CrossOver Mac includes a Wine software library of Windows programs that it can run. You'll find very popular applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, Quick or Windows Media Player. Be aware though that you'll still need the program installer to actually install any application.

CrossOver Mac will create bottles, which are essentially Windows environments, for the programs you install. These include their own C drive, subdirectories and registry.

Since CrossOver Mac is not truly a virtual environment, it can launch applications much faster. The downside to this is that you never really feel like you are using Windows. Another problem with CrossOver Mac is that software unsupported by Wine either won't work or will be unstable.

CrossOver Mac lets you install and run Windows applications on your Mac.

Download CrossOver Mac Standard 12.1 in Softonic

Onyx is completely free and will help you keep your Mac clean and in perfect running order. The first time you run OnyX it'll verify S.M.A.R.T status of your disk to prevent failure and analyze the structure of your volume. Every action is well explained and OnyX also includes a help guide for anything you're not sure.

OnyX allows you to set a number of parameters to check including Dock, Exposé, iTunes and Spotlight. It is most effective at fully cleaning your files including system, user and fonts. You'll have to make sure all other applications are closed to allow it to perform all the tasks it needs to do. The automation section in OnyX will let you maintain, rebuild and clean your drive.

Obviously, some of these operations will take some time to perform. However you should see some notable improvements in the way your Mac runs afterwards. The only downside to Onyx is the overall interface which is very basic but it's a minor drawback to an excellent app.

OnyX is a very handy application to have around. It'll ensure your Mac is always clean and tidy. And best of all, it's completely free.

Download OnyX 2.6.8 in Softonic

iStat Nano means that obtaining such details has never been easier. Simply bringing up your dashboard will display the iStat widget with a detailed readout of the major components. It's such an elegant and handy widget that it's hard to believe that it's free. It displays absolutely everything, including CPU speed, internal temperature, remaining memory, connected drives, IP address, network traffic, battery status and more.

The widget is divided into various different categories such as temperatures, fans, processes etc. Clicking on one flips iStat Nano to reveal the full details. Everything is performed in real time and there's no delay in between selecting a category and seeing the results.

In the preferences, you can customize the units in which you want readings to be displayed, whether to enable animations and even change the skin color. Possibly the only drawback I found was that the process list is limited to the top five processes and there's no way to kill them either but this is not really the widget's job anyway.

For diagnosis or just for fun, iStat Nano is an excellent widget for giving you a comprehensive readout of your Mac's vital signs.

Download iStat Nano 2.2 in Softonic

Geekbench is a processor and memory benchmark that's been especially designed for 64-bit operating systems and multicore processors. The application provides a comprehensive set of benchmarks to measure processor and memory performance. Geekbench is refreshingly easy to use for a benchmarking application and runs testing very quickly.

What's great about it is that you don't have to configure it. Within just a few clicks, you can not only benchmark your system, but share the results with other users via the Geekbench Result Browser although you have to register for a free account to do this. This is a very handy way to see if users on similar machines are getting more out of your system than you are.

Geekbench provides a user friendly way to test your system for either diagnosing problems or simply comparing it with other users.

Download Geekbench 2.4.2 in Softonic

Download iDefrag 2.2.4 in Softonic

Onyx is completely free and will help you keep your Mac clean and in perfect running order. The first time you run OnyX it'll verify S.M.A.R.T status of your disk to prevent failure and analyze the structure of your volume. Every action is well explained and OnyX also includes a help guide for anything you're not sure.

OnyX allows you to set a number of parameters to check including Dock, Exposé, iTunes and Spotlight. It is most effective at fully cleaning your files including system, user and fonts. You'll have to make sure all other applications are closed to allow it to perform all the tasks it needs to do. The automation section in OnyX will let you maintain, rebuild and clean your drive.

Obviously, some of these operations will take some time to perform. However you should see some notable improvements in the way your Mac runs afterwards. The only downside to Onyx is the overall interface which is very basic but it's a minor drawback to an excellent app.

OnyX is a very handy application to have around. It'll ensure your Mac is always clean and tidy. And best of all, it's completely free.

Download OnyX for Leopard 2.0.6 in Softonic

On Windows I used the excellent TreeSize, and WhatSize is probably the closest equivalent you'll find on the Mac. WhatSize is a simple tool that allows you to quickly measure the size in bytes of a given folder and all subfolders and files within it. The files and folders are automatically sorted by size, with the biggest sizes first. This makes it very easy to see which folders are occupying valuable space on your hard drive and if they're useless, to simply delete them.

WhatSize also includes hidden files, cache files and directories and you can also choose to filter certain file types (such as multimedia) or only find those files over a certain size.

