iSwitchd

When I bought my Mac last year, I didn’t know anything about software. I had to find by myself applications to replace the ones I used on PC. Let me share with you my top 3, plus an extra one.

1. Instant Messaging - Adium
   One of the first applications a switcher needs is an instant messenger. The best available on the Mac is Adium. It works with AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, ICQ to name a few. Facebook chat will be added in the next version. It is extremely customizable: appearance, Dock icon, sounds. Unfortunately, Adium does not support audio/video chat, but the developers are working on it.
2. Video Player - VLC
   Playing media files can be a real pain. Audio and video are encoded in so many different formats that if you don’t have the right codec to play it, you can’t play it. But one application is able to read almost everything: VLC. I personally use iTunes for music, but VLC is my player of choice when it comes to video. It’s fast and I never had issues playing videos with it so far.
3. RSS Reader - NetNewsWire
   If you don’t know what RSS is, I highly recommend you watch this well explained video from Common Craft. It completely changed the way I browse the Internet. NetNewsWire is a RSS desktop client. I like the possibility to flag news to read them later. There’s nothing much more to say about it except it works great.

Extra one - Growl
It’s kinda hard to explain what Growl is. Basically, it shows a notification on the screen when some events are fired in numerous supported applications. For example, when one of your Adium’s contacts connects, a notification is displayed on the screen. Like Adium, it is extremely customizable. Growl is a MUST HAVE.