My favorite "must have" is Quicksilver.

http://quicksilver.bla...

Seriously... hard to live without. And it's free.

Next up is Textmate, if you do any kind of coding/scripting/programming.

NetNewsWire for RSS.

WMV Player, a Quicktime wrapper for WMV files.

Think, from Freeverse:

http://www.freeverse.c...

Transmit, for FTP:
http://www.panic.com/t...

Firefox (Browser, Obviously), Adium (Chat), Apple Mail (email), iTunes (audio/video), iCal (calendar), Apple KeyNote (presentation), Apple Pages (fun basic layout/word compatability), Apple Numbers (spreadsheet), Photoshop, TextMate (Coding/Text Editing), Transmit (ftp), MacTheRipper (dvd duplication/encoding), Apple Aperture, Adobe LightRoom, iPhoto, Audacity (free audio editor), Apple GarageBand (audio editing), Colloquy (irc), JUploader (uploading photos to Flickr), Preview (viewing all documents, so handy), Skitch (screenshot/image tool), Skype, Twitteriffic, Transmission (torrent), HandBrake (dvd/video encoding)

There are more I'm sure, just look around and ask us on here!

If you don't like Apple's Safari browser, you may want to try Camino before you download Firefox. It's not as extensible as Firefox, but it uses the same core, and it presents a much nicer browsing experience (IMO, obviously). Currently, Camino's my secondary browser while Safari is my primary.

Beyond that, you'll probably want AppZapper ("the uninstaller Apple forgot"), iLife, iWork (which can also function as a very decent replacement for Microsoft Office), Adobe products as needed, Adium (multi-protocol IMing), Interarchy (multi-protocol file transfer), Disco (not entirely necessary, but fun eye candy when burning media), jUploadr (for whenever Kristopher turns on the Zooomr API), Skitch (screenshot and image mark-up in private beta, let me know if you want an invitation), Flip4Mac's WMV player components (adds Windows Media support to QuickTime), Perian (adds support for almost everything else to QuickTime), Vienna (open source RSS reader), App Update and Widget Update (check for updates to your installed software with these widgets), and iStat menus (system statistics in your menubar).

I probably forgot something, so please feel free to browse through my Favored Freeware reviews for other ideas:

http://www.macmanx.com...

Also, stop by Open Source Mac for a small categorized list of some of the best free and open source software for Mac OS X:

http://www.opensourcem...

I forgot to mention that most (if not all) of the fore-mentioned applications can be found (complete with download links, screenshots, and user reviews) at http://macupdate.com

Thanks everyone for the great links to Apple applications. I know there are lots of good stuff that comes with the Mac but it's those little utilities and applications that make it a better experience that I'm looking for.

I have my toolbox for Windows and I'm looking forward to trying out the links provided. I'm sure I'll be talking about this on my podcast after I had some time to play.

VMware Fusion to run Windows when you get annoyed at OSX ;)

Nah, go for Boot Camp instead. Why run Windows under an emulator environment when you could dual-boot as a fully native Intel-powered PC?

Whoops, it looks I did forget a few essential apps.

Delivery Status (a Dashboard widget for monitoring shipment status with over 15 carriers) and Smultron (for plain-text editing).

now you need the zooomr mac suite (ZooomrBackup, ZPOD, and sss) friend me here to get 'em (look in my messages for the latest posted versions of each....