Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

Chapter 9. The Free Programs

Right out of the box, Mac OS X comes with a healthy assortment of nearly 50 freebies: programs for sending email, writing documents, doing math, even playing games. Some are dressed-up versions of Mac programs that have been around for years. Others, though, are new programs that not only show off some of Mac OS X’s most dramatic new technologies, but let you get real work done without having to invest in additional software.

Note

Several of the freebie programs described here are also the subject of other books in this series, including iMovie 3 & iDVD: The Missing Manual, iMovie 3: The Missing Manual, and iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual. By popular request (and, in some cases, indignant request), this chapter now includes concise crash courses in these programs. But the full scoop on each of these powerful programs-including tips, tricks, customization advice, troubleshooting chapters, and so on-requires a whole other book.

Your Free Mac OS X Programs

You’ve got a broad assortment of programs in the Applications folder in the main hard drive window. The Applications→Utilities folder holds another couple dozen mini-programs that handle such workaday jobs as setting up printers and network connections, fixing problems on your hard disk, and monitoring the behind-the-scenes processing performed by your Mac whenever you launch and run programs.

All of these programs have been either written expressly for Mac OS X (Cocoa applications) or adapted for it ( Carbonized ...