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Jason Alexander has a great post about must-have mac apps and some of the settings that he uses. I am in a similar boat as Jason, being primarily a .NET developer and former Windows user who has switched to the Mac I get tons of questions about what apps to use and how I like it. I thought I would go ahead and lay out some of my must-have apps and tips here:

My must-have apps for the Mac:

1) FireFox and Camino: I agree with Jason here, I couldn't get into Safari. I like Camino, but the various plugins I have become accustomed to keep bringing me back to Firefox. (Firebug, Del.icio.us, Google Toolbar, Alexa, etc)

2) Adium - Again, I am with Jason here. This is the best messenger app I have ever used on any platform.

3) Ecto - It's what I am writing this post in. Great blog posting tool that wasn't too expensive and does a great job.

4) VMWare Fusion - I have never used Parallels so I can't compare the two, but I loved VMWare on Windows and I love it on the Mac.

5) Quicksillver - It really is as cool as they say. Great launcher app with all kinds of neat features.

6) TextMate - Again, it's as cool as they say. Not only am I using it for Rails development I am using it for all of my text editor needs.

7) Cyberduck - Good little FTP program. I am thinking about buying Transmit, but I have bought enough Mac software this year already.

8) svnX - This is what I have been using for SVN access, there is a finder plugin as well like TortoiseSVN but I couldn't get it working with the latest version of Subversion.

9) Twitterific - The twitter client that all the Windows people lust over, been a little weird since Leopard but hoping a new release is coming out to fix the issues.

10) delibar - Toolbar app that gives me easy access to all my del.icio.us links.

11) Fan Control 1.2 - I like this one a little better than smcFanControl since it lets you set temperature thresholds. These things run hot.

12) Transmission - Free BitTorrent utility that I only use to download legit stuff.

13) Writeroom - One of those cool word processor apps that blacks out the rest of the screen and makes it feel like a typewriter, it's great if you want to focus on something.

14) CocoaMySql - A nice little MySQL client.

15) Flip4Mac - Play VMW and WMA in Quicktime

16) Growl - Toast for Macs

I have been trying out CSSEdit which is a nice looking CSS editor as well as iWork.

As for configuration tips I have a couple small ones, but make sure you read Jason's.... I do just about all the same things.

1) I setup my Active Corners a little bit differently than Jason. I put All Windows in the top left, Dashboard in the top right, Desktop in the bottom left, and Space in the bottom right.

2) Under System & Preferences -> Keyboard check the "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys". Using Visual Studio and hitting Fn + F5, Fn + F11, Fn + 11 is a pain.

A couple of accessories I have picked up too:

1) I picked up a Lapinator. Did I mention these run hot?

2) Option GT Max 3.6 Express - Don't believe the guy at the store who tells you it only works for Windows.

3) Brethaven Edge II - Great small case, not much room for anything else. But the extra power adapter pouch helps.

Well, that's about it.

-James