The Top Ten Most Beautiful OS X Apps
Top ten lists are a dime a dozen, but I haven't seen one floating around yet on the most beautiful OS X apps out there. And as someone who's hitting MacUpdate daily as a small part of my job, always on the hunt for what's cool and new, I thought I'd share some of my insight, condensed down for mass consumption into a neat little list. Before you go on, remember that this is going to be controversial no matter what. I haven't found a single top ten list that doesn't get most people complaining. But honestly, after a lot of thought, I feel there are very few truly beautiful OS X apps left out if you include the honorable mentions. Oh, and before you begin, note that Apple apps (like Front Row and Aperture) have been knocked off the list. This one features independently developed freeware and shareware apps. So, without further ado, presenting the ten most beautiful OS X apps in the world:
The List
Starting off this list is the first of two extremely eye-pleasing P2P apps. (Coincidentally, the other one links to this from within its Help menu as the recommended BitTorrent client.) Transmission is an exercise in simplicity and Aqualicious UI design, with notable exception to its icon. (Look for a replacement icon coming soon on this blog by Tom.) For all of you Azureus and BitTorrent users out there, feast your eyes on this baby. And for an even appearance, download an alternate set of toolbar icons by artist Matt Ball.
The Potion Factory's second release may not be quite as useful as Podcast Maker is for many podcasters (it's also on this list), but the UI is just as lickable. Starting with the mouth-watering application icon (ok, I'll stop with the food analogies there), the eye candy gets only better. (Doh.) You definitely have to try this one to experience it. For what is ultimately an extremely fun voice recording and filtering toy, there's been a lot of love put into this app. You'll notice some really cute icons for each filter effect by the excellent Mischa McLachlan of Zyotism, and the secondary windows for setting reminders and viewing alerts are just as gorgeous. If you have any kids, or never fully grew up, check this one out. Useful as a voice recorder, fun as a prank tool, and costs less than a Yakbak or Whoopee cushion.
I'm no podcaster, but Andy and Jin at the Potion Factory must be doing something right with their flagship app, Podcast Maker, because after one look at the demo, I actually fired up Garageband and tried to record a few shows, just to fiddle around with PCM. An hour or two later I realized I wasn't cut out to be a celebrity podcaster, but regardless, the app's UI was something I was glad to have experienced. For all experienced or novice podcasters out there, there is no better tool on the Mac to put your shows together. Just ask "The Office" creator Ricky Gervais, the band "They Might Be Giants", Senator Debbie Stabenow, or any of the other celebrity podcasters and happy customers listed in the Podcast Maker gallery.
Ahh, finally, the much loved FTP application from Panic. Transmit, around since OS 9, made the UI jump to OS X with much grace (unlike some other competitors still figuring it out), and has since matured at a very consistent, comfortable pace. The single most impressive UI feature of Transmit is the remarkable amount of features and functionality it squeezes into its pretty, pitch-perfect Aqua window. Basically, you're left with the feeling that if Apple had their own "iFTP", it'd look something like this.
Just about every corner of thish app oozes with polish and works as you'd expect it to. Tabs and column view are reimplemented from scratch better than just about any other shareware app out there, and Transmit even comes with a pretty nice widget for customers to use in the Dashboard. (And hey, that's coming from the guy selling a competing widget.) It's an app I use nearly everyday, and use with utter pleasure.
The small shareware/freeware Mac game market doesn't exactly offer a wealth of UI gems, so this is pretty much the exception. While the icon needs some work, Quinn's interface looks more like a sleek skin for an expensive utility than, well, a tetris client. Pop open the drawer, and you get a slick animated radar type dealy while searching for servers, and just about every action in the game is smoothly animated, whether it's the pane shifting around after joining a server, or typed chat messages quickly wiping in with a neat, subtle sci-fi sound. The score display looks extremely cool, and the blocks themselves look suitably clean, though I'd like to see some slicker skins. (Future "Pimp your App" feature on this blog perhaps?)
The coolest part perhaps is how far this freeware game has come along in the UI department. When I tried it a few weeks ago for the first time in over a year, my jaw dropped. I've never before seen an app's looks improve this much. Oh, and the game itself is fun too.
