Best 3rd party utilities for OS X...

[serpicolugnut]

While responding to another thread about Default Folder X, it occured to me that there is a extremely healthy crop of 3rd party utilities available for OS X, and it hasn't even hit it's 1 year birthday yet. I wanted to start a thread to talk about them, and maybe introduce some new ones to people who didn't know they existed.

My favorites in the arena of GUI enhancements are ASM, FruitMenu and Classic Spy.

My other favorite 3rd party utilities are osXigen for FTP, Password Master for storing serials & passwords, Pic2Icon for generating 128x128 thumbnails of images, USBOverdrive for finally given us 3rd party mouse users control over our devices, and Iconographer for creating OS X icons...

[Ralph J.]

in addition to the utilities that serpicolugnut mentioned, i also recommend TransparentDock, TinkerTool and MouseZoom.

[frgee]

duality 3 for theme-ing.

[genghiscohen]

LaunchBar!!!

[tismey]

DockSwap , TransparentDock ,WindowShade X and TypeIt4Me get my vote.

[edX]

ASM is no. 1 on my list but that is because i am old school. It keeps me from habitually reaching for something that isn't there.

also dockswitcher, default folder x (even while needing some work), desktop changer, free space, swap cop, Xoptimize, and BatChmod.

[serpicolugnut]

You know, I weened myself off of the habit of moving my mouse to the upper right hand corner of the screen to switch applications, so I stopped using ASM because I thought I didn't need it.

Then I realized another thing that ASM does that's a lifesaver - it enables "Classic Window Mode", which basically means, if you click on one window of any application, the entire application and all it's windows comes to the forefront, which is the way that I like it.

OS X by default allows you (depending upon the application), to click on an applications window, and if it isn't the main window, the rest of the apps windows may be obscurred by another application. Very annoying - and really cool that ASM fixes it.

I wish one developer would take all these nifty little utilities like ASM, TrashX, Fruit Menu, WindowShadeX, etc. and roll them in to one application/utility. They could call it the "RetroResourceApp" or something to that effect. Basically a all in one utility that gives old school lovers of OS 9's UI features the ability to restore them in X.

Hey - I can wish outloud can't I?

[naysayer]

less is more