Most Popular Free Mac Downloads of 2008

By Adam Pash

We've featured gobs of great Mac freeware over the course of the year—now it's time to check out the best. Keep reading for a look back at the 10 most popular Mac downloads of 2008.

NOTE: This list is based on the popularity of posts we've published in 2008 only, regardless of the original release date of the app. Many were brand new this year, while others were solid updates to popular software. If you took a look at yesterday's Most Popular Free Windows Downloads of 2008, a few of the cross-platform favorites may look familiar.

Firefox 3 Is Released for All Platforms

Oh Firefox, what a journey it's been. We've seen all sorts of competition spring up in the browser market over the past year, but no browser excited readers like the third major release of Firefox. If you're living la vida Firefox, make sure you're taking advantage of the top 10 Firefox 3 features, then school yourself with our power user's guide to Firefox 3.

Mojo Downloads Music from Your Friends' iTunes Libraries Over the Internet

iTunes may be one of the most widely used desktop media players on the block, but that doesn't mean it can't be better. Mojo lets you browse through your friends' iTunes libraries and download any song directly to your computer. Sounds like an improvement to us. If you haven't used Mojo, check out our guide to getting started with Mojo.

OurTunes Makes a Comeback, Still Snags Music from Shared iTunes Libraries

What's that? Two iTunes-related apps back-to-back? That's right, the dormitory classic ourTunes is back at it. It's got a new developer releasing updates semi-regularly, it's still open source, and it still downloads any song from any shared iTunes library on a network. (Original post)

PwnageTool Jailbreaks the Hell out of Your iPhone and iPod touch

Mac users jumped all over the opportunity to jailbreak their iPhones with the dead simple PwnageTool this year (the official download is a torrent from The Pirate Bay). Though Apple continues to battle jailbreaking with every new software update, the iPhone Dev Team has so far managed to push out new jailbreaks through PwnageTool within a few days of each update. Using PwnageTool is dead simple, but if you'd prefer a little reassurance, check out our guide to jailbreaking your iPhone with PwnageTool.

XBMC Moves to the Mac in a Serious Way

XBMC made its first official appearance on the Mac back in February, and since then the popular media center application has made the move to all platforms and found a huge following along the way. Mac lovers have been especially lucky: XBMC's move to the Mac has come in many different forms, including Plex and Mac-supported spinoff, Boxee.

Dropbox Makes Cross-Platform, Instantaneous File Sync a Breeze

We saw several exciting new file-syncing applications in 2008, but none more popular than Dropbox. It's fast, it's free, and—if you need it—it makes for a helluva password syncing utility. (Original post)

iTimeMachine Backs Up Leopard Over Your Network

Mac OS X Leopard's Time Machine may offer one-click backup so simple that you've got no excuse not to back up, but unless you like carrying an external hard drive with you everywhere you take your laptop, it's not always terribly convenient. iTimeMachine backs up your Mac using Time Machine to any hard drive on your network. (Original post)

Top Draw Generates Psychedelic Images

The Official Google Mac Blog released a crazy little utility called Top Draw that creates killer wallpapers and other trippy psychedelic images. (Original post)

Songbird Challenges iTunes

Songbird is a free, cross-platform music player built using the same bricks as Firefox. That means it's open source, extensible, and looking to innovate. Songbird has been incubating for a while, but now that the official 1.0 release has hatched, it's sparked all kinds of interest. If you're just trying Songbird for the first time, check out these killer add-ons that make Songbird sing. (Original post)

Secrets Presents an Easy Way to Tweak Leopard's Hidden Features

Developed by the Mac philanthropist who brought us Quicksilver, Secrets rolls every hidden feature of Leopard into an easy-to-use preference pane in your System Preferences. Tweaking hidden features that would normally require obscure Terminal hacks is as simple as ticking a checkbox with Secrets. (Original post)