By far the simplest in function and UI among the rest of these apps, AppZapper packs an incredible amount of tasteful visual punch per pixel into its tiny, efficient UI. Factor in the animated dropzone, the truly iconic application icon, the smooth sliding and fading between window views, the construction warning strip for "safe apps", and the utter elegance of the package as a whole, and maybe this #1 spot will start to sound reasonable. And let's not forget that beauty is not limited to what our eyes take in. I wouldn't call it 'beautiful' necessarily, but there is something to be said about this magical combination of screen flashing and the "zap" noise that makes appzapping waaaay more fun than it should be. If this doesn't snag this year's Apple Design Award for Best OS X User Experience, I will honestly be very, very shocked.
David Watanabe's extremely slick and polished P2P application Acquisition won't win any Apple Design Awards for a pretty glaring reason (think Apple's tenuous deals with the record companies), but if the "Best OS X User Experience" category was judged without politics, this would surely take it, or at least make runner-up. That not being the case, Dave can hopefully take some comfort with this spot on the list for a very well-deserving app. Sporting one of the most polished unified window apps out there, Acquisition manages to pack in a lot of features while maintaining what is ultimately a surprisingly spare and aesthetically pleasing UI. There is no single outstanding visual element here, unlike Delicious Library's shelves, or CoverFlow's 3D effects. It's all about the presentation as a whole.
Props to the slick in-list progress bars, the visually contextual search button that animates while searching, the Mail rules style filtering UI, and even the use of the main pane for one of the most visually pleasing nags ever, and some discreet branding for registered users. Acquisition does a lot with its single window interface, and is so intensely polished and perfect, that you just know the app is in really, really talented hands. Which is true, because with three apps in this post (one as an honorable mention), Watanabe is a powerhouse dev with a perfect eye for masterful UI design.
This little app came out of nowhere last year, and has since managed to pretty much universally wow everyone who tries it with its unique 3D visual effects. CoverFlow attempts to fix one of the more glaring shortcomings of the modern music jukebox application's user interface: its lack of visual navigation, and general lack of attention to album art. The solution the app's UI offers is by far the most fun way to browse music since flipping through LP's at the local record store. (The icon pictured is coming soon. For now you can download it and install it through artist Jasper Hauser's blog by dropping in the icns file into CoverFlow's resources folder.
Newsfire 0.1 debuted two summers ago to a very crowded RSS feed reader market which included the venerable NetNewsWire and of course the not yet out Safari RSS, announced at WWDC just months before. That hasn't stopped this app from fast becoming one of the most popular RSS feed readers out there though, in large part due to its obsessively polished UI. Watanabe looked towards iChat's buddy list for inspiration, and the result is a UI that contains a feed list in Newsfire that smoothly shifts around items when feeds are updated, displays unread items in familiar green badges, and perhaps most importantly, presents news and podcasts in an extremely slick fashion. Sure, even at version 1.3 Newsfire lacks some of its competitors' features and customizability, but this is a case where you won't have a problem with giving up UI control to developer Watanabe's hands. He knows what he's doing, and frankly, sometimes, it's best not to mess with works of art.
With a reported $250,000 in sales in its first month of release, Delicious Library will go down in history as one of the most successful shareware application launches ever. With a price tag of $40, it's also the most expensive shareware app on this list. So, why did masses of people pay a solid chunk of change for what is in its essence an app that helps you organize your media collection and borrow items out to your friends? Witness the power of UI design.
Clearly, Delicious Library's most viscerally appealing feature is its ability to let users relive the joy of building their collection, this time for free and with little hassle on their Mac. What Delicious Library did to differentiate itself from the competition in this regard, in addition to its slick improvement of the "adding" process with iSight barcode scanning support, was represent your media collection about as realistically as it was technically possible to do. The super slick representation of CD album art and book covers downloaded from Amazon as jewel cases and real paperback and hardcover books in a virtual wooden bookshelf truly resonated with its users, and I feel, ultimately contributed hugely to its success. There's more of course, but I'll let you try this app out for yourself, in the unlikely event that you haven't yet of course.
