These utilities will make life with your Mac a little easier. You can live without them, but you will wonder how after you have them.

• HandBrake is a video transcoder. Want those old family movies converted to H.264 to watch on your Mac, your Apple TV or your iPhone? This will do it.
• Paintbrush was developed for those who miss Paint on the PC. I do not understand how this type of application was left out of OS X.
• Jar makes sure the only cookies kept on your Mac are from sites in your history, bookmarks or top sites. No sites to block or unblock, “Remove” buttons to click or maintenance to perform.
• BetterZip is just what it says, a better way to deal with zip files. BetterZip is similar in functionality to WinZip on the PC. BetterZip costs $20. BetterZip also has a free Quick Look Generator that lets you view the contents of compressed archives in Quick Look.
• ChronoSync performs file and folder syncronizations and backups. This can be particularly useful for keeping multiple machines in sync. ChronoSync costs $40.
• Mover Connect is the fastest way to "slide" files (photos, documents, what ever) between Apple products. The Mac app is free, but in order to include iPhones and iPads in the mix you need the $2 app Mover+. Apple introduced a similar feature called Air Drop in OS X 10.7 (Lion). But it only works over a wireless connection. So if you have an ethernet connected Mac it will not share in the Apple solution.