better off setting VLC as the default player.
• ViJournal - This Journal app is a traditional diary that lets you write and sort the entry in a calendar based system. It is suitable for personal use but it also supports online blogging websites. I use this as a personal diary that is secured with encryption so Spotlight will not find anything in it.
• Times/Newsfire/Newslife - These are the best news-reader for Mac. Times uses CSS to format the RSS into a newpaper-format that is easy on the eyes and very appealing. It is the best looking news-reader out there, very unique in the approach but sometimes it crashes when you mess around with the layout, also some RSS newsfeeds doesn’t seems to work on this app. Despite these problems, it is still the best RSS reader for the Mac. Newslife is the ‘conventional’ news reader that has some unique features like displaying news as a photo calendar. It is a stable and well-developed app and the best choice if you want a good news Reader. Newsfire is a freeware, perhaps the best freeware RSS reader for Mac. It looks clean and tidy, easy to use and did I mentioned it's free? This app has a multi-tasking bug: when it is grabbing RSS news, the app will freeze and you will see that spinning beachball for a few seconds. If you can live with that and don’t want to pay for a newsreader, then try Newsfire.
• Hear - This is a software DSP for Mac. It improves the sound quality and creates 3d effect on the audio. Once it's turned on, all the audio on your Mac will be affected by it (games, movies, music, etc). It takes some calibration to get it to output high quality sound. On the default setting, music tends to sound noisy. Movies however, will sound so good, you won't watch another one without having this thing turned on.
• Shovebox - This is an app I can't live without. It stays constantly on the finder bar ready for me to drop webpages, texts, pictures and other stuff into it. You can basically drop anything that interest you on a website: pictures, pdf, links, highlighted text or the entire webpage. The idea behind this app is allowing you to easily save things you like, then organize them when you are free.
• Prizmo - This strange software can be very handy if you have the need for it. It uses digital camera as a scanner, with a built-in OCR program. It also supports the web-cam on Macbooks for capturing images.
• Pixelmator - The best Photoshop clone on Mac. It looks better than PS, faster and cheaper. The interface is very similar to PS but uses OSX's core animation to great effect. The filter is also very fast, thanks to the implementation of core animation acceleration. The only drawback is that it lacks a few PS features. (You wont be able to draw a curve box for example) For most users though, it is more than enough for their graphic needs.
• VLC - On the Mac, all you need for watching movies is VLC with Perian and Flip4Mac codecs. It is faster than Quicktime player.
• Mind Node - The best mind-mapping software on the Mac. There are more features packed ones out there but they are not as intuitive as this one. It is simple, and easy to use. It doesn't provide complex tools or functions and that is its appeal, keeping it simple and straight forward.
• Stellarium - This is a freeware and one of the nicest looking astronomy software I have seen.
• CleanMyMac - A utility that will clean up the mess on your Mac. It cleans up caches and useless files, it will dramatically increase your free hard disk space. What it does is, it scans universal binary and removed files meant for PowerPC Mac if you are using an Intel Mac. It also removes languages files if you don't need them. In a single click, I gained a few gigabyte of space back. It also tracks the apps you had on the hard disk, when you removed them, their associated files will also be erased.
• Visual Thesaurus - This is one of the best Java app that runs on Mac. The software has an organic feel that distinguished it from the rest, I can play with this app forever and learn new words at the same time. It provides a 3d view of words networked like a mind-map. From a simple word, you can relate it to obscure words that will always surprise you. This app should be use in schools, it is helpful not only to writers but can be use as an idea generator.

Now for entertaining softwares, these are the fun and addictive ones. They don't require high end Macs to run and are mostly from independent game developers.

Games

• World of Goo - A physics based game with very good gameplay and graphics. Even Nintendo were calling it a perfect game.


• Osmos - Another physics game but in a surreal world. This game has very good ambient music and will have you thinking about natural laws of physics. It is like the game flOw or the early stages of Spore.


• 4 Elements - The best looking and exciting match-3 game. If you like Jewel Quest or Bejeweled, this one will have you addicted.


• Peggle Nights - A game that will have you staying all night playing. It is that addictive, don't believe me try it. The presentation is like a gameshow, watching that little silver ball bounce on the pegs. It is strangely hypnotic.


• Plants vs Zombies - This is the best tower defense game. It is funny and will consume a lot of your time just trying stages after stages which never seems to end.


• Fate - If you like Diablo 2, you will love this one. It's a pure clone of Diablo but with better graphics.


• Pure Hidden - A hidden objects game. This one is for all the Mac graphics people. What's better than playing an artsy and stylish graphic game on Mac?


• Kitty Spangles Solitaire - Yes it looks cartoony and kiddy but it’s the most polished solitaire on any platform. The graphic uses OpenGL and is the cleanest and most Apple-ish Solitaire there is. This is the only card game you need for your Mac.