Hi there! Definitely get Alfred, Caffeine and TotalFinder. Alfred - just for convenience Caffeine - prevents screen from dimming TotalFinder - introduces tabs in Finder
-Alfred: So much better than spotlight. Download it from the dev site free or the Mac app store. -Popclip: pretty cheap now in MAS. You can quickly cut, copy and paste items and there are also extensions available to make tasks quicker and easier. This along with Alfred should be included in ALL Macs. -Little Snitch: block any unneeded/unnecessary connections. If you somewhat value your privacy, check it out but its not for everyone. Trial and license available on the devs website. -Temperature Gauge: I use it mostly for tracking fan speed. -Jumpcut- keeps track of your "copied" text. Other apps I use but not quite as much -Moom: place your active windows in certain areas. -Boom! in some cases my MBP volume isn't loud enough but boom can raise the volume even further. -Gemini: duplicate finder. -Screenflow- record your screen. Well worth the asking price.
I use Caffeine and Jumpcut all the time, so I second or third those recommendations. I don't know what types of applications you are looking for. For work I use BBEdit as my code editor. It is fantastic. Hexedit also gets use. I use the svn client Cornerstone and it is quite good. For SFTP and such, I am currently using Cyberduck. It's good and is donation-ware. I use Microsoft Office only because I have to. Spotify is a nice music service and app. OmniDiskSweeper is useful for clearing out disk space/finding out what's taking up space. SplashID is a pretty good password and other secure info manager, but there may be better options - I've been using SplashID since the days of Palm Pilots! VMWare Fusion is the tool I use for Windows and Linux VMs. It's very good, just make sure you have at least 4 GB of RAM. Otherwise it's painful. Dropbox is a great cloud storage service and tool. I put my SplashID database on Dropbox and then have it available on all computers I use. Great stuff. Pacifist is a useful tool for pulling bits and pieces out of installers, and also just to see what is in an installer/what it installs. That should give you a start.
I use AppZapper to delete applications. Just drag the app icon onto the AppZapper window and it finds the associated files and deletes them too. http://appzapper.com/
PassLocker is simple way to manage your passwords. And it is not expensive. Check it out: http://passlockerapp.com