Honorable Mentions
Finally, there was of course a list just as long of apps that didn't quite make the cut. If you found some gems in the top ten and want to explore further, I highly recommend trying these additional ten apps out: Inquisitor by David Watanabe, TextMate by Macromates, Pixadex by The IconFactory & Panic, Omniweb and OmniDazzle by The OmniGroup, RapidWeaver 3 by Realmac Software, CSSEdit by MacRabbit, Comic Life by Plasq, Adium 1.0 SVN, Quicksilver by BlackTree, Inc., and StickyBrain by Chronos.
These apps are all pleasures to behold, and definitely worth a spin.
Conclusion
My thoughts after compiling this list? I have to say that there are definitely a lot of clean, HIG complying freeware and shareware apps out there, but when you try to really narrow it down to the truly slick, beautiful, and eye-catching, there ultimately aren't that many contenders. And, let me add, the shareware contenders listed in this post generally tend to do pretty well. Developers, listen up. UI matters, a lot more now than it did in OS 9, or does in Windows, and I'm not talking about just slapping in some nice toolbar icons and calling it a day, customers can respond amazingly well to what many programmers will write off as extraneous eye candy. (Delicious Library's shelving? AppZapper's screen flash?) Some of the most successful Macintosh shareware companies are represented on this list (Delicious Monster, Panic, and The OmniGroup among others) and I think you can get an early glimpse at the next generation of powerhouse companies as well, and it's not a coincidence. Good UI sells, so give it the time it deserves. And for the rest of you, enjoy these apps! Hopefully you'll find a few gems in here that you'll be trying out for the first time.
Comments
Up until this point, there have been 117 responses to “The Top Ten Most Beautiful OS X Apps”:
Because the default Adium UI is appalling! It takes some tweaking and customizing for it to become decent.
Phill Ryu
Adium\'s given an honorable mention, but there\'s definitely some improvement needed to its UI before it could\'ve been a contender for top ten. For one, Adium 1.0 should be much better, but it\'s not even in public beta yet.
However, I\'ve heard it\'s going to hit that status very soon, so expect a feature on this blog after that wiht instructions on how to make Adium really nice. 
Yep, Adium can look very gorgeous, but only after a lot of fiddling.
I should also say - great article! It's hard to not make 'Top Ten's damn near content-free, but not here.q
A good list, even if I have no need of some of these apps. Good call on Quinn, by the way. I'd never heard of it before, and now I can't wait to get home and try it out.
Just thought I'd point out that Newsfire is written by the same David Watanabe as Acquisition and Inquisitor. It wasn't obvious from the writeups there.
Very nice. I haven't heard of most of these applications but I'll be sure to give them a try. Very well made.
Hey, you got slashdotted. Congratulations 
Backstage is nice and clean- wonder what it was inspired by?
A little biased, really... and some of these are not that great at all interface-wise. But yeah, they are all good products. Check out: http://www.nullriver.com/index/products for some other beautiful Mac apps.
The main reason why MAC OS apps have nicer UIs is because the MAC OS team has done a helluva job on providing a smack beautiful OS.
I've always been quite impressed with how well Hog Bay Notebook looked and operated...
...even more so now that it's evolved into Mori!
In the financial world, one must disclose any dealings with the comapnies they report on... Is Phill getting a cut of David W. revenues from the traffic from this site? Ethical minds want to know.
I'm of the opinion that a lot of Mac users are swayed by aesthetics, this means that as a developer it's important to take that into account. Also, with Mac's, you're generally programming for a very limited range of hardware.
With XP, you'd end up having to troubleshoot someone who's still using Window ME with a Savage S3, with some obscure beta driver.
That said, I'd like to see Delicious Library become cross platform, and I can't see why it cant be done....
Oh right, http://www.imediaman.com/
How did you get Transmit unified?
Why does your transmit look like iTunes 5 and mine doesn't? I am using the latest version.
This is exactly the reason why I started my NeatLittleMacApps podcast. There is a slew of superb looking Mac Apps out there. True, a lot of the functionality, details and looks are inherent to the great way that OS X is made. But let's face it. There are some truely great Mac Apps out there. Apps you somehow just love to work with, just because they look nbice, and do exactly what they're supposed to do, without getting bloated.
