So what do you use that you could recommend to a cloth eared cat?

I love Super Duper

Also

Spotify

Currently the only third-party free apps I’m using with any regularity are: Camino, GimmeSomeTune, Tweetie, NetNewsWire, AppCleaner and Skype.

As for paid-up apps: ChronoSync, Amadeus Pro, Pixelmator, Airfoil, BBEdit and Yojimbo, as well as Pages, iPhoto and Numbers.

I like Spotify too, but find that it only has about half of the music I want to listen to. Hopefully that will improve over time.

I can't think of any other free software I use. Most of my software is cracked.

Blimey, I have tons of it. All paid for when I have to too, gullible me .

Stuff that gets regular use :
Unison (Usenet client), RapidWeaver (WYSIWIG web page maker), Tweetie (twitter client), Pixelmator (Core Image photo editor), Handbrake (DVD ripper), MPEG streamclip (video recompressor), CandyBar (desktop/dock skin manager), Coda (dynamic web page IDE), Transmit (FTP client), Adium (IM client), Tables (spreadsheet), The Hit List (task manager), Name Mangler (file renamer), Springy (zip/sit/tar etc archiver), SuperDuper (disk copier), TextWrangler (text editor).

Occasionally :
Intaglio (vector graphics app), DaisyDisk (disk space management), Picturesque (web image niceifier - is that a word?), GarageSale (eBay auction manager), iPlayer Downloader (you can figure this out..), Disc Cover 2 (CD/DVD cover creator), WireTap Studio (record anything on your mac), Airport Flow (tells me how much traffic is going through my network), CoRD (windows remote desktop app), iTerm (terminal emulator), uTorrent (bitorrent client).

Blimey.

You said it.

Actually that lot probably only cost me about £100 quid all in. Which is about the price of a copy of Windows that'll do next to nothing .

Jon

Delves into App folder...

Adium for MSN, Audacity for sound stuff, iPlayer, Camino, Chicken of the VNC, Eclipse, Firefox, Gimp, Handbrake, iChm, JarInspector, MAMP, Monoligual, OnyX, penOffice, Opera, Remote Desktop Connection (From MS), Seashore, Skype, TexShop, BibDesk, LaTeXiT, TextMate (Excellent app and paid for), Vine Server, , irtualBox, VLC.

Phew...That's it all! Unless there are any command line apps I have forgotten about...

Free stuff:
Adium (not using IM so much).
Burn
CCC
Context Free
Cyberduck
Handbrake
Hidden Cleaner
OmniDiskSweeper
OmniObjectMeter
OmniWeb
OnyX
Oxidizer
Temperature Monitor (& Lite)
VLC

The price you pay for OS X on a new machine is much more than that, though.

That is as always a matter of opinion. For most to the time that I have used Macs the spec of the machines has very closely matched PC machines of similar price. In fact often the Apple products have worked out to be rather cheaper than similarly specified PCs.

This may be a subject for another thread.

iTunes LAME LAME MP3 encoding for iTunes
iVolume Perceived volume equaliser for iTunes
Unison Usenet client
SABnzbd+ Allows access to older posts in large newsgroups that Unison has problems reaching
MacPaAR deLuxe and Split & Concat for recombining RAR files downloaded from Usenet
Cyberduck FTP client
TextWrangler Text editor
VLC Video player
Font Explorer X Freeware version of Linotype's font management app, although since it doesn't allow auto activation of fonts with CS4 or XPress 8 I'll probably be replacing it with a commercial app that does.

I depends on what you want to do... Probably most of what I use wouldn't be of interest to you...

Eclipse, OpenOffice, TextPad, Notepad++, Firebird, Filezilla, Adium, Skype (not OSS, but free), 7-Zip, Opera... Probably more stuff, I'm at my girlfriends at the moment on the old Windows laptop, so not sure what exactly I have on the Mac...