MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, Mac Mini: thank you, Apple! If you just bought a new flavor of Mac, your next step is to start decking it out with bells, whistles and apps to capitalize on all the advantages Apple offers. In the Mac store and across the web you’ll find Mac apps that can customize your experience, allow you to quickly access your Mac’s controls, and overall ensure it runs smoothly. Here are the first 5 free Mac apps you need to download to control and enhance your new Mac’s performance:
Caffeine
Caffeine is an app that controls when your Mac goes to sleep. It lives in your menu bar, shown as a coffee mug icon. When the mug is filled with a steamy cup of coffee, you know Caffeine is on to keep your Mac awake (i.e. prevent it from dimming the screen or starting screen savers). Click the coffee mug again to enable sleep or screen saver mode (the coffee and steam will disappear from the icon).
Little Snitch
You really can’t put it any better than this program’s developers do: “A firewall protects your computer against unwanted guest from the Internet .But who protects your private data from being sent out? Little Snitch does!” When applications on your computer send data out to the Internet sometimes its for good reason, but Little Snitch will intercept what might be bad, call foul, and let you decide whether you really want to proceed.
iStat Pro
Feel like your Mac is running slow or a program is taking up too much processing speed? System monitoring tool apps monitor things like what processes are taking up the most power, how much space your hard drive has left, the temperature of your Mac, battery health, memory, and more. The Mac store offers several paid apps that focus on different system monitoring aspects, but iStat Pro is free, offers monitoring of just about every aspect of your Mac, and even allows you to customize exactly what you see. After downloading, pressing F4 on your Mac will allow you to quickly pop open this system monitoring tool and check-in on how it’s running.
Mobile Mouse Server
If you have a Mac, there’s a good chance you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, too. Download Mobile Mouse Server on your Mac and iPhone/iPod/iPad to turn that device into a motion-based trackpad and wireless remote that controls your computer. Now you can sit back on your couch or bed and control your new Mac without moving, and enjoy a brand new trackpad mouse when in front of your screen.
SMC Fan Control
When your new Mac is running a lot of processes, the hard drive gets hotter and a built-in fan helps keep it cool. SMC Fan Control lets you customize different fan settings and speed so you can power your Mac up for more intensive tasks – like if you’re using big editing software or are playing games. The icon displays in your Menu bar, and also shows your hard drive’s temperature so you know right away when it’s getting hot and you should manually up that fan speed.
What other essential utilities would you add to the list? Leave them in the comments!
