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Stuff for Macs

Science

• Yorick. "Yorick is an interpreted programming language, designed for postprocessing or steering large scientific simulation codes". A good IDL alternative, with similar performances (see here and here). If you want to move away from IDL, this set of compatible functions might help, as well as the Yorick Forum. Yorick runs perfectly on OSX and linux (very few experience myself on Windows, but seems OK). Not that it is easy, but GUI can be made as well as links to compiled C routines, these are called plugins. Some nice things made with yorick that I am aware of:
  
• a simulation tool for adaptive optics (YAO)
  
• the AMBER interferometric data reduction software
• I guess the data reduction software I wrote for FLUOR does not qualify as "nice" (no GUI, etc.)
• Fv, multi plateform FITS viewer, from NASA.
• LaTeX Equation Editor. Creates small pictures with equations in them. Bring LaTeX quality to your PowerPoint / OpenOffice / Keynote presentations.
  

Web/Network

• Firefox. Open source web browser. Check out Thunderbird, the email client and the SeaMonkey suite (I am using its composer for my webpages).
• Skype. Chat & talk to people with Macs, Windows or Linux. Great to call regular phones too (from a conference hotel with Wifi and outrageously expensive phone service).
  
• iStumbler. Scan for WiFi networks, check signals and channels: set your network without using everybody else's channel, etc.
  

Utilities

• Fink. "The Fink project wants to bring the full world of Unix Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X." Want emacs? just type "fink install emacs", want LaTeX? "fink install tetex-base" and so on!
  
• psync. Very simple backup script. I use it to create bootable clones of my hardrive. Backup, backup, backup! (not that macs are not reliable...)
  
• Fan Control. Cool down that Mac Book (Pro) with Open Source code! I found the cooling on my Mac Book Pro less than adequate: it runs too hot. Not anymore! with Fan Control.
  

Graphics

• GIMP. Open Source Image tool manipulation. Yeah, I know, it's not Photoshop...
• Inkscape. Open Source vector graphics editor using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Music

• Automat. A great analog sounding synth for GarageBand. Installation is not straightforward: Copy automat.component in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components and restart GarageBand.

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