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With Mac OS X comes a lot of useful software but there is also a lot missing. Here a list of software that I had installed and use on my Powerbook.

OpenOffice

Everybody needs a wordprocessor and a spreedsheet application and OpenOffice is a good piece of software that also runs also under Mac OS X. Before you can install OpenOffice you need to install X11 because OpenOffice is not a native Mac OS X software and sadly never will.
NeoOffice is a free port of OpenOffice to make a native MacOS X, but it is still beta.

Abiword is also an nice wordprocessor that has the native Mac OS X look and feel, but I do not have much experience with abiword.

Graphic

If you need an alternative to Photoshop Gimp is a powerful alternative. Gimp also requirs X11 (see Openoffice)

Movie Players

Quicktime can play a lot of video formats, but with the normal version that comes with Mac OS X you can't play in fullscreen. Most times I use VLC (Video Lan Client) that playes almost any video format. MPlayer is also a great movie player. The Windows Media Player is also available for Mac OS X, but I use this player only if I want to play a WMV9 movie.

Instant Messagner

iChat is a nice instant messagner but in can only handy the AIM and Rendezvous protocol. There are two good alternatives that can handle almost any instant messenger protocol. The first one is
Fire and the second
is Adium X. Both programs work find, but Adium X look better than Fire.

Mail Client

The Mail application that comes with Mac OS X is quite nice but I prefer Thunderbird

Desktop Manager

If you want to have virtual desktops then you need the Desktop Manager

Fink

If you also know and use Linux or any other Unix you might find fink useful because with fink you can install lot of free software that is ported from unix to Mac OS X.

Links:
http://www.openoffice.org
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/download/
http://www.neooffice.org
http://www.abisource.com
http://www.gimp.org
http://www.videolan.org
http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/software/Macintosh/osx/default.aspx
http://fire.sourceforge.net/
http://www.adiumx.com
http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/
http://desktopmanager.berlios.de/
http://fink.sourceforge.net