1. Pages
Price: $19.99
Apple’s inexpensive answer to Microsoft Word, Pages is a user-friendly word processor that every frugal Mac owner should download. Save files as page documents, word documents or PDFs sent through email.
Pages comes with more than 180 templates to choose from, allowing users to create any kind of document they need.
Image: Pages
2. ReadKit
Price: $4.99
With read-later log and RSS client ReadKit, users access their favorite feeds offline. ReadKit supports Instapaper, Pocket, Readability, Pinboard, Delicious, Feedly, Fever, NewsBlur, Feedbin and Feed Wrangler.
The app has a minimalistic layout, so users focus on the content instead of the design.
Image: ReadKit
3. Day One
Price: $9.99
Make the switch to digital with Day One, a connected journal. Day One encourages users to write and take pictures every day.
In version 1.8, print your journal entries or export them as PDF files.
Image: Day One
4. You Need A Budget 4
Price: $39.99
Visualize your saving and spending with the fourth iteration of “You Need A Budget.”
Users can record expenditures on their phones on-the-go, then sync data to their desktops. Install the app on as many computers and mobile devices as needed, helping connected families keep their finances up-to-date.
The app helps allocate funds to specific bills, saving users time and money.
Image: You Need A Budget 4
5. Keynote
Price: $19.99
Another Apple answer to an expensive Microsoft product, Keynote is the Mac user’s PowerPoint. With a simple interface and variety of import options, Keynote should be on every Mac user’s dock — right now.
Users can craft their slideshow presentations with animations and over 40 design templates. Then, easily convert Keynote files into PowerPoint files.
Image: Keynote
6. Boom
Price: $6.99
Play movies or music directly through the Mac’s sound system with the Boom app. Boom dramatically boosts the volume limits of your Mac’s speakers.
Users create custom sound presets for programs like Netflix, Skype and YouTube.
Image: Boom
7. Live Wallpaper
Price: $0.99
Pretty up your desktop background with Live Wallpaper. With 24 official themes (and many more created by the community), Live Wallpaper offers a real-time updating display complete with a clock, location-specific weather forecast and customizable wallpaper background.
Image: Live Wallpaper
8. Divvy
Price: $13.99
Divvy allows users to split their desktops into designated sections, improving workflow with more clicking and less typing. Define your own keyboard shortcuts, vastly improving the stock Mac method of clicking and dragging.
Image: Divvy
9. GIF Brewery
Price: $4.99
With GIF Brewery, users create animated GIFs from any of their Macs’ video files. Users can also add their own text to the clips, making it perfect for the Photoshop-impaired.
Image: GIF Brewery
10. Diptic
Price: $0.99
A simple photo combination and editing tool, Diptic offers 56 customizable layouts. Simply save images in the app and return at a later time. Plus, you can export Diptic photos at huge resolutions for higher-quality prints.
Image: Diptic
11. Disk Doctor
Price: $1.99
Find out what’s taking up your hard drive space with Disk Doctor, the top-rated disk cleaning app in the App Store.
Once installed, Disk Doctor scans your Mac’s hard drive and creates a simple report that includes larger files you could delete to make space.
Image: Disk Doctor
12. DoodleDesk
Price: $3.99
Use your desktop background as a whiteboard. Perfect for jotting down an idea or giving a live presentation, DoodleDesk is cheap and fun to use.
Export your doodles as JPEGs, PNGs, GIFs or TIFF files.
Image: DoodleDesk
13. Living Earth HD
Price: $6.99
For just $7, your boring desktop background can become a window to space. Living Earth HD pictures live cloud coverage, weather forecasts, a screensaver and wallpaper.
The app lives unobtrusively in your menu bar until you choose to access it.
Image: Living Earth HD
15. iA Writer
Price: $4.99
A fantastic and ultra-light text editor, iA Writer is well worth the small $5 price tag. Minimalistic and user-friendly, it contains an exciting feature called “Focus Mode:” Surrounding text fades into the background so users can focus on one sentence at a time.
Image: iA Writer
14. Alfred
Price: £15 (about $23)
With Alfred, create and launch your own workflows with customizable keywords or hotkeys. You can even design the color scheme of the interface.
Instead of tracking down a file within a bunch of folders, set the preferences so all you have to type is “open [filename].” The file will automatically open.
The app is free, though not greatly useful without the Powerpack option, built on top of the robust core of Alfred.
Many of the more useful features are hidden behind the paywall.
Image: Alfred
16. 1Password
Price: $49.99
1Password is the last password-protecting and autofill service you’ll ever need. The app generates and autofills passwords to every site you visit, encrypting your data with a single password you create.
Users can easily sync data between Apple devices, too.
Image: 1Password
17. Pixelmator
Price: $14.99
Pixelmator is an exceptional photo editing tool and stand-in for Photoshop. Users open and save images as PSD files with layers, just as they would in Photoshop.
Pixelmator is extremely user-friendly and allows for much more customization than the average photo editing app.
Image: Pixelmator
18. Fantastical
Price: $19.99
One of Fantastical’s coolest features is its ability to understand natural language. The app pulls data from your natural sentences and automatically adds them to your calendar, saving you time.
Fantastical integrates perfectly with Google Calendar and iCal, making it the only digital calendar you’ll need to update again.
Image: Fantastical
The Mac App Store, now two years old and offering just under 16,000 apps, is chock-full of great resources for Mac users.
Whether your passion is photography, writing or gaming, the Mac App Store has a program that can help you do it better.
See also: 22 Best Mac Apps of 2012
While it offers many excellent industry-specific programs in fields like design, music production and photography, we searched for apps useful to the widest array of users. Loads of these desktop apps are free, but a few are worth your wallet. In