I believe that he is using UNO, which I HIGHLY recommend.
AppZapper? Transmission? Seriously?
I'd like to nominate Skype and eDrawings Viewer (http://www.edrawingsviewer.com/MAC_Viewer.html) for being stunningly good OS X ports of software written for other platforms. The new beta of Yahoo Messenger is also pretty great in this respect.
Phill Ryu
Ah whoops! I forgot Transmit wasn\'t already unified. You can experience that by installing Uno. And once this site is a little more accessible I\'ll mention that in the Transmit part.
"Why does your transmit look like iTunes 5 and mine doesn’t? I am using the latest version."
He is using Uno.
Very nice list. I am a beautiful app junky too. I've been know to download apps that are completely useless to me just for one excellent toolbar icon.
I look forward to some app makeover posts.
I just really appreciate the fact that Star Wreck is in the Transmission screenshot.
Bookmarked. Looks like a great list. Once I get my macbook pro I'm gona hook it up with this apps! Thanks
How could these not make the top 10... Omni Dazzle, Browseback, Sizzling Keys, Comic Life,Swift Publisher, and Witch?? These are beautiful apps.
Perhaps I need to come up with my own top 10.... and Transmit & Transmission aren't going to be in it... maybe in the useful list..but not the most beautiful.
I just want to know how you could forget Quicksilver - which is not only beautiful, but useful as hell.
Nice list, my Cousin will love these...
Thanks for sharing...
Only one game?
What about Professor Fizzwizzle, Tribal Trouble, Titan Attacks, etc, etc?
Phill Ryu
To all of you guys moaning about Quicksilver and Adium, let me just point out that while I still don\'t believe they deserve to be in the top ten, I do agree that they are pretty nice, and gave them honorable mentions. It just seemed like lots of readers are missing that section.
Check out the apps at http://mekentosj.com/. These guys make the most useful programs for use in molecular biology. Not only gorgeous to look at but functional to the extreme. They are constantly updating the applications: all for FREE!
they have a osx beta, too, and it looks cool: www.mxwendler.net
On newsfire. I just wanted to say it is one of the most annoying apps to try out. It bugs you every couple of minutes to buy it. And limits you to 15 feeds and groups. Limiting is fine, but once it pops up the annoying window the app basically locks itself from use without quitting.
Shareware is fine, but don't nag me to death. On that alone I won't buy it. Of course that is personal opinion .
I think you might be forgetting apeture:
http://www.apple.com/aperture/photoprofiles/?buissink
watch how beautiful it is for showing proofs to a couple at the end of the video.
Phill Ryu
Gavin, I decided to leavel Apple apps out of this list, noted in the first paragraph. That having been said, before I made that decision, Front Row and Aperture were in the running for the top ten.
how do I make my Transmit show only the remote server, like on your picture?
Phill Ryu
All you have to do is move over the slider between local files and remote.
Thanks for the list. I find some of them really useful.
Whats not beautiful is blue links on a light blue background. Uhg! I had to highlight the text to see the links.
Phill Ryu
Hmm, John, what browser are you running in? The text should all be above a white page (which is in turn on top of the light blue BG).
Interesting *list*... I wonder when I find someone who has gone to the extremes to screen apps for "beauty" what they think of her when they get her home.
You fail to mention what "problem" each of the Top10 picks "beauty" solves by UI design which is what I thought your premise. At the end of the exercise the impression is shallow "eye-candy" and hype.
How about posting an addendum?
Yeah, UNO is pretty important for OS X, as far as eye candy goes. Josh Gruber's anthropormorphic squabbles between Brushed Metal and Steve Jobs should include UNO busting through the wall like the Kool-Aid man yelling, "OH YEAH!"
Quicksilver SHOULD have been on the list. There is NO DEBATE, IT SHOULD BE THERE
A little shout out for all the UI freaks, I send hours looking at File Buddy 9's About Window, it brings a tear to my eye, Check it Out
Also click on the Transmit's Truck in the about window and see what happens
About window are important people
Quicksiler NO DEBATE
Andrew Scott:
You wouldn't happen to be astroturfing for that windows knock-off of DL, would you?