Once the measuring of a folder has ended the user can also view the information by filtering for particular file sizes or types. What can be a drawback with these programs - as with TreeSize on Windows - is the time it takes to calculate file sizes and go through your system but WhatSize works remarkably fast. Unfortunately, the trial version will only measure up to 20GB of data but you can buy a modestly priced license to remove this restriction plus it gives you access to a few other preference and admin features.

If you're tired of Finder's lack of support for showing how big folders and sub-folders are in an easy to read way, WhatSize could help you finally get rid of those useless disk hogging files.

Download WhatSize 4.9.10 in Softonic

However, iTool bucks the trend as an easy-to-use, effective, and free maintenance utility that aims to keep your Mac in tip-top condition. iTool is ideal for the first-time Mac user who wants to perform Windows-style maintenance tasks on OS X but doesn't know where to start. You can even automate tasks so you don't need to be around to use it.

In terms of ease of use, iTool is probably the simplest maintenance tool on Mac I've ever used. Everything that you want to administer or maintain is listed down the left-hand side. So, if you want to clean your browsers, just select 'Internet'. Or, if you want to restore Spotlight's indexing, just click on 'Restore' and then click and unclick the options you need.

You can also automate tasks to work while you're away such as a monthly script repair or to periodically clean your Internet cache. There's also a checkbox to shut down your Mac when all these tasks are done and the ability to force clean the trash (and show what's in it at the same time) which I always like to see in these kinds of apps.

iTool will not satisfy power users but for newbies on the Mac, or those wanting to perform the most basic of maintenance tasks, iTool is all you need.

Download iTool 2.0.1 in Softonic

Lion Disk Maker creates a Lion installation file from the Lion DMG file that you download from the Mac App Store. All you need is a USB stick or external drive of at least 4GB and Lion Disk Maker creates a bootable version of Lion.

How does it work?

Lion Disk Maker uses Spotlight to automatically scan your Mac for the Lion-installation file. Unlike Apple's official Lion Recovery Disk Assistant all you need is the USB stick to restore Lion - no Internet connection is needed to re-download Lion unlike with Lion Recovery Disk Assistant.

What if I don't have my Lion DMG file anymore?

No problem. You can simply re-download it from the App Store. Simply go into purchase history and click on OS X Lion while holding the option key to start a new download of Lion. Since you've already paid for it once, you won't be charged for it again.

Lion Disk Maker is an excellent tool that creates a reliable bootable recovery disk for Lion. In contrast to Apple's solution, it's much better because it creates a hard copy of Lion which you can boot your Mac from.

Download Lion Disk Maker 2.0.2 in Softonic

GeekTool is a Preference Pane (so it installs into your System Preferences rather than as an external program) app that lets you display many different types of system information and processes on your desktop. You can instruct GeekTool to follow a specific file that you want to track, launch custom script commands and monitor the data load on your machine such as bandwith usage, CPU loads and memory availability.

You can instruct GeekTool to 'stay on top', so that it will always remain visible whatever you're doing. Be warned though that this is not a tool for beginners. GeekTool is pretty hard to work out for the first-time user and you're only hope is to use the GeekTool Wiki page to get up and running. There are no sample scripts or user scripts that you can test for yourself although there is a user forum if you get really stuck.

GeekTool will definitely appeal to all those advanced Mac users that want maximum control over how their Mac performs.

Download GeekTool 3.0 in Softonic

gfxCardStatus places a small icon in the menu bar and displays a small n for nVidia or i for the currently active Intel graphics chip set. Just use your mouse to switch manually between the two when needed. If you disable the nVidia card permanently, you will should notice an increase in your battery life.

It's a shame gfxCardStatus doesn't detect automatically when to activate your nVidia graphics card but nevertheless, it gives you the possibility to extend your battery life manually.

Download gfxCardStatus 1.8.1 in Softonic

SMARTReporter works by periodically verifying the S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) status of your hard disk. Most modern hard drives are equipped to support S.M.A.R.T. and acts as an early warning system for pending hard disk drive problems. SMARTReporter notifies you of impending failures by sending e-mails, displaying a warning dialog or executing an application.

SMARTReporter sits in your Menu Bar and displays the current state of your hard drive. SMARTReporter supports ATA, SATA or eSATA hard disk drives although FireWire hard drives aren't supported. However, it should be noted that SMARTReporter is not a fail safe measure against any kind of failure. It can be very sketchy in picking up errors and there's no guarantee that it will detect anything before the worst happens.

SMARTReporter is certainly better than doing nothing in preventing hard drive failure although it's far from perfect.

Download SMARTReporter 3.0.5 in Softonic

Cocktail can do all your essential maintenance tasks from clearing your cache to controlling sleep times. There's nothing new in Cocktail that you can't do in Terminal but Cocktail makes it so much easier through its GUI. Many of it's functions and tweaks will remain a mystery to basic users though - options such as whether to switch on or switch of journaling and the network options are aimed more at power users.

