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- To wake me up and set timers
Adium - Instant Messenger program
Slim Battery Monitor - A simple battery monitor
- For playing music quickly
- Tweeting, you know…
Last.fm - For streaming from Last.fm, but mostly for scrobbling music
- A nice little app/file launcher
- For e-mail
Dropbox - The best online flash drive I know of.
Time Machine - For backups
iStat Menus (outdated, but free) - CPU Monitoring, Hard drive space
Airport - Wi-Fi and such
iStat Menus - Better date information
Spotlight - Obvious
(From Mike Rapin)
I have a thing about B&W only on my menu bar.
Third Party:
(new toy)
Flux
's CodeBar
Skitch (for annotated screenshots for the clients and managers)
Dropbox
gfxCardStatus (so I can force my Nvidia or Intel graphics chipsets to save my battery)
Caffeine (to keep my laptop awake when I need)
BootChamp (for one click booting into windows)
System:
Keychain (for quick locking and lockup)
iChat (why)
Spaces
Sync services (MobileMe)
Monitor settings
Time Capsule
(From )
, Dropbox, iScrobbler, Little Snitch, Camouflage, Caffeine, , iStat Menus (Temp, Upload/download, RAM usage and CPU usage), and Time Machine.
(From )
Visor - Terminal.app in a Quake-style dropdown console
Dropbox - Make sure everything is up to date
Little Snitch - App blocks outgoing network connections, this is a red/green network IO monitor
iStat Menus Network - Having actual KB/s speed numbers has proved very useful over the years
Airport - Always want to know Wi-Fi signal strength!
iStat Menus Sensors - Monitoring CPU temp, ALWAYS want a quick reference for temp to protect from runaway processes melting my Mac
iStat Menus CPU - What the CPU’s been up to of late…
iStat Menus Memory - How much pie is left to eat…
iStat Menus Battery - Different icon depending on mains/charging/depleting
iStat Menus Clock - Date and time
Spotlight - Never, ever use this but the command to remove it from the menu bar via OnyX doesn’t keep it gone very long :o(
(From Chris)
from the App Store, myTunesController for when I’m hooked up to my external monitor, mouse and keyboard, Keychain Access to lock my screen, Spaces, Monitor, and the Basic stuff. (From Tyler Perkins)
BetterTouchTool, Dropbox, Memory/CPU/Temp/Battery/Calendar from iStat Menus, MobileMe Sync status (every now and then I use this), Time Machine backup status, Bluetooth status (lets me start tethering easily), Airport, Sound, Hotspot Shield (living in the UK, this lets me view Hulu/Daily Show and Colbert Report online).
(From Jeff Fox)
Current iTunes info - What’s playing on iTunes right now with controls as a dropdown menu so I don’t have to go to iTunes.
Sparrow - Gmail client, I just downloaded it after seeing it here and I have several Gmail accounts and it makes it convenient to juggle through them.
Evernote - Keeps random pieces of info organized. I use it as a bookmark archive for links that I want to remember for later use someday, and it works across all my gadgets (iPad, Android, etc.).
Dropbox - Great sync tool.
TinyAlarm 1.3 - Mini alarm app that lets you set up short alarms. I use it wake me up from my computer haze / daze
: I use for Gmail, but now with Sparrow I don’t think I will be needing it.
Little Snitch - Firewall, one of the best Mac personal firewalls IMO.
Camouflage - Hides cluttered desktop. Makes my mac look neat.
Caffeine - Disables sleep and screensaver when clicked. Sometimes you need your mac to stay awake. I use it a lot.
Chat Status - I swear, I found it there. I didn’t install anything to have it there.
VPN Access - To connect to the corporate network.
Sync - To sync to multiple devices/services (I didn’t install anything, it came with the Mac).
Airport - Wi-Fi signal.
Spaces - Spaces preference to choose different screens.
Time Machine - Used for backups, I never backed my computers until I started using Time Machine, it makes the effort painless.
Bluetooth
Sound Control
Display Detector
Battery status
Keyboard Preference - I use Arabic and English keyboards.
Switch Users - To quickly switch between different users.
MiniCal - Mini calendar app that shows you the month calendar in a drop down.
Spotlight
(From )
From left to right: , CloudApp, Time Machine, iStat Menus (CPU Temp, Network usage (upstream, downstream), RAM usage, CPU usage graph), Bluetooth status, Battery/Power Status, Airport, Volume, Time.
(From noallegiance)
BetterTouchTool to make my trackpad more effective, iAntivirus, because I’m paranoid, smcFanControl, to keep my Macbook Pro from catching on fire, LogMeIn for all those times I need to remote desktop in. Bluetooth (disabled), iStat Menus for battery notifications, Wi-Fi, Volume, iStats Menus for time, and then Spotlight.
(From tayworm)
Dropbox - Awesome.
TotalFinder - which is a finder replacement that gives you tabs and a few other neat features. I don’t really need the icon but it gives me a quick way to relaunch the program if/when it crashes.
Flux - Automatically adjusts the screen temperature (I believe that’s the correct term?) of the screen to coincide with the time of day. Basically makes the screen easier on the eyes at night.
- Quick one-glance check for new mail.
Evernote - Don’t really use it anymore, but it looks cool :).
Caffeine - Keeps your Mac from going to sleep. Great for me cause I do some music performance (Reason w/ midi controller) with my Macbook so sometimes it is sitting open on stage for quite awhile unused- and caffeine makes sure it doesn’t go to sleep at an inopportune time.
- Notifications of various sorts.
Lock - This is an OS X icon, I added this little guy from Keychain Access utility (not third-party- it’s in the utilities folder) - in the preferences for Keychain Access there’s a box to “show status in menu bar”. The lock shows if keychain is enabled or not. BUT the real reason I added it was because it gives you one-click access to lock the screen!
Displays - I know it’s hokey ‘cause I’m on a Macbook Pro, but I connect to external displays a lot and this gives me quick access to change the resolution of an external display to make sure it matches native.
Then, you got your Wi-Fi, Volume, Battery (showing minutes remaining- invaluable IMO), and Date/time. I’m kind of scatterbrained so I love having the day of week, date, and time right there.
(From Kraig Hufstedler)