The move back to Mac after 5 years in the wilderness has led to a lot of application testing. Someone recently asked me to write up what applications I have settled on after fiddling around on Mac OS X for a few months, so here it is:

• Mac OS X utilities -- I really love Konfabulator and its blizzard of widgets that Liz Lawley turned me onto. Many integrate with iCal, iTunes, and iChat in very cool ways.
• iCal events displays todays iCal appointments.
• iChat Patroller provides a floating, semi transparent roster of my iChat contacts.
• iChat Friend tells iChat contacts what music I am listening too.
• mini What To Do? is a to do widget.
• World Time is a widget for tracking time in three time zones.
• Liz also turned me on to Quicksilver, but I am not actively using it.
• Instant Messaging -- After trying a long, long list of apps (Tiger iChat beta, Gush, Proteus, Adium, atc.) I have settled on a combination of applications for instant messaging. I run iChat to talk to the AIM and .Mac worlds, partly because of the integration with iSight, but primarily because of number of cool Konfabulator plugins and addons.
• I am also running Fire, a multiheaded client for OS X, which has a wide variety of critical features and flexible customization options. (For example, it supports Jabber SSL connection, which I needed for connecting to Ubergroups, recently). So if you IM me via MSN (stowe.boyd@gmail.com), Jabber (stoweboyd@2entwine.netstowe@jabber.org), or Yahoo (stoweboyd), I will be responding in Fire.
• RSS Reader -- I am bouncing around a lot re: RSS. I have a Bloglines account, and have been exploring some of the new features there, as well as trying out Josh Taylor's Chameleon service that builds on Bloglines. But I don't really like web-based browsing of RSS feeds. Same reason I am not using Firefox RSS implementation, although it is my browser of choice. I tried four or five RSS clients (NetNewsWire, and NewsFire, most notably) but I have more or less settled on Shrook. I like the features and ease of use.
• Music -- iTunes, of course. Plus I have a bunch of integrated plugins and addons. I use iScrobbler to capture my play, which posts to Last.fm. This connection has dramatically changed my musical life (as I wrote about here). I also have installed Amua, a Last.fm control for OS X, which runs in the menu bar, and allows me to play Last.fm radio stations without 'going to' Last.fm directly.
• Blogging -- Mostly I just use the web interfaces for MT and Typepad, which are the two blog systems I use regularly, but I also have Ecto, which I principally use in airplanes or when I have no Internet access.
• Docs -- I am using Microsoft Word, but am contemplating trying Apple Pages. My docs are fairly trivial, these days.
• Number Crunching -- Excel.
• Project Coordination -- I have explored Ubergroups recently (here), but have had a number of issues with encrypted RSS feeds and the lack of a single solution for chat and instant messaging. I love the concept of presence-based project coordination, but Rhombus has a way to go to iron out the kinks. So I am sticking with Basecamp (written up here). [added at 12:36pm]
• Mail -- I tried Mail for a while, but have switched to Gmail because of its cool features. I haven't tried to use Mail as a simple offline editor of Gmail, but I plan to do so next time I travel. I will set it up so that I upload email from it, and perhaps download what's in my inbox prior to departing.

I love the Mac, and I have had only a few snags. I should have bought a bigger harddrive, but I have a beautiful little Lacie external drive that gives me an additional 40G, and I moved my iTunes music there -- like 20G now, and climbing! I did install Virtual PC, and it worked like a charm, but I ran out of harddrive, so I uninstalled it. Now that I have the Lacie, I think I will reinstall on the Lacie, so I can fiddle with Windows apps.