What’s For Lunch At The Mac Free Lunch Club?

Yes, it requires a little effort to find them (Bambi’s good at that) and they’re not always as good as commercial software for your Mac. Still, with some free Mac software you get much more than you pay for.

We all have our favorite “free” Mac utilities. The kind you couldn’t do without because they fill such a great and obvious need. We probably have some software we paid for that we’d like to destroy before it destroys us (can you say “Windows™?”).

This isn’t a comprehensive list, but it’ll give you the first step to find plenty of free, cheap, inexpensive Mac software without having to travel too far to do it. Click.

One of my favorite and most visited Mac web sites is MacUpdate.

Click Here to get a list of the day’s most recent Mac applications. The free and not so free.

Thursday’s list on MacUpdate was remarkable. At the high end (meaning—you’ll pay big time) there were updates for Apple’s Logic Pro and Express ($999 and $299 respectively).

The list of freebies was extensive. Late in the day saw an update of StYNCies, a free Mac app to synchronize your Stickies to your iPod and/or iDisk. That’s probably pronounced “stinkies.”

Also free but of less need to mention is the Norton AntiVirus X defs for January. Had a Mac virus lately?

Sometimes there’s free Mac software that serves a purpose that only the developer truly understands. So it is with

MailBadge. This is a nifty Mac app that displays a floating window to tell you the number of email messages in Apple’s Mail. Just like the one in the dock.

Do you have a Yahoo email account? Yeah, me, too. And it’s the only account I have that I have to check separately. I can’t use Apple’s Mail.

YMail 0.4.1 to the rescue. Mac software versions that are less than 1.2 usually scare me. YMail is 0.4.1 so hasn’t even made it to .5 yet.

Still, Mac users love it because it works. Well, maybe they love it because it’s free. Where else will you get a status bar application that periodically logs in to Yahoo! Mail and lets you know if you have new mail. Documentation is skimpy, that that would cost extra, right?

As if the 56 backup and clone and synchronize utilities for the Mac aren’t enough, Grapefruit Software says we need another one. Their iBackup 3.0.1 is available for download.

You get to be the first to write a review. I already have 27 backup applications.

Here’s one we don’t need in Hawaii but you might love it up there in Minnesota (where there’s four seasons—snow, more snow, still snowing, and road construction)—Snowman 0.2.2.

A snowman on your desktop? The price is right.

Did you know Mac OS X comes with the Apache web server built in? That’s a lotta power. WebControl is a little application that lets you edit the Apache httpd.conf file.

That file isn’t easily accessible to the average Mac OS X user, so WebControl makes it easy. However, if you know how to edit httpd.conf, you won’t be doing it in WebControl. Mostly.

Don’t have a Yahoo! email account but you have a Google GMail email account? Try the very free GMail Status to get a look at the unread GMail. The number shows up in the Mac Menu Bar.

Got an older Mac that’s not supported by Mac OS X but you’d like to run it on the Mac anyway? All you need is XPostFacto, a more-than-nifty Mac application that does a modification to allow OS X to run on older, non-OS X supported Macs. It’s free.

The Virex Vires 7 Virus definitions for January were also released. Had a Mac virus recently?

Finally, for you budding web designers just itching to get at the power of the web (via your Mac), Taco HTML Edit 1.7 is free and awaiting your download. MacUpdate users give it 4.5 stars. Edit HTML and PHP like a pro. Well, maybe not a pro—fake it. Who’ll know?

Mac applications are NOT a dime a dozen. There’s thousands and thousands of applications available for your Mac. Hundreds of them are free, proving once again (what we learned as young adults) that there is such a thing as a Mac Free Lunch™.

What’s your story? Got a FREE Mac application that you can’t live without? Share it. Got one that’s a dud and you’d like to warn everyone else? Share the pain. Click on Comments below and declare your love (or hate) to others.