More options. If all you need is a cross-platform, open-source word processor, AbiWord (free, www.abisource.com) also reads and writes Microsoft’s DOC format, as well as OpenOffice Writer’s SXW, Open Document ODT, HTML, TXT, RTF, and others. And don’t overlook TextEdit, which came with your Mac. It looks simple—and it is—but packs some decent formatting options and can save documents as RTF, TXT, HTML, DOC, or XML files. It opens files created in any of the other mentioned apps (Word, NeoOffice, OpenOffice, and AbiWord) with the formatting and styles intact.

Find More Apps Online—And Don’t Forget Online Apps

Buzzword’s gorgeous design makes writing a pleasure.

If you like Photoshop and Microsoft Office just fine, thank you, there’s still a world of freeware for your Mac. Even if you’re not trying to replace a big-budget app, you can still expand your Mac’s capabilities—and your skills—without spending any money. (That said, if you wind up relying on a free app in a major way, many developers appreciate a donation.) Find more at opensourcemac.org, macupdate.com, and versiontracker.com.

Adobe InDesign is the current standard in desktop publishing, but Scribus (free, www.scribus.net) is a solid alternative, although it can’t read or write InDesign or Quark formats (it does support XML, PDF, Open Document, RTF, and HTML). An Aqua app, it doesn’t need X11, but you do need to have Ghostscript 8.5.4 or later installed first to assist with translating formats, and the Scribus install itself is a little complicated (see www.scribus.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index for a walkthrough).

Inkscape (free, www.inkscape.org) is a drawing app that requires X11, but the single-window interface is easy to use, although its looks leave something to be desired. If you’d rather have a native Mac app and don’t mind a reduced feature set, Teal (free, www.versiontracker.com) is an entry-level drawing/editing app, but at version pp8 for “public preview 8,” it’s really more like a work in progress (it currently supports PNG and JPEG).

And if you tend to be always online, consider trying some online apps. Your work is accessible from any online computer, and many apps offer handy collaboration features. Just make sure to export a copy of your work to your local machine periodically, especially if you’re going to be offline for an extended time—since the drawback of online apps is that you have to be online to use them. We like Google Docs and Spreadsheets (docs.google.com), the ThinkFree office suite (www.thinkfree.com), Mint for personal finance (www.mint.com), and the elegant word processor Buzzword (www.buzzword.com).