The Ten Most Beautiful OS X Apps

Phillip Ryu writes "As someone in the Macintosh shareware business, as part of my job, I make the daily crawl through MacUpdate to look for the latest and greatest in Mac software. One thing I've been noticing recently is a renaissance of extremely polished and beautiful Mac apps, so I thought I'd share some of these finds with you guys. Without further ado, presenting the top ten most beautiful OS X apps. Hopefully you'll find some new gems in there, even I found a few surprises while compiling this list. Enjoy!"

Nothing for you to see here.

[Kesch]

Hmm... well I guess there is some inherint minimalist beauty.

I think you ment minimalistic...?

[Duncan3]

Only #3 and #1 have any place on that list.

There are so many more visually appealing OS X apps out there. Most of his list is just file-list style apps. A downloader? Good grief.

The Mac-iest Mac app ever....

[Otter]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the "right"-est MacOS app ever is, hands-down, Fetch. Every time I ever wondered "Maybe Fetch could do this...?", it always could and the first way I thought to try it always worked.

Re:Acquisition

[oahazmatt]

It would be nice if it didn't constantly nag you to cough up $18 for a damn P2P/Bittorrent app. I'm sorry, but I don't care how pretty Acquisition is, I'm not going to cough up $18 when there are free apps that do the exact same damn thing. Maybe if it was less than $10 I might feel gracious enough to pay for the pretty interface.

Yes, I circumvented the nag screen by registering. I did the same with Radiolover. See, I enjoyed the program and wanted to support it. And those nag screens did get annoying. It was useful to me, and rather than disregard a useful product because I do not feel like paying for it, I actually paid for it and continued using it happily. It worked out for everyone that way.

One man's opinion...

[theheff]

... doesn't always echo another man's. This list proves that statement. AdiumX is such a good application in Mac OS X... I'm surprised Apple hasn't taken it up themselves, and frankly, the author of this list all of my respect by not even mentioning it. This is just an absurd list put together by an amatuer. So a downloader has a nice GUI... big deal? Not in my book.

Re:Acquisition

[Kadin2048]

I can't really tell if this is a troll or not.

Anyway, I think you're way off base. There's no "copying Windows freeware concepts and selling them as crippleware" going on here. None.

There are a host of free Mac Bittorrent clients out there -- this is what the GP was alluding to when he was saying that he wasn't going to pay $18 for Transmit. Azureus, for one, runs fine on OS X and doesn't cost anything.

The complaint about Transmit is that what you're essentially paying $18 for is not the functionality, but the interface.

So really, I'd argue the on the Mac platform, you generally have a choice: do you want to use the spartan-but-functional-and-free program (often a port from another platform, if not a direct recompile), or do you want to pay extra for the eye candy? Perhaps there's something about Mac users that makes them more likely to value appearance enough to pay for it, and keep such a cottage 'beautification' industry in business.

Re:Bah.

[Trillan]

I must disagree. Firefox is easily the ugliest application ever created. And I say this even after trying dozens of skins. Not a single one of them comes close to the eloquence of the built-in "Aqua" appearance on Mac OS X.

Re:I think you ment minimalistic...?

[nacturation]

Yes, a downloader. Even downloaders can have UIs. (Unless you use wget/curl all of the time.) All interface with the user needs to be friendly, usable and well designed. *All* of it. Even a downloader.

Of course, but this isn't "Ten OS X Apps with a User Interface", it's the "Ten Most Beautiful". And check out this screenshot:

http://www.mathgamehouse.com/images/phillryu/acqui sitionfull.jpg [mathgamehouse.com]

Does that strike you as particularly "most beautiful" of all OS X apps out there? To me, it looks busy and uninspired... and that's supposed to be the fourth most beautiful app? More beautiful than, say, Google Earth on OS X which didn't make the list even though it's freeware as well? Screenshot:

http://saya.s145.xrea.com/archives/images/GoogleEa rth.jpg [xrea.com]

The "extremely eye-pleasing" P2P app they mention doesn't look much different than Safari's download panel with a couple of colorful buttons thrown on top. Compare:

P2P app: http://www.mathgamehouse.com/images/phillryu/trans missionfull.jpg [mathgamehouse.com]
Safari: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/is/diary/mac/SafariDownloadMa n.jpg [ucl.ac.uk]

I'd say the list could perhaps qualify as top ten nice OS X application icons.
 

Quicksilver

[Infonaut]

I'm always finding new capabilites with Quicksilver [blacktree.com]. It transforms the way you work with your Mac, and it is beautiful in its minimalism and polish. This is a tool that does so much, and actually does so while not only staying out of your way, but also by removing obstacles to flow. Quicksilver gets my vote for #1.