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The word free gets thrown around quite a lot lately. Cell phone carriers offer "free" phones that are tethered to a two-year contract. Those free rooms in Vegas come at the price of three hours of your life spent listening to a time share pitch. Even Steve Jobs said the new camera in the iPod nano was free. If you're still paying money, it's probably not free.
To help get free back to its rightful place of, well free, we've compiled a list of apps and services that are indeed free and won't require you to sit through a pitch about how great it is to be a foster parent to a monkey. We do want to note that some of these items are services or system preferences. But hey, they're free, so stop complaining and enjoy.
We would also like to note that some of these apps are donationware. If you find that an app you find here is the greatest thing ever and you plan on using it all the time, consider donating some money to the developer. They'll appreciate being able to buy food for the monkeys they're currently playing parent too.
Adium - Talk to anyone
The go to chat app on Macs for years. Connects to AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, Facebook, ICQ, Bon Jour, Google Talk and more. If there's a chat, chances are, Adium can handle it.
Alarm Clock - WAKE UP!
Versatile alarm clock app can wake you up to your iTunes music, and even wake up your computer first if it happens to be sleeping. Supports the Apple Remote for snoozing.
Anxiety - So much to do
Lightweight to-do list that syncs with iCal and Mail.
AppCleaner - Clean your virtual room
A small application that helps truly delete applications when you move them to the trash.
Audacity - Sound off
Cross-platform audio editor.
Bean - You want how many words by when?
Word processor with live word count, autosaving, and other features.
Boxee - Reply to emails or watch It's Always Sunny in Philedephia?
Turn your Mac into a multimedia powerhouse with this free open source app. Hulu may have put the kibosh on Boxee support, but the media player still rules the TV.
Burn - Burn it all!
Burn CDs and DVDs of just about anything: music, data, DMGs, etc.
Carbon Copy Cloner - Making copies.
Create a clone of your drive ready for installation on another drive. A great backup tool for those that value their data.
CyberDuck - Ducktales, wooohooo.
Robust FTP client with plenty of cool features. Plus, how can you deny the cute factor of a duck controlling your data transfers. Utility
doubleTwist - Sync your Palm Pre.
Sync your random non-iPod device to your iTunes library. Oh, did we mention you can buy music from Amazon.com from within the app?
Dropbox - Files to go.
Your files, anywhere you need them. Sync, backup and store your data with Dropbox.
Evernote - All your notes in one place, all over the place.
Sync your notes, webpages, snippets of text and photos with Evernote on to your Mac and iPhone. Get a free account with 2GB of storage.
Firefox - Maybe you've heard of this already
The mozilla-based browser boasts impressive download numbers. There's a reason for that.
Flip4mac - Play those scary Windows Media.
Play windows media files in quicktime.
Fluid - Make an app for that
Creating native Mac apps from your favorite Websites and Web apps.
FreeDMG - Image is everything
Easily handles disk-imaging tasks: Create, resize, encrypt, burn disk images, and more.
Gawker - Make a video of a flower blooming or your roomate lounging around.
Uses your iSight to make a time-lapse video you can watch in QuickTime.
Gimp - I'm making purdy pictures.
Powerful open-source image editor. The Photoshop of the open-source world.
Google Earth - I can see my house from here
Fly around a 3D model of the whole world, get directions, and view satellite imagery, building models, and more.
Google Notifier - Google wants to tell you something
Sits in your menubar to alert you to new Gmail messages, and remind you of events in your Google Calendar.
Google Quick Search Box - Search it all
Search tool and application launcher searches your Mac as well as the Internet as you type in a query.
Growl - Yakitty yak, apps talk back
Allow your applications to notify you when something exciting happens.
gTuner - Are you ready to rock? OK, I just have to tune this thing.
Tune your guitar with your Mac.
HandBrake - Tag your media
Video transcoder lets you rip DVDs and convert lots of video formats.
Hulu Desktop - Oh hai, The Office is on.
Watch your favorite shows on Hulu in an app.
i Love Stars - Fast acting critic
Rate your iTunes music from the menu bar.
Inkscape - What's your vector Victor?
Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editor that bring Illustrator-like capabilities to your Mac for free.
iPhone Explorer - I can see its insides
Using the supplied USB cable, darg and drop files from your Mac to your iPhone and iPod touch.
iProcrastinate - Download today, or maybe tomorrow
Task management app that lets you break items down into smaller step.
iTweax - Tinker away
Optimize and tweak the OS X Finder and other OS X bundled apps like Safari and Mail.
KeePassX - What's the password?
Password-generating utility and secure-information database.
