I started using a Mac before everyone wanted their computers to match their iPods–sometime around the release of Jaguar. Outside of the fact that they are fucking gorgeous, I liked the stability and newness of the operating system. I also had been using Linux for like 2 years before that (yeah, I’m a fucking nerd), so the UNIX underpinnings made me orgasm. Needless to say, the decision to move to the good ole’ Macintosh was a good one, and I probably wouldn’t be where I am now in terms of academics without my good ole’ eMac. So as my last year of high school approaches, I have compiled the list of my ten best friends in the world so that you, young Jedi, may follow in my footsteps. In no particular order they go as follows:
1. OmniOutliner 3 Any good teacher will tell you that writing a paper without an outline–espicially an important one–is like going to do surgery without knives. OmniOutliner (and most products by The Omni Group in general) is amazing. It is extremely intuitive and creates beautiful prints. I use it for everything, from two paragraph homework assignments to 10-page thesis papers. The thing I like best about it is the ability to create several columns, which I use for things such as keeping track of URLs and other reference information so I don’t have to spend three days making a Works Cited page. Omni Group offers a free, limited version and a relatively cheap professionally version, which is worth the cash.
2. iChem From the guys that brought us the PulpFiction RSS reader, this is an awesome periodic table app. I don’t know too many people that use it, and it probably doesn’t hold a candle to all the really expensive science stuff you can buy for the Mac, but it’s awesome for a high school chem student. It has all kinds of nice things like color coding and pretty accurate information about elements. The thing I probably like best about it is the molecular weight calculator, which I find crazy useful (see below).
3. Genius I don’t think the developer has a website, because the only links I have found are on places such as MacUpdate. This is a kick ass application. It literally can make you memorize anything. It is extremely useful for vocabulary, espicially foreign language. I would not have passed French without this program, I swear to God. It uses a spaced repition that figures out what you know and what you don’t. It’s freeware, so you have nothing to lose. Just load this sucker up with like 50 or so words, and spend 15 minutes studying with it, and you’ll know everything by heart. This thing is crazy, you have to try it.
4. Eudora I no longer use Eudora, but it deserves it’s place in this list. When working on collaborative projects, email was crucial. And Eudora made it easy. Now the developers seem to favor Windows over us Mac users, so I have since moved to Apple Mail. Nevertheless, it was a great app in it’s day and it helped me organize my life. (But hey, that was before Smart Folders)
5. SubEthaEdit Yet another collaborative tool. If you have not heard of this, you are probably living in a cave, or Afghanistan. This thing fucking owns. You can work on papers together with your friends in real-time, with all sorts of syntax highlighting. I’ve listened to some podcasts from the developers, and they seem pretty cool. The app is free unless you are using it for commercial purposes, but I bought it anyway because I used it to so much. Outside of school, I use this thing all the time writing Ruby and Python scripts. This is, in my opinion, the best text editor for OS X.
6. Lotus Notes My school uses this and gives it to every student for free, so this isn’t really an app I picked. I think it is pretty cool that they make a Mac version. It does have some pretty nice features, but let’s just say that if they didn’t give it to me, I wouldn’t have it.
7. Mathematica Best math software ever. I was using Maple for a few months when I was in algebra, but now that I have moved to more advanced stuff, Mathematica rocks. I love the concept of notebooks, it is very organized and keeps my papers looking professional as shit. Nothing compares to this, don’t waste your money on Maple or other programs. Plus, Mathematica runs great on the Mac. 
8. iWork If you own a Mac, you’ve been seen this a bazillion times, so I am not going to give you another review of it. So I’ll keep it at this–if I had to count each time I received extra points on presentations and research papers because of my good buddies Keynote and Pages, it’d take me weeks. The kids with the sleekest projects, always get the best grades.
9. Transmit A great FTP client. I didn’t use this much until recently, a lot of colleges use FTP for serving files so I got this to help out. Beats the living hell out of using Finder for FTP. Panic is an awesome company, and Cabel Sasser is my god. What makes this thing great is that whenever you want to do something, you can do it. I have never found myself asking “Why can’t Transmit do this?”. It fucking rocks.
10. Quicksilver A great productivity tool, that is updated a lot. It has all kinds of plugins and is great for someone who is busy. Looks great, and is considered my most to be one of the Mac’s greatest trophies. If you haven’t tried this I recommend doing it now.
Well there you have it, youngling. I didn’t list MS Office or iCal/Address Book because every Mac student uses them sometime in their career, there’s no sense in wasting one-fifth of my precious list for the unspoken rules. Plus, the only thing Office has going it for it is Excel. Sigh. Maybe one day Apple will add a decent spreadsheet app to iWork. Until then, it’s either Excel or AppleWorks. And I’m not living in 1998.
