Daily Cup of Tech

It appears that I have been neglecting a very important segment of our readership, the OS Xers in the crown. Especially in the department of portable applications. Todd points this out to me in an e-mail:

Hi. I’m pretty much a Windows power user kind of guy and really love all of your articles dealing with Windows. However, due to the nature of my profession (photography), I’m forced to use Mac machines during the day, which is no big deal really; there are things that I like and dislike about both platforms.

My question is, can you point me - and possibly others - to any resources for loading a USB drive with utilities for use on a Mac? Specifically web browsing and email clients. I love the Portable Apps site and haven’t been able to find such a site with Mac stuff.

Thanks.

Todd

Well, Todd, that’s a pretty tall order but I think I can be of some help. Here is a list of portable OS X applications that I have found:

Tip Jar $1.00 $3.00 $5.00 $10.00 $25.00 $50.00 $100.00 Show Your Appreciation

Note: I have not tried all of these applications to confirm how well they work so Caveat Emptor. Also, all descriptions are copied directly from their websites.

Most of these applications come from FreeSoftware Mac User Group. A big thanks to them and all their hard work.

Applications

• Portable Firefox OS X - Portable Firefox OS X is the popular Mozilla Firefox web browser packaged as portable application so you can take your bookmarks, extensions, history, cookies, and saved passwords with you.

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• Portable Thunderbird OS X - Portable Thunderbird OS X is the popular Mozilla Thunderbird email client packaged as portable application so you can take your email, address book and account settings with you.

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• Portable Adium - Portable Adium is the multiprotocol Adium instant messaging client packaged as portable application so you can take your contact list, emoticons, message stiles, plugins, scripts, sound and users with you.

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• Portable AbiWord OS X - Portable AbiWord OS X is the award winning AbiWord small, fast, featureful and crossplatform word processor packaged as portable application so you can take your profile, dictionary, math, Plug-ins and tempaltes with you.

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• Portable Nvu OS X - Portable Nvu OS X is the complete Web Authoring System Nvu packaged as portable application so you can edit your web site on the go.

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• Portable Sunbird OS X - Portable Sunbird OS X is the Sunbird Project cross platform standalone calendar and task manager application packaged as portable application so you can take your calendar and task list with you.

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• Portable Cyberduck - Portable Cyberduck is a FTP and SFTP (SSH Secure File Transfer) browser with an easy to use interface packaged as portable application so you can take your bookmarks, history, preferences with you.

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• Portable Check Off - Portable Check Off is Check Off to-do list that sits in your menu bar packaged as portable application so you can take your to-do list with you.

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• Portable Gimp.app - Portable Gimp.app is the binary distribution of the GNU Image Manipulation Program for Mac OS X packaged as portable application so you can take your preferences with you.

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• Portable Newspeak - Portable Newspeak is Newspeak Cocoa IRC client for Mac OS X packaged as portable application so you can take your IRC servers, channels list and saved transcrip with you.

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• Portable Inkscape OS X - Portable Inkscape OS X is the binary distribution of the Scalable Vector Graphics editor for Mac OS X packaged as portable application so you can take your preferences with you.

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• Portable VLC OS X - Portable VLC OS X is the binary distribution of the VLC video stream and multimedia palyer for Mac OS X packaged as portable application so you can take your preferences with you.

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• Portable Audacity OS X - Portable Audacity OS X is the binary distribution of the Audacity audio editor for Mac OS X packaged as portable application so you can take your preferences with you.

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• Portable OpenOffice.org OS X - Portable OpenOffice.org is the complete OpenOffice.org office suite - word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database - packaged as a portable app, so you can take all your documents and everything you need with you.

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• Portable RSSOwl - Portable RSSOwl OS X is the binary distribution of the RSSOwl RSS, RDS, Atom newsreader for Mac OS X packaged as portable application so you can take all your favorite newsfeeds with you.

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• Portable Feed - Portable Feed is the binary distribution of the Feed RSS, Atom newsreader packaged as portable application so you can take all your favorite newsfeeds with you.

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• Portable X-Chat Aqua - Portable X-Chat Aqua is the binary distribution of X-Chat Aqua IRC client packaged as portable application so you can take all your bookmarks, server list, preferences and plugins with you.

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• Portable Camino - Portable Camino is the Camino web browser packaged as portable application so you can take your bookmarks, extensions, history and cookies with you.

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• Portable Vienna - Portable Vienna is the RSS/Atom newsreader for Mac OS X packaged as portable application so you can take all your favorite newsfeeds with you.

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• Portable Safari - Portable Safari.app is a shell script that open local copy of Safari™ using preferences stored in its application bundle. ~/Library/Application Support/Safari and ~/Library/Caches/Safari folders and ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist file are temporary renamed with .pabu extension and a symlink is created to use portable ones.

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• Portable Mail - Portable Mail.app is a shell script that open local copy of Mail™ using preferences stored in its application bundle. ~/Library/Mail and ~/Library/Caches/Mail folders and com.apple.Mail.plist preference file are temporary renamed with .pabu extension and a symlink is created to use portable ones.

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• Portable iCal - Portable iCal.app is a shell script that open local copy of iCal™ using preferences stored in its application bundle. ~/Library/Application Support/iCal and ~/Library/Caches/iCal folders and ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iCal.plist, com.apple.iCal.AlarmScheduler.plist and com.apple.iCal.helper.plist files are temporary renamed with .pabu extension and a symlink is created to use portable ones.

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• Portable Address Book - Portable Address Book.app is a shell script that open local copy of Address Book™ using cards, groups and preferences stored in its application bundle. ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook and ~/Library/Cash/com.apple.AddressBook folders and ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Address Book.plist file are temporary renamed with .pabu extension and a symlink is created to use portable ones.

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• Portable iChat - Portable iChat.app is a shell script that open local copy of iChat™ using buddies, accounts and preferences stored in its application bundle. ~/Library/Logs/iChatConnectionError and folder and ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.plist, com.apple.iChat.AIM.plist, com.apple.iChat.jabber.plist, com.apple.iChatAgent.plist, com.apple.iChat.SubNet.plist files are temporary renamed with .pabu extension and a symlink is created to use portable ones.

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• SyncPAppX - SyncPAppX.app is a shell script that syncs preferences between portable and local applications. SyncPAppX synchronizes Portable Safari, Portable Mail, Portable iCal, Portable Address Book and Portable iChat to ones on your local machine. This means that your local preferences will be the same as Portable ones.

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• Password Gorilla - The Password Gorilla helps you manage your logins. It stores all your user names and passwords, along with login information and other notes, in a securely encrypted file. A single “master password” is used to protect the file. This way, you only need to remember the single master password, instead of the many logins that you use.

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• PortableOSX - PortableOSX installs a full or stripped down version of Mac OS X to a mobile device, such an USB2 or FireWire drive. The resulting OS X installation can be bootable by both Intel and (recent) PPC Macs. It can also generate custom Mac OS X install DVDs.

Other Websites

In my travels, I have also found a couple other websites that might be of interest to the USB/OSX/Mac crowd:

• Creating a Mac-on-Stick using Mini vMac
• HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive

Conclusion

While there are not nearly as many portable applications out there for OS X as there is for Windows, a lot of the important applications are available to be taken wherever you want.

If you found this to be a useful post, especially if you were the requester, I would like to draw your attention to the Tip Jar (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

If you found this post useful, why don't you buy me a cup of coffee to show your gratitude?