Incidentally, that app shows me that no matter how much a developer tries to make a windows app look like a Mac app, they usually come up with utter crap. The only counter-example I know of is iTunes.
-jcr
Nice list.
Phill...always keeping my on the ball. Def checking out CoverFlow.
and I'm getting black text on the blue background as well in Firefox, but its completely legible.
Shut up whingers!
There will never be an ultimate Top 10 apps that everyone is going to like. Get over it. Move on.
Just cause you like an app, doesn't mean someone else will.
Maybe wording your post differently would be more appropriate. Like "These are all good apps, wish such&uch.app was included. It's nice. Check it out."
Instead of "How could you snub this.app" and "no debate, this app is the best". Yes, to you. Congrats. You sound like an 8 year old who didn't get what they wanted on Christmas day.
pipsqeek
Though in a slighlty differnt Genre, i would add Growl to the list... indisposible and works with alot of the apps mentioned in your review.
Hi, There is also nice applications at app4mac.com
I love RapidoWrite and xTime Project
You left out Professor Fizzwizzle !
[...] I discovered this while reading an article about the top ten most beautiful OS X apps. [...]
I agree with all of this APART from Transmit. I'm sorry, Transmit has not only a clunky UI, but it's also buggyer than a termite mound. Captain Ftp is a much nicer application with a smoother interface and a logical UI.
Otherwise. Nice work.
How about iSale?
http://www.equinux.com/sf_img.php/epa_item/14327/c_image
http://www.equinux.com/us/products/isale/index.html
Nice user interface.
Nice list. I found it by sheer luck when a friend of mine yesterday asked me in two consecutive IMs about CoverFlow ("Yes, I use JewelCase too", I replied) and NewsFire ("I don't do RSS much, I like to see each website's look every time, personally").
My question, thought: Would you mind if I provide a translated version in Spanish? (either in my blog or here, I don't mind much?). People in Spain have a somewhat... weak grasp of English as a rule and god knows Spain could use with a little more Mac help and tips.
[...] PhillRyu.com - The Top Ten Most Beautiful OS X Apps As aplicações de MAC mais bonitas (tags: mac osx software apple design apps beautiful application top10) [...]
Phill Ryu
Sure Eduo, make sure to leave a link to your post here!
[...] Phill Ryu ha publicado una lista con las diez aplicaciones para Mac OS X con los interfaces más bonitos del panorama. Muchas de ellas son ya conocidas y os he hablado de ellas en este blog, pero nunca esta de mal dar una vuelta, siempre se aprende alguna cosa nueva. [...]
Great list, Thanks.
I'll give AppZapper a try.
I use Transmit, iSale3 and Acquisition - They are great apps.
I agree with "Puppy" - iSale should be in this list.
Just read your about page,u work on Widget Machine, Menuet and Art Collector
Not too bad yourself bro
Your apps arent too far behind the top ten itself
Very nice, looking forward to see lots more blogging from u
Cover flow rocks!
Proteus is the prettiest MacOS multi-protocol instant messaging software.
Unfortunately, it seems to be losing the war to Adium. That duck was always annoying (almost worse than the running dog.)
You might want to look at Garage Sale as well, from http://www.iwascoding.com/GarageSale/
While I like iSale very much, and it is feature rich. Garage Sale has a much wider selection of templates, and I think it is easier to setup a page with it.
[...] As someone in the Macintosh shareware business, I make the daily crawl through MacUpdate to look for the latest and greatest in Mac software. One thing I’ve been noticing recently is a renaissance of extremely polished and beautiful Mac apps, so I thought I’d share some of these finds with you guys. Hopefully you’ll find some new gems in there!read more | digg story [...]
[...] PhillRyu.com - The Top Ten Most Beautiful OS X Apps (tags: apple mac osx) [...]
Larry,
Won't buy NewsFire because it nags? Reminds me of the old vaudeville joke. "My wife nags me for money all the time." --"What does she do with all the money?" --"I dunno. I never give her any."
