Must have Mac Software

Ever since the move to Mac about 3 years ago, its been a mixture of agony and pleasure. For starters, until Snow Leopard, using Mac in a "corporate" world was a joke. No integration to Exchange (yeah, call it evil or whatever - it is THE standard in corporate email), and no calendar integration of any sorts. It was like living without O2. But, there were so many good things about the Mac that the corporate citizen in me, figured out ways to work around the everyday challenges that a Mac posed. Solutions ranging from Entourage (yikes!) to Outlook Web Access to Parallels (really, if u have to run Windows in the background, whats the point?) to CrossOvers. You name it and everything was tried. None of it even ever came close to being the REAL thing, unsurprisingly!

And then came along a performance release of Leopard with a couple of features - go figure :) Snow Leopard has had its issues. My Mac never crashed before Snow Leopard, but now, its not as rare. Apps crashes a bit more, but Mail.app's out of the box integration to MS Exchange and also, seemless calendar integration was all anyone can ever ask for, in a single release. My question to Apple would be - what the heck took soooo long? I mean, its not like Apple has a competing product to Microsoft in the corporate email server/calendar server. So, why did it take so long? But, I guess, they did get it right. Both in the iPhone and on the desktop.

Anyways, for anyone new to the Mac or even pro users of Mac, a few must have apps:
- OmniFocus (in general, all Omnigroup apps are great) - this is the uber task manager you will ever find; If you have it, but dont use it, then, I recommend relearning the tool through a couple of 30min tutorials available through Omnigroup website. +1 for iPhone integration
- Evernote
- Asana
- Mail.app, iCal etc - this is brain dead, yes, but SmartFolders, multiple calendars etc makes life so much easier
- 1Password - Absolute life saver
- Alfred - yeah, turn that Apple Spotlight off and use Alfred
- Adium - well, the only IM client you need, period
- Colloquoy - IRC client, if u need one
- AppFresh - Keep all your apps up2date; really useful. Its still in Beta and it doesnt work with all apps, but atleast this is a good start
- AppCleaner - Works nicely; UI is a bit quirky; but once you figure it out, its useful
- Caffeine - Must have app; its a great little app to override the power saver/screen saver settings
- Gimp - Free online image editor; I have used it and again, its a bit quirky, but if you figure it out, its super useful
- NXClient - very useful tool - a la Remote Desktop for Linux systems
- TextMate - great Text Editor
- iTerm - great Terminal
- XMind - great tool to brainstorm