Bremsstrahlung

In order to be able to point people to it, here is my list, in no particular order, of software which should be considered for installation on a new Mac:

• Flip4Mac - to play wmv files in QuickTime
• Perian - to play a bunch of obscure video and audio formats with QuickTime
• XiphQT - to play ogg vorbis and theora using QuickTime
• FunctionFlip - makes function keys more convenient, particularly for QuickSilver triggers
• Quicksilver - good for opening files, and lots of simple actions; is often a bit unstable and one has to know where to go to find the newest upgrades, though
• Glimmerblocker - ad blocking proxy
• Growl - provides notifications systemwide, can be at dfferent times fun, useful, or annoying
• Mouse Locator - useful for finding your cursor
• iStat Menus - handy monitoring tools; version 3 costs money, but v2 was free
• AppFresh - good for collecting updates en masse; watch out as some of its recommendations are dumb or broken (it will try to get you to update to alpha versions, and so on)
• Displaperture - bring back proper rounded screen corners
• TextWrangler - good midrange text editor
• PicoPlay - tiny alternative to iTunes; not terribly useful but pretty and you may like it
• GreaseKit - GreaseMonkey extension for Safari, maybe useful (requires SIMBL)
• Burn - disc burning software which doesn't really do anything more than the Finder and iTunes, but maybe handy
• SuspiciousPackage - for examining what an installer package will do
• wxMaxima - computer algebra software; not the best or terribly easy to use, but free
• Adium - super general purpose chat program; never used it myself but other people swear by it
• Chax - significantly improves iChat
• ClickToFlash - keeps flash animations under control

Some of these are kind of mutually exclusive (you probably don't care about Chax if you use Adium), some are more useful to some people than others (wxMaxima is good if you need to do a lot of math), and most of the internet related ones (Glimmerblocker, GreaseKit, ClickToFlash) are geared towards Safari, although there's really no good reason at this point to ever use Firefox.