Due to the popularity of the last two lists (one and two), I’m following up with a new set. Enjoy the newest addition to The Best Unknown Mac Apps Part 3.

Let me just talk a bit about why I make these lists. When I’m browsing digg and various mac blogs (TUAW or TAB), I often see links to blog posts abut the best mac apps. Usually the lists are around 10 programs and all 10 are fantastic, but the problem is that these blog posts all chronicle the same 10 apps. Being a small-time indie developer, it’s hard to get your stuff noticed. And all these lists pointing to Adium, Flip4Mac, TextMate, etc are great but don’t show off your app to the world. It’s my opinion that we don’t need any more lists pointing us to the big time apps. What we need are lists of the sweet gems that go unnoticed.

Alright enough chatter, let’s get to the list:

Alert: Shameless plug. This program is one of mine (see them all here), but it exemplifies what’s great about the Mac. This app may not boost your productivity nor serve any real purpose, but it’s fun and just cool to have. 10 Seconds With Tyler Durden will fade in a window every 10 minutes and display a quote from David Fincher’s movie Fight Club. The app also contains a dashboard version, CLI version and Adium version. Check it out here.

This is one of the many developer apps that are featured in these lists. If you ever program in Xcode, you probably are well aware of its inability to easily change project names. I, for one, usually name my projects “Test” or something like that and then change the name once I come up with one. This can be a pain, and you have to make sure you change it everywhere it needs to be, which can get annoying. This app simplifies the task into two clicks. It’s very useful. Get it here.

This is a nice addition to any web developers toolkit or anyone who works with XML. XML Nanny is a simple GUI for xml verification utilities, and it works great. It has some nice graphics and nice animations. Check it out here.

This is a great app, and it’s indispensable for any web designer. pngCrushrrr will take any PNG file you drop on it and compress it. This app can save an enormous amount of space and every bit you save is less bandwidth and faster downloads for your viewers. Pick it up here.

This is perhaps one of my favorite app ideas. What MyTunesRSS does is take your entire iTunes music collection and create a web server on your computer to share that music. After doing some port forwarding if you are behind a router, any user (Mac/Win/Linux) can access your Mac and download some or all of your music using a really nice web interface. They just go to your Mac’s IP in their browser and can navigate through your music and download it or stream it. It’s very cool and somewhat illegal/not illegal. We’ll let the lawyers deal with that. Download it now here.

I thought I should throw in a game to this list. This app won the iDevGames award i believe a few years ago (correct me if I am wrong). Since then, it’s hasn’t received too much press, even though it is an amazing game. You fly a chopper and attempt to rescue citizens all the while dodging and killing terrorists. It’s extremely fun and the graphics are spectacular (really cool particle effects). Find the game here.

This app is just a plain good concept. It’s implementation is super simple and that fits it well. The program will put an icon up in the menu-bar. Click the icon to disable your Mac from going to sleep or screen saver. This is useful when you are watching a movie on your Mac but you’re sitting on your couch or bed. This will prevent it from going to screensaver and disturbing you. Download it here.

This is a little app that will emulate Firefox’s “Are you sure you want to close this window” alert when you attempt to close a window with multiple tabs so that you can have the same thing in Safari. All you need is SIMBL (free) and TabStop. Don’t lose all those tabs stupidly anymore. Get it here.

This is a wonderful little app for Xcode developers. The concept is simple. Add growl support to Xcode. Whenever you finish building or cleaning (or upon completion of the intermediary steps) a growl notification will pop up alerting you. This is really great and just a smart addition that perhaps the Apple Xcode team (and all Apple application teams) will adopt. Grab the app here.

I hope you enjoyed the list, and please feel free to comment. I’d like to hear your favorites.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 at 11:15 pm and is filed under Tech, Mac, Applications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.