Break down and buy the damn app. It will stop nagging.
Las 10 Aplicaciones + bonitas para MacOSX...
En el blog de PhillRyu.com han hecho una recopilación de las aplicaciones mas vistosas para mac, hay aplicaciones conocidas, freewares, sharewares, etc.
Todas las aplicaciones no son radicales para mantener tu OSX al 100%, pero si vale la penas probar...
This guy has some nice Transmission App Icons http://www.iconaholic.com/
Adium can be annoying though until you tama it. And the duck icon itself is just not that enticing. There are problems with it's sometimes tenuous connection with yahoo as well as it's inability to get into AIM community chats. Still, it's interface is pretty..and can be customized.
Re: Honorable Mentions
> It just seemed like lots of readers are missing that section.
Turn it into a bulleted list so that it's more obvious and less easy to skip. Those arrows don't do anything, IMO.
I'm glad ComicLife made the cut.
Good list. I have some new apps to try out now.
I have one problem with Transmit from a UI perspective though. What's with the absolutely huge window borders? It's worse than the average brushed metal app in that regard. It's not such a big deal now that I have a MacBook pro and an external 20" screen, but when I had my 12" PowerBook it was horrible. I still love all the other aspects of the app, though.
It's posts like this - and of course apps like the ones mentioned that make me just plain happy to work & play on my Mac.
I think Windows has it's merits too, don't get me wrong, every now and then I work on a Win station... But boy, am I glad that my main machine is a Mac.
Apps like Coverflow, Delicious Library and NewsFire almost bring tears to my eyes Such elegance, clarity & usability... only on a Mac, only on a Mac.
Thanks & great work on the compile of this list, Phill.
I agree with most of the choices. Yes, Delicious Library is a great looking app. However, it's slow as molasses starting up. It takes about twenty bounces of its icon in my dock before I can see that beautiful UI appear. That's just wrong.
Cast Life is a very sweet application as well. It is located at http://www.meddiecatsoft.com
Great article, great picks, great comments. As a developer, this is extremely useful, and you can be sure it's making an impact on the next version of Anthracite web mining desktop toolkit! see: http://www.metafy.com to see the current ("before") version that's shipping today...I wish it were this beautiful already! -Joe
Maybe I missed it, but you forgot Camino. I think it looks much better than both Safari and Firefox.
I can see why you picked these... eight of them look exactly the same. Gotta love you Apple fans
Phill Ryu
And i can't see how that's better than tons of totally nonstandard, inconsistently designed, butt-ugly Windows apps, after taking a short visit/descent into Boot Camp. Oh, you PC users.
How can you leave out Adium, which needs tweaking to look good, but leave in Trasmit which you tweaked to look good?
I can't see how Quicksilver could look any better without being more intrusive...
I can't stand Transmit it's $30 for something that should be in the OS, and something that programs like Cyberduck blow away by being free!
Now tell me that Transmit is worth $30 more...
Finally, why no decent usenet reader for osx? Agent was great on windows, but Soup sucks and the rest seem to be in beta or broke...
Phill Ryu
Ian, have you tried Unison by Panic for a usenet reader? I'm not expert in news groups, but Unison picked up some Apple Design Awards, and seems pretty nice.
Now, let's come up with a list of the 10 *MOST USEFULL* applications...
As promised, the translation to spanish:
http://www.eduo.info/2006/07/06/10_apps_bonitas/
Como prometí, la traducción a Español: http://www.eduo.info/2006/07/06/10_apps_bonitas/
HoudahSpot ( http://www.houdah.com/houdahSpot )
stickybrain is just OK.
try PROCESS. http://www.jumsoft.com/process/
it just has something more than stickybrain and yojimbo. its like a outliner but as well as a project manager. its pretty amazing
My only contention is with the honourable mentions - you chose the wrong Icon Factory app for inclusion
xScope is beautiful *AND* functional: http://iconfactory.com/xs_home.asp
For an application to win an Apple Design Awards, it has to be submitted for consideration by its developer. Apple does not go out looking for apps.
There's no reason Acquisition couldn't win -- remember that VLC won a runner-up award back in 2003.
