The Best Mac Utility Software

This page is a collection of the best Mac Utility Software currently available for the Mac. We review a lot of software for the Mac, some we like and some we don't! If we like it then it appears on these pages.

This page is based on the applications in the Mac App Store Utilities category, and includes software that makes our daily lives easier, such as file converters, utilities for scanning or for handling our photos, and of course social networking utilities for Twitter or Facebook.

Against each App listed below there is a black App Store button, which when clicked, takes you to the same application in the Mac App Store. You can then read further reviews and purchase the App, if you are still happy, by simply clicking the button indicating the price!

We are happy to confirm that we make a small affiliate commission from each sale through our website. Our policy is to never add an App to this page that we haven't tried ourselves. So commissions are used to invest in more Apps.

Mac Utility Software - The Top Ten Paid Mac Apps

The list below is the top ten paid for Mac Apps in the Mac Utility software category of the Mac App Store at the moment. The list is updated each time this page is loaded, and is generated from an RSS feed supplied by Apple.

OS X Lion Server - Apple

Historically, the Mac OS X Desktop client and the Mac OS X Server have been completely seperate products sold as retail boxes by Apple. But the release of OS X Lion has changed the way that these software products are distributed.

The reason that you are seeing OS X Lion Server listed here in the Mac App Store Utilities category, is that it is now an App. It is installed on top of an existing OS X Lion installation.

Once you have installed OS X Lion Server you once again have a Server operating system. Another advantage is that because you can run upto two virtual instances of OS X Lion, both can also be upgraded to run OS X Lion Server.

As you would expect from any server operating system you get access to a number of standard services as listed below;

• DNS Server (BIND 9)
• DHCP Server
• VPN Server
• NAT Server
• Apache Web Server
• WebDAV
• Perl and PHP
• SMTP (Postfix)
• POP and IMAP (Dovecot)
• Webmail (Roundcube)

The screenshot below shows OS X Lion Server running on an installation of OS X Lion. You can see two of the server configuration windows open.

OS X Lion Server

Read our overview of OS X Lion Server to get more information on the services available.

PopClip - Pilotmoon Software

Those of you that followed the announcement of OS X Lion, by Apple, during 2011 will know that the keynote event was called 'Back to Mac'. It basically meant that features found in iOS were being fed back into Mac OS X.

One of my favourite features of iOS is the little bar that pops up when you touch some text on your iPhone or iPad. It provides you with the ability to 'Copy' or 'Paste' it between different Apps. It really does work well! But Apple didn't feed any of these features into OS X Lion.

So, Nick Moore at Pilotmoon Software in the UK decided to take up the gaunlet.

The result is PopClip, a really simple to use piece of software, which works for you all day.

PopClip can recognise email addresses, text, website links and perform spell checking. The screenshot below shows the welcome dialog displayed once the App has been installed. The message captures the simplicity.

So what happens if you do what it says? Let's start with TextEdit. The screenshot below shows some text selected in TextEdit. As you can see, this action has triggered PopClip resulting in the little task bar being displayed.

I think that this little Mac App is great. It has been well thought out, behaves as you would expect and is very stable. I suppose this is why it has found itself into the Top Paid for App chart.