Nevertheless, for those that want more control over how their dock works, their startup sequence and other OS interface related issues, Cocktail gives you immense control. The Interface options are perhaps the most useful allowing you to select a range of different features such as Finder, Safari and Mail and tweak them to your own liking.

Some users will complain that what Cocktail does for a modest fee, other apps do for nothing but as an all round system maintenance tool, especially for power users, it's one of the best out there.

Download Cocktail 6.3.1 in Softonic

Onyx is completely free and will help you keep your Mac clean and in perfect running order. The first time you run OnyX it'll verify S.M.A.R.T status of your disk to prevent failure and analyze the structure of your volume. Every action is well explained and OnyX also includes a help guide for anything you're not sure.

OnyX allows you to set a number of parameters to check including Dock, Exposé, iTunes and Spotlight. It is most effective at fully cleaning your files including system, user and fonts. You'll have to make sure all other applications are closed to allow it to perform all the tasks it needs to do. The automation section in OnyX will let you maintain, rebuild and clean your drive.

Obviously, some of these operations will take some time to perform. However you should see some notable improvements in the way your Mac runs afterwards. The only downside to Onyx is the overall interface which is very basic but it's a minor drawback to an excellent app.

OnyX is a very handy application to have around. It'll ensure your Mac is always clean and tidy. And best of all, it's completely free.

Download OnyX Tiger 1.8.6 in Softonic

All you need for Lion Recovery Disk Assistant to work is a USB stick or external hard drive with at least 1GB of space on it to create your own recovery hd.

The tool will allow OSX lion recovery for users that suffer total hard drive failure. Currently, Lion creates a Lion boot recovery on your hard drive when you install it but that's not much use to you if your entire hd fails. Lion Recovery Disk Assistant will allow you to reinstall Lion, repair the hard drive using Disk Utility, restore Lion from Time Machine or just browse the web with Safari. Note however that it does not create a Lion recovery USB stick/DVD - it simply creates a partition onto which you can redownload Lion from the Apple store and restore Lion to your system.

To use it, simply download Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, connect an external drive or USB stick to your Mac, launch the assistant, select the drive where you would like to install, and follow the on-screen instructions. Voila, you've got a hard copy of Lion to restore it from in case of hard drive failure.

Note that when the process is complete, the new partition will not be visible in Finder or Disk Utility. To access Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, reboot the computer while holding the Option key and then select Recovery HD from the Startup Manager.

If you were worried that you had no recovery hd for Lion or a hard copy of a recovery partition for Lion and want to know how to create a Lion boot recovery disk, then Lion Recovery Disk Assistant is all you need.

Download Lion Recovery Disk Assistant 1.0 in Softonic

Wireshark is a professional protocol analyzer aimed to help users in troubleshooting, analysis, software and protocol development, and education. All of the standard features you expect to find in a protocol analyzer are here but Wireshark also has a few added extras because it's open source and has been enhanced by it's community of users. The contribution of global networking consultants across the globe are what make Wireshark a particularly powerful analyzer.

If you don't have any network analyzing knowledge, Wireshark might make you feel a bit lost. The program does have an extensive manual and forum but unless you are familiar with protocol analysis, they won't mean much to you. For those that are in the know, Wireshark features deep inspection of hundreds of protocols, live capture and offline analysis and even VoIP analysis. Any captured network data can be browsed via an easy to use GUI or alternatively via the TTY-mode TShark utility. In addition, live data can be read from Ethernet, IEEE 802.11, PPP/HDLC, ATM, Bluetooth, USB, Token Ring, Frame Relay, FDDI, and others (depending on your platform).

Wireshark is a highly specialized tool that the average user won't find much use for but for any network administrators out there, it's an essential addition to your toolkit.

Download Wireshark 1.6.8 in Softonic

You control all the tests from one simple, two tabbed interface divided in tests and utilities. Your Mac's performances are shown as load average and Mach factor at the top of the interface. What I liked about this application is that you can perform all the major troubleshooting tasks quickly: set to CPU maximum, launch the graphics visualizer, image rotate and test available memory. HighLoad can also allow you to quickly disable specific features like sleep and screen saver, to get a better testing environment. The time spent testing will be indicated at the top of the interface.

Apart from these operations you can launch the Terminal and create a disk image and even perform more common tasks like purging cache, verifying preference files and rebuilding the index in Spotlight and Mail.

In all, HighLoad is very handy to test the general and specific performances of your Mac and see if something is going wrong. The simple interface makes it accessible to anyone. Recommended.

Download HighLoad 1.9.8 in Softonic

One particularly useful bonus though is the ability to Force Quit Finder and applications using Main Menu - when all else fails, it's incredibly effective at stopping processes instantly.