Free Mac apps are easier to find but harder to choose

Back in 2006, when I first started Thriftmac, it was hard to find free Mac apps. In fact, it was hard to find any Mac apps at all. That meant snapping up links to pretty much any freeware I could find. On the plus side, it also meant that those few apps were likely maintained by developers willing to stick it out with the platform despite its tiny market share. Twenty years later, there is a tsunami of new Mac apps driven by vibe coders. The good news is that we have a much larger selection. The bad news is that much of it is best avoided. As an example, I use Ghost Crop to crop the transparent pixels that often surround the icons I post on Thriftmac. It’s been out for four years and works fine. I gave it five stars. A few days ago, I came across an app that costs about the same and does a bunch of other image-related things as well. I downloaded the trial version and gave it a try. The results were pretty bad. This developer is quite prolific, with dozens of apps on his site up for…