Member Avatar for tompatrick

Video players

  1. VLC Media Player - VLC is a cross-platform and open source multimedia player for Mac OSX.

  2. Perian - Perian is another open source video player for that are based on multi-platform form of FFmpeg project.

3. Mac Media player - Mac media player provided all the basic functions like subtitle options, adjustable audio and video settings.

  1. GOM Player - GOM player is a versatile media player that is easy to use and have a nice user-interface

Word Processing Software

  1. Microsoft Office - It is the most popular and well know software suite for Mac that includes excel, word, power point etc. software.

  2. Bean - Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor that is designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable. Bean is lean, fast and uncluttered.

  3. Mellel - Mellel is a word processor for writers, scholars.

Presentation

  1. Keynote - Keynote is a presentation apps from Apple Inc. and used for creating 2D and 3D charts.

Data Recovery

  1. TestDisk - Free data recovery app for Mac

  2. Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery Software - Used to recover the lost or deleted files from Mac OS X internal and external hard drive.

  3. EaseUS Mac data recovery - Software that recovers deleted data from Mac OS.

  4. Mini Tool Mac data recovery - Another data recovery app for Mac OS X.

Mac optimization Software

  1. Onyx - Free optimize my Mac tool

  2. Speedup Mac - Another free Mac cleaner software

  3. Appcleaner - Removes unwanted apps for free

AntiVirus Mac

  1. AVG for Mac - Give free scan to locate viruses & malwares

  2. Sophos - Scans Macintosh HD and external drives for malicious threats

  3. ClamXav - Another free Mac AVsoftware

VMWare for Mac

  1. - Run Windows on Mac without booting to another drive

  2. Parallels for Mac - Run Windows on Mac parallely. No boot into Windows required.

Edited by tompatrick
  • 8 Contributors
  • 10 Replies
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  • 1 Year Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by Zed_2

Dani AI

Generated

This thread is from 2015, so a few quick 2025 updates to save folks time. For video, try IINA, a modern, open‑source mpv front‑end that feels native on macOS and plays almost anything out of the box IINA. Also note that Perian (listed above) was discontinued years ago and no longer applies to current macOS Perian project summary.

+1 to on LibreOffice as the best free office suite today. Grab the Apple Silicon or Intel build as needed LibreOffice download (US site). For ’s dev picks: Sequel Pro is unmaintained; use the community‑run Sequel Ace instead (same feel, maintained, MySQL 5.7+/MariaDB) Sequel Ace and the background on why the fork exists Future of Sequel Pro (GitHub). A lightweight live system monitor that nicely complements ’s XRG is Stats (open source, menubar) Stats.

If you are on Apple Silicon and need VMs: VirtualBox now supports only ARM64 guests (e.g., Windows 11 ARM, Linux ARM) on M‑series Macs; x86 guests are not supported VirtualBox 7.2 docs: Arm64 hosts. For free options, UTM is an excellent open‑source choice UTM for Mac. Also, VMware made Fusion Pro free for personal use in 2024 .

Fast installs via Homebrew (works on Intel and Apple Silicon):

brew install --cask iina sequel-ace utm stats

Security/cleanup: macOS already includes Gatekeeper, Notarization, and XProtect for malware prevention and remediation Apple Platform Security: Malware protections. If you want an on‑demand scanner, Malwarebytes’ free mode does manual scans (real‑time requires paid) Malwarebytes for Mac install guide. For ’s hang after an unknown installer: try Safe Mode, then if needed reinstall macOS from Recovery; reinstalling keeps apps/data intact in most cases How to reinstall macOS.

Recommended Answers

All 10 Replies

Member Avatar for rubberman

You missed Libre Office for office applications (word processing, spreadsheets, etc) which is available for the Mac - and free/open source as well!

Member Avatar for tompatrick

Please make contributions in this thread for the apps not mentioned above.

Member Avatar for JamesCherrill

XRG - gives you a little floating window with graphs of CPU, network disk etc usage in real time. I use it all the time because I have a lousy internet connection and so I want to keep an eye on it.

Plex. World's best media center/hub/server

Edited by JamesCherrill
Member Avatar for tompatrick
  • Net Spot - Only professional app for wireless site survey, Wi-Fi analysis and troubleshooting on Mac OS X
  • ZTerm - ZTerm is a terminal emulation program for the Macintosh.
Member Avatar for jeffmarkel
  • VirtualBox - Neither Parallels nor VMWare are free. VirtualBox IS free, and while perhaps not as richly featured as the other two, is the basis for both Vagrant and boot2docker.
  • SequelPro - Free, excellent MySQL database management tool
  • Homebrew - aka "The missing package manager for OS X"
Member Avatar for jwenting

Microsoft OneNote. Great note taking software, and synchs seamlessly between platforms (Windows, Windows Phone, Mac, Android, probably iOS as well).

Member Avatar for tompatrick

1PasswordMac

Member Avatar for Anu_5

LibreOffice or OpenOffice both are absent here

Edited by Anu_5 because: more words
Member Avatar for isaacpc

Hi friends is there any way to remove virus from my macbook pro. Acuttly last night i have downloaded a software. But i dont what this was. When, i have try to installed then, my system goes to be hanged. no any other option are working. So tell me what i can do. Can restor my macbook pro operaing System.

Member Avatar for Zed_2

After using Pandora for a couple of days, I have ended up being very impressed with it. It is very fast with finding recoverable files and when you click on what you want brought back, it restores the file and sends it back to your hard drive within seconds.

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