Some of my favourites apps are hard to find.
Smultron : smultron.sourceforge.net (text editing)
Seashore : seashore.sourceforge.net (image editing, but with less feature at the moment...)
Colloquy : colloquy.info (IRC chat client)
Cyberduck : http://cyberduck.ch/ (ftp client)
All "free and free", (open sourced and free of charge).
Check out Equinox.
http://www.microprojects.ca/MPjEquinoxPage.html
Here are some screen captures http://www.microprojects.ca/Screens.html
just a happy customer.
stan
nice compilation of softwares you've made and this needs a lot of efforts.The coverflow application is a real candy to the eyes .I suggest you should put in more links .
Great job
Hey: Simon has halted distribution of Quinn, the Tetris game in this Top Ten list . According to Simon's website, the legal counsel for the Tetris company issued a cease and desist letter. Fancy that. I was able to get a copy of Quinn earlier in the week and it really is the best Tetris game for the Mac. I hope they can settle the dispute and continue to distribute Quinn. It's a great piece of OS/X work.
Hey. Thanks for making a new mac user better acquainted.
Nice list, I particularly appreciated the new coverflow icon, as I thought the previous icon was the only shortcoming of the program. Two of my favorites have yet to be mentioned though, iClip and Devon whose interface is great, and use to academics is beyond measure.
Check it out: www.academhack.org
Would anyone be willing to send me the Quinn dmg? I apparently found out about it a little too late.
rahulsinha (at) mac (dot) com
Adium is one of the reasons I use OSX, its amazingly slick and usefull with attention to detail everywhere.
Don't forget Photostickies: the picture viewer that isn't. I know the complete lack of an interface, including window borders, may not seem to put an application into contention for "most beautiful application", but for a photo viewer, it's perfect. The ability to pile up a collection of photos or even directories of photos, and arrange them however you like, AND save those arrangements, makes this one of the most beautiful applications ever. From www.devon-technologies.com
what about clock and calculator? those are some sweeeeet apps.... nuff said!!!
When you do a "useful little Apps" blog, do consider these:
SnapNDrag - What Apple's Grab might have been
wClock - improvement on Apple's menubar clock date and time w/drop-down calendar.
Auctionsieve - fantastic for weeding through ebay listings. Not a great Mac UI, but developer seems to update regularly.
Bookit - multi-browser Bookmark Synchronizer
PageSpinner - editor with live preview
Little Snitch - keeps an eye on Apps outgoing traffic
Psst - turns down or off your startup tone
ElectricSheep - screen saver
IP Monitor - small unobtrusive desktop badge with IP
IPMenu - your internal and external IP address in your menubar. emails you when IP changes. think theft recovery! useful with Remote Desktop
WIMP - emails you when IP changes. think theft recovery! useful with Remote Desktop
PopChar - select special characters easily from its popup window; inserts them into your text.
Great stuff with one glaring omission: Shirt Pocket software's $20 SuperDuper. This is a beautiful, affordable, incredibly usable and useful app which makes backups and clones a no brainer. Can't live without it.
Expand your horizons There's lots of nice work out there that doesn't make it onto top ten lists because the app occupies a niche most people could care less about ... unless you happen to care. A good exemplar would be Sergey Kurkin's JEDict 1.4 (Tiger), at www.jedict.com. Context-sensitive Japanese lookup that knows who Jim Breen is? Whoa...!
Nice list, but I would definately have included adium. Obviously you need to fish around in the prefs for awhile, but it's the most customizable app I know, and it can quickly be the most gorgeous.
[...] One of the more wowing demos during the Keynote was that of Core Animation, Apple’s new technology that enables developers to harness it and produce some amazing 2D and 3D animations with ease. Steve’s iTunes album art example was just a tech demo, but it was implied that it would replace the current screensaver in Leopard, and man, was it amazing to watch. The most interesting part probably was when he began to navigate around these flying 3D album art images, selected one, and it flew up to display track listings and such. It’s not too hard to imagine a little bit more interactivity beyond that, and allow users to browse and play music through a similar interface. (Whether in a screensaver, the new Front Row, the next version of iTunes, or whatever.) If that happens, there’s an app that is going to have a hard time going shareware, and that’s CoverFlow, which had a deserved spot on my previous Top Ten Most Beautiful OS X Apps list. Unfortunately, CoverFlow looks like it could now be developed by a developer well-versed in Core Animation in about 2 days. (Correct me if I’m wrong.) Its developer will have to really pimp up CoverFlow to have it compete with whatever Leopard is going to offer as competition this coming Spring. [...]
