My five most valued applications for Macintosh OS X.

5. Launch Items Editor X. This add functionality to the OS X contextual menus. This is my second vote for the most under-developed aspect of the Apple user experience. contextual menus, for those that have not noticed yet, is the menu palette that opens up when the user Control+Clicks on a document, application, the desktop, or whatever. That’s what it means by contextual-click on a document and the menu displays options that are relevant to documents. Examples are open, open with, send to trash.

4. CodeTek VirtualDesktop. This is the best application to experience a “sense of power” over the standard Apple user experience. Apple has so far ignored this with the new OS. Virtual desktops allow the user to have multiple “desktops” to spread out your finder windows. For anyone familiar with RedHat Linux, you will be happy to find this addition for OS X. Even better then the Linux version of the tool, Virtual Desktop allows the user to select finder windows in the virtual desktop palette and move them between desktops. This is useful when multi-tasking because you arrange your computer space like adding an extension to your house with the click of a mouse.

3. Page Sender Fax Center. This is a great test application. If you don’t have the need to have a separate fax machine page sender is the answer for the modem equipped Mac. It uses your address book. It is available with your other printers and is added to the OS X Print Center.

2. Carbon Copy Cloner. I have been using computers long enough to know that regular backups is like brushing your teeth every day. Let your teeth go unattended and you will have serious dental problems that will cost you lots of actual money, frustration and pain. CCC makes it very simple to backup your computer. OS 9 was as easy as copy the hard drive to another volume. With OS X there are numerous hidden files and other UNIX peculiarities that can cause your copy to be incomplete. CCC takes care of everything.

1. Sticky Brain. This is my number one favorite software. At the basic level this application functions as a replacement for Apple’s Stickies. The Advantages over Stickies are that every note is saved until it is specifically deleted. I have many times “closed” a sticky only to want it back minutes later. Sticky Brain uses a two frame window to review all notes (something I wish Microsoft would implement in Entourage) with a list view and note view.

The BEST part of this application is that you can create a new note simply by selecting target text and using a keyboard shortcut (Command+Option+G). This is perfect for taking notes while web surfing or reading any text selectable document. There are actually several different styles of stickies and each can have it’s own keyboard shortcut. An absolutely necessary application for any web research where the information is more important then a bunch of bookmarks.