Top 10 Free, Most Useful, Unique, Alternative Mac Apps

What’s on your Mac? Apps, of course. So, you’ve carefully selected, cultivated, and engaged yourself on new Mac apps. And you’re still not satisfied?

Here’s a list of 10 Mac apps you probably haven’t heard about or used. But here they are. 10 free Mac apps that do a little bit of this and a little more of that in different ways than the typical mainstream commercial apps.

Browse, Click, Download, Use, Repeat

There’s something about shopping online that appeals to a deeply embedded sensitivity; a need to try and have that can be satisfied with a click.

The Mac App Store appeals to that inner urge to accomplish something with that click, made even better when there’s no cost involved.

Finding apps online is the easy part.

Retail therapy has been reduced to a collection of attractive app icons and a one-click way to have them show up on your Mac.

It’s the 21st century. Let your fingers do the walking while you bask in the knowledge that, within minutes, your Mac becomes full of the latest and greatest, and you’re more productive than ever, and none of that newfound attitude cost you a dime.

#10 – FreeMemory: Why not start a list of free apps with one that has free in the name. FreeMemory monitors your Mac’s memory usage. With a click you can see which apps are gobbling up the RAM and slowing down your Mac.

#9 – The Unarchiver: There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and at least double that many ways to unarchive archived files. The Unarchiver does exactly that to Zip, RAR, Tar, GZip and many other archived files.

#8 – iProcrastinate: How do you get things done? Lists. Lots of lists. The poorly named iProcrastinate brings all your to-do lists together. Manage tasks with easy and have it sync up to your iPhone version or Dropbox. Why? Because wherever you go, there you are, and you’ll always need a list of things to do.

#7 – MPlayerX: Sure, Apple gives you QuickTime Player X. Surprise! It doesn’t play everything. MPlayerX plays more, costs less (actually, it’s the same cost). The icon might be yucky but the app sports video tuner controls and a multi-band equalizer. Not bad for free, no?

#6 – Caffeine: Here’s the deal. You’re watching Netflix on your MacBook and the screensaver comes on every 15 minutes. Use Caffeine to toggle the screensaver on and off as needed. It sits in the Menubar, totally out of the way until you need it.

#5 – Spectacle: This is so cool and easy to use. Spectacle sits in your Mac’s Menubar and helps you manage the twenty eleven open windows on your screen. Use the keyboard shortcuts or click and Spectacle moves windows left and right and up and down adding a little OCD order to your Mac.

#4 – Alfred: Think of this app as a butler for your Mac. Alfred launches. It searches. It spells. It calculates. It obeys your commands (provided they’re Mac OS X system commands). Alfred in drag is Siri.

#3 – Droplr: Alright, you’ve mastered drag and drop. Now you need something to drag and drop someplace. Droplr to the rescue by giving you an easy way to share photos, documents, links, et al with your friends online. It’s like dragging and dropping stuff to the cloud then giving your friends a link to the stuff.

#2 – Free Ringtone Maker: Because the world doesn’t have enough annoying ringtones on smart phones, there’s Free Ringtone Maker. It might be the easiest way to create ringtones from almost any sound source; from iTunes music to the microphone.

#1 – Cashculator: Too much month left over at the end of your money? Can’t afford Quicken? Use Cashculator to track your money, set up a budget, record transactions, and give you the only Mac app with a digital piggy bank icon. Ain’t it pretty?

There you go. 10 of the most useful, unique alternative Mac apps that don’t cost a dime. If you’re in need of some retail therapy to ward off the hunger pangs of being a penniless Mac user with an internet connection, the Mac360 Value Vixen™ aims to please.

Listen to Apple’s Siri read my article:

What? Me? Follow?

Finally, have you visited our sponsor overlords? When you do our pre-schoolers can stop hanging around 7-11 begging for food. Did you know our daily reviews, news, updates, and nonsense come right to you when you Follow Mac360 on Twitter? They do. Now you know.