Bitmap graphics and photo editing
Pixelmator Pro - I tried to run GIMP on my Mac and it was a pretty terrible experience. After admitting defeat I started looking for an alternative to GIMP that wasn't Photoshop. I tried several applications and most were either too basic or weren't what I was looking for. Pixelmator Pro was the best of the worst. It has a few features I didn't know I wanted in addition to the usual boring image editing stuffs. Pixelmator Pro also natively supports the M1. I use this as a replacement for the GIMP.
Affinity Designer - Another of my favorite art type programs I use under Linux is Inkscape. On my Mac mini Inkscape runs for crap. The performance is really bad, mostly due to macOS using Rosetta 2 to run this x86-64 program. Affinity Designer has most of the normal features you'd expect from a vector drawing program. The interface is mostly sane. The only missing feature from Affinity is a bitmap trace function. I use this along with Vector Magic as a replacement for Inkscape.
Vector Magic - To make up for the lack of bitmap tracing in Affinity Designer I needed to find a a suitable replacement. Vector Magic does tracing and does it really well. It has an ugly interface and hideous layout but it works great. I use this in conjunction with Affinity Designer as a replacement for Inkscape.
Thee Internets
Downie 4 - This is one of my favorite apps on this little Mac Mini. It takes video links and downloads them. I'm not certain about every site it supports but Downie has downloaded everything I've thrown at it. The options pane says it supports about 874 sites in total.
Transmission BitTorrent - I don't know what I can say about Transmission that hasn't been said before. It just works. I use it while under Linux and on my Mac.
Cyberduck - A very nice FTP client which supports tons of connection methods. Cyberduck has a really clean interface and is as much of a joy as a FTP client can be. I use this as a replacement for Filezilla.
BatChmod - This is a dead simple GUI frontend to chmod. It is pretty convenient with all the permission settings available with a click. I use it to fix "broken" Mac application bundles also.
AppZapper - OK, it might be silly too need an application to uninstall applications you previously installed. Normally one is encouraged to drag the offending application to the trashcan and be done with it. Yes, this rids you of the application but it does not remove anything left behind by said application. AppZapper removes both and makes a cool sound effect when it's done.
Pixelmator Pro - I tried to run GIMP on my Mac and it was a pretty terrible experience. After admitting defeat I started looking for an alternative to GIMP that wasn't Photoshop. I tried several applications and most were either too basic or weren't what I was looking for. Pixelmator Pro was the best of the worst. It has a few features I didn't know I wanted in addition to the usual boring image editing stuffs. Pixelmator Pro also natively supports the M1. I use this as a replacement for the GIMP.
Vector graphics, editing and drawing
Affinity Designer - Another of my favorite art type programs I use under Linux is Inkscape. On my Mac mini Inkscape runs for crap. The performance is really bad, mostly due to macOS using Rosetta 2 to run this x86-64 program. Affinity Designer has most of the normal features you'd expect from a vector drawing program. The interface is mostly sane. The only missing feature from Affinity is a bitmap trace function. I use this along with Vector Magic as a replacement for Inkscape.
Vector Magic - To make up for the lack of bitmap tracing in Affinity Designer I needed to find a a suitable replacement. Vector Magic does tracing and does it really well. It has an ugly interface and hideous layout but it works great. I use this in conjunction with Affinity Designer as a replacement for Inkscape.
Thee Internets
Downie 4 - This is one of my favorite apps on this little Mac Mini. It takes video links and downloads them. I'm not certain about every site it supports but Downie has downloaded everything I've thrown at it. The options pane says it supports about 874 sites in total.
Transmission BitTorrent - I don't know what I can say about Transmission that hasn't been said before. It just works. I use it while under Linux and on my Mac.
Cyberduck - A very nice FTP client which supports tons of connection methods. Cyberduck has a really clean interface and is as much of a joy as a FTP client can be. I use this as a replacement for Filezilla.
Utilities & Misc thingies
BatChmod - This is a dead simple GUI frontend to chmod. It is pretty convenient with all the permission settings available with a click. I use it to fix "broken" Mac application bundles also.
AppZapper - OK, it might be silly too need an application to uninstall applications you previously installed. Normally one is encouraged to drag the offending application to the trashcan and be done with it. Yes, this rids you of the application but it does not remove anything left behind by said application. AppZapper removes both and makes a cool sound effect when it's done.
Keka - A simple archive decompression program that decompresses archives. And thats all. Keka supports tons of compression formats and has not failed me yet. Cute icon too.