Ever think of taking a class in print design? Eyes need contrast to read, think black on white, not gray on blue. Just a suggestion.
[...] In the past few months, there have been a hell fo a lot of top ten lists. No joke, thousands have been made. There’s been everything from the top ten most buitiful apps, to the top ten Web 2.0 losers (and winners), to the top ten Pink for October reboots. But thoughout all the top ten lists I’ve seen make the front page of Digg, I have yet to see one for dashboard widgets. So, I now introduce to you my list of the top ten dashboard widgets available for Dashboard. [...]
[...] Read it on Phill Ryu’s Blog [...]
Well I tried all of these out and the ONLY useful one was for me was AppZapper... And the ONLY reason it was usefull was so that I could delete all the others in this list.
Seriously! If this is the state of shareware on Mac then there hasn't been ANY ground gained since OS4. I am a Windoze guy that bought a MacPro 3gig for the new and INDUSTRY-WIDE, great price point of the hardware! I got one with 2 gig ram for $3k and that's about $1.5K cheaper than trying to build something similar for any other platform! Go Apple!
But seriously... The ShareWare scene on Mac is INCREDIBLY LAME!
Now what's that about having cake and eating it too?
[...] The Top Ten Most Beautiful OS X Apps Not sure if I agree with all the choices but Phill Ryu’s list is pretty much spot on [...]
Aquisition cannot download individual parts of collections and is therefore pretty much useless. The bittorent app of choice for MacOS X is Azureus.
[...] Jan over at MacRabbit has just released version 2 of his CSS editor. I can't emphasize enough what a beautiful app this is. CSSEdit 2 is truly a labor of love, and the final product simply reeks of Aqua goodness. (If I revised my top ten list of beautiful OS X apps, this one would be near the top for sure.) [...]
[...] PhillRyu.com - The Top Ten Most Beautiful OS X Apps Top ten lists are a dime a dozen, but I haven’t seen one floating around yet on the most beautiful OS X apps out there. And as someone who’s hitting MacUpdate daily as a small part of my job, always on the hunt for what’s cool and new, I thought I’d share (tags: mac downloads internet software tools) [...]
Another trackback. And some little promotion for another one of these Top 10-Lists on my blog !
[...] Phill Ryu ein 18 jähriger Mac-user hat auf seinem Blog eine interessante Top Ten Liste an OS X Apps aufgestellt. http://phillryu.com/2006/07/03/the-top-ten-most-beautiful-os-x-apps/ [...]
[...] PhillRyu.com - The Top Ten Most Beautiful OS X Apps [...]
OMG, this list is too funny. My vote goes for AppZapper
Nice List! Bookmarked!
For people doing long distance sports like running, biking or hiking there's also a MacOS X freeware to plan routes and journalize workouts. TrailRunner integrates well with the Nike + iPod Sports Kit and with GPS devices like the Garmin ForeRunner or Garmin Edge. http://www.trailrunnerx.com
[...] Having just set up my third Mac laptop this year - for reasons too dull to go into - I thought I’d make a list of all the useful shareware (and some worthwhile crippleware) which I always install… For my benefit, for your benefit, for the good of humanity… Because the internet so needs another list like this. [...]
[...] Top 10 Most Beautiful OS X Apps [...]
[...] PhillRyu.com - The Top Ten Most Beautiful OS X Apps (tags: gui osx mac software design) [...]
Needs moar Pixelmator.
Dave
July 03rd, 2006 at 2:28pmHOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY SNUB ADIUM!?!?
it is quite possibly the most versatile interface, and certainly as far as AIM apps, it is miles ahead. C'mon. Give Adium some love.