LEGO Digital Designer - Be like Zack, the LEGO maniac
Build your LEGO dream house, or car, or starship with rocket cannons and jacuzzi.
Minitube 0.7 - YouTube without the browser
Native YouTube client. Watchin your favorite videos with taking up a browser tab.
Mint.com - I spent how much on that?
A handy budgeting tool, beware it may make you think about what you are buying though. Not an actual app, but it's going to help you save money.
Miro - All your favorite video memes in one place
Video player supports RSS feeds, downloads Bit Torrents, searches and downloads from YouTube, and supports lots of file types. video
Monolingual - Adios Español
removes unnecessary language files from your computer.
Name Mangler - From this point forward, you shall all be named George
batch file renamer with the ability to create droplets for saved configurations.
NeoOffice - Who is this Ms Office you speak of?
Open-source office productivity suite featuring a word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation, and drawing. Based on OpenOffice.org but runs natively on the Mac, looking and feeling more Mac-like.
NetNewsWire - It's robo-Katie Couric.
RSS reader can archive articles to your hard drive, plus sync with Google Reader and integrate with Address Book, iCal, iPhoto, Growl, Twitterific, and more.
OnyX - Stand back, I'll fix it
OS X maintenance tool. Verify your start up disk, run system maintenance, configure system parameters.
OpenOffice - Open up and say ahh
Replace Microsoft Office and Apple's iWork with the free OpenOffice suite.
Perian - Play anything, well almost anything
Give QuickTime the native support needed to play almost any video format.
Picasa - One more cog in the Google take over of your machine
Google photo manager that integrates with your Picasa account
Poladroid - Cheaper than the film that's making a comeback
Create polaroid like pictures from your digital photos.
Quicksilver - Shazam! Thats what we yell when we use Quicksilver.
The ultimate Finder extender continues to rule the lives of those addicted to its speedy ways.
Quinn - Come on column piece, come on.
ResizeIt - Resize all the avatars you need quickly
Batch change the size and format of multiple images without spending a bunch of cash.
Seashore - Selling images by the sea shore
Image editor based on GIMP technology but in a native Cocoa framework for the Mac.
SelfControl - Must. Stay. Away. From. Facebook.
Block yourself from time-wasting sites for a predetermined amount of time.
Shadow - We were going to write, "The Shadow knows," but that seems lame
Clipboard manager that uses Bonjour to let you copy and paste from one Mac to another.
Simplify Media - Keep on rocking in the free world
Stream your music anywhere for free.
Sketchup - 3D for you and me
Create, modify and share 3D models.
Skype - Talking heads
Audio and video chat with other Skype users, or make low-cost phone calls overseas.
Solitaire Greatest Hits - The offical game of your mom's computer
A collection of solitaire games ready for those lonely nights.
Spark - Take the shortcut
Powerful shortcut manager for those that would rather stay away from that pesky mouse.
SuperDuper - It's super
It's billed as "heroic system recovery for mere mortals". A quick, easy--and yes free way to make bootable backups of your hard drive. Hooray!
TextWrangler - Yehaw!
Text editor that writers, html monkeys and Coders should have in their arsenal. Far more powerful than the OS X bundled TextEdit app.
Thunderbird - Thunder, thunder, thunderbird HO!
Tilt2Joystick - Your MacBook as a Wii Remote
Use the motion sensor on your MacBook as a joystick for your favorite games.
Time Machine Editor - H.G. Wells would be proud
Allows you to change the scheduling of time machine from every hour, to a more pleasing schedule.
Tooble - YouTube to go
Download YouTube videos and save them to play on your computer, iPod, or iPhone.
TweetDeck - The columns, the beautiful columns
Versatile Twitter client supports multiple accounts, updating Facebook, user groups, syncing columns between the Mac and iPhone versions, and more.
Tweetie - Multi-account Twitter magic
The incredible iPhone Twitter app on your Mac. Handle multiple accounts and shoot video directly from your iSight camera. Get it for free with ads popping up in your stream.
Virtual Box - Guest OSs playing nice
Open-source virtualizer. Run Windows, Linux, etc on your Mac. For FREE.
VLC Player - Play it all
an open source video and audio player. Capable of playing MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, MPEG-1, mp3, ogg, aac.
Vuze - Stream your legally-aquired media
Bit-torrent client that doubles as a media server to your favorite video game consoles.
xBench - Just how fast is your Mac?
Benchmark your machine and test it against the giant database.
Xmarks - Bookmarks anywhere you need to be.
Sync and search your Bookmarks.
Did we miss your favorite free app? Drop it in the comments.
Thanks to all the readers that helped us with this list.
