10 Most Popular Mac Downloads – LimeWire and Vuse Blow Away the Competition

One of the things I like keeping up with is user behaviour and interest. I like to find what’s popular on the different platforms. The list is compiled over at Download.CNET.com. They provide a weekly listing of the most popular downloaded software for different platforms including PC, Mac, Mobile and Webware. I wanted to take a few moments and highlight the top 10 downloaded Mac applications, ending on the week of September 13, 2009. The partial reviews below are taken from Download.cnet.com. To see the full review for each item listed, visit Download.CNET.com.

10. Mozilla Firefox 3.5.3 – 4,127 Downloads, 5 Star CNET Editor Rating, 4.5 Star User Rating (241 Votes)

“No longer a fledgling upstart, Firefox 3 is full-featured, lightning fast, and an able foe for both the big-dog competitor Internet Explorer and competitors nipping at its heels. Firefox’s killer add-ons remain strong, and the latest update makes version 3.5 about two times faster than version 3. However, competition is strong and it can no longer be said that Firefox is the fastest browser available.”

9. Stufflt Expander 13.0.3 – 4,701 Downloads, 3.5 Star User Rating (18 Votes)

“Easily expand and decode all the files you download from the Web or receive in your e-mail. Access StuffIt files, uncompress Zip archives created by WinZip and other zip utilities, decompress tar, gzip and bzip archives, and more. Just drag, drop, and you’re done. From BinHex to Zip, StuffIt to MIME, Expander accesses more formats, in less time, with zero hassles.”

8. LimeWire (Classic OS) 4.0.10 - 4,953 Downloads, 4 Star CNET Editor Rating, 3.5 Star User Rating (232 Votes)

“From its start as a post-Napster clone to its leading role as the quintessential Gnutella client, LimeWire has been one of the highest-profile P2P applications. Version 4.0 further ups the ante with a combination of new features, an updated interface, and better network performance.”

7. Adobe Photoshop CS4 11.0.1 – 6,200 Downloads, 4 Star CNET Editor Rating, 4 Star User Rating (82 Votes)

“PC users often upgrade their hardware to get the most out of new games. Many Mac users, on the other hand, view Photoshop as the litmus test for hardware performance. While technically an image editor, this program contains an endless selection of drawing tools, filters, color adjustment capabilities, and other tools designed to manipulate images in almost any way. Photoshop incorporates raster and vector drawing tools, allowing you to work with bitmap images and scalable graphics at the same time.”

6. Camfrog Video Chat 1.9.2924 - 6,631 Downloads, 3.5 Star User Rating (25 Votes)

“Camfrog Video Chat allows you to join real streaming video chat rooms where you can hear, see, and chat with many people at a time. Instant message a user to get to know them before you Webcam chat, and add them to your contact list. This videoconferencing software also works behind most firewalls and routers. Camfrog Video Chat allows multi-user videoconferencing where you can join a room with up to 1000 users and just click a user name to begin seeing someone.”

5. Microsoft Office 2008 12.2.1 – 7,043 Downloads, 3.5 Star User Rating (11 Votes)

“With beautiful docs, spreadsheets, and multimedia presentations, you can quickly create, manage, and re-use content across any platform. Manage calendars, communications and projects with a completely easy-to-use 2008 UI and new tools that help you make time behave.”

4. Free YouTube Downloader 1.8 - 7,754 Downloads, 3.5 Star User Rating (7 Votes)

“YouTube Downloader is a powerful and easy to use application that will help you to download your favorite videos from YouTube. The program offers a unique feature that makes it possible to extract video files names from the YouTube website. Other features are: multiple downloads during one program session, easy to use graphical user interface and html format download report. The application is platform-independent and runs in Windows, Linux and MacOS. The YouTube Downloader is distributed with a bonus application by the same author.”

3. VLC Media Player 1.0.1 – 8,070 Downloads, 4.5 CNET Editor Rating, 4 Star User Rating (183 Votes)

“VLC Media Player is a long-time open-source favorite, and the latest version is also the first to be out of beta development. It’s not the only option for free video playback, but it’s one of the best, and the feature updates in version 1 make it well worth the upgrade. Users can now get frame-by-frame advancement, granular speed controls allowing for on-the-fly slower or faster playback, and live recording of streaming video. The toolbars are fully customizable, so you can have only the buttons you need in the interface, there’s AirTunes streaming, and there’s better integration in Gtk environments. Along with the improvements, VLC continues to offer robust support for a wide range of video and audio formats, including OGG, MP2, MP3, MP4, DivX, HD codecs like AES3, Raw Dirac, and even support for playing back zipped files.”

2. Vuse 4.2.08 – 45,709 Downloads, 4 Star User Rating (29 Votes)

“Vuze brings the popular Java-based BitTorrent client to a new level of stability, usability, and speed. Very actively developed, this latest version includes a new split-window MyTorrents view with support for categories and advanced downloading / seeding / queuing rules for powerful and automated torrent management, a customizable user interface, seeding from read-only media, and significant reductions in resource usage.”

1. LimeWire 5.3.4 - 101,540 Downloads, 4 Star CNET Editor Rating, 3.5 Star User Rating (643 Votes)

From its start as a post-Napster clone to its leading role as the quintessential Gnutella client, LimeWire has been one of the highest-profile P2P applications for Mac. The latest version further ups the ante with a combination of new features, an updated interface, and better all-around performance.

From the top 10 list, as you can see music and video applications dominated. Do you use any of the software above? What are your thoughts on the software or the listing?