So what was iWorks is actually all free now, so quite affordable!

Good point about using the app store. Much of what I suggest above is not available there, and that makes it a bit of a pain. There are one or two utilities that will try to keep track of this sort of thing for you. And, there are some apps (not any mentioned here that I know of) that are available either through the app store or downloading separately. Sometimes the non-ap store version has functionality not found in the ap store version because of sandbox rules (or some other difference) but those differences usually go away, so if you can, do the ap store version!

I don’t know much about Adboe CS2. I avoid Adobe simply because you never know when something you doing cheap or free suddenly costs you a gazillion dollars to keep doing because they move some functionality. But, if certain kinds of graphics activities were critical to me I’d of course have to consider it; lacking experience with recent Adobe products I figured I’d butt out,.

Steam… will that be the future of gaming? It is certainly picking up … steam!

Pages, Numbers and keynote are: iWorks in toto. All three mentioned and commented upon.

Speaking of the App Store, I’d recommend installing and managing as much software as possible through it, especially the free stuff. It can manage your updates for you and ensure you aren’t getting malware versions. Your purchases are also recorded for as long as you keep your account alive.

Adobe CS2 is free these days, so if you don’t have a flavor of CS and it can run on your computer, why not fetch it? I think technically they only want people to download and use it if they are an existing CS2+ customer, but it’s still open to all takers.

Oh, if you are a gamer, install Steam! The frequent sales are good deals and you usually get WIn/Mac and even Linux versions of the same game for the same cost. And like the App Store, your purchases are recorded and available forever.

LaTex and related software and r-cran and related software are also good suggestions. I did not include these more specialized areas because this post is more for the average user. Also I’ve not included a number of other useful command line software such as ImageMagick, which is a must have.

PDF related software is a whole other area of interest worth a post on its own.

If you have need for LaTeX, I can recommend TeXShop. A related program called LaTeXiT is useful (and far superior to Microsoft Equation Editor) if you need to include mathematics in a presentation. Export the resulting image in PNG format and import it to your presentation software.

If your workplace will pay for Adobe Creative Suite (which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat), then you can legally install a second copy on a different computer, as long as you don’t use both at the same time. However, it costs $$$ if you have to pay for it yourself. If you need the graphics or PDF creation capabilities for work, it’s well worth the money, but if you would be a casual user, you might want to look for cheaper options. For example, I find Illustrator handy for cleaning up the allegedly publication quality output I get either from my plotting software or from artistically clueless collaborators. Even if you do install Acrobat, I recommend keeping Preview as your PDF viewer; the latter is superior to Acrobat in all aspects except forms.

I use VLC for playing back videos, and Mendeley for managing papers and referencing.

I would suggest a good Latex installation as well.

And a comment on photo software: I’ve been experimenting with the 30-day trial of Lightroom 5. Works well on my Mac and I will probably purchase a license when the time comes. I’ve never used Aperture so I can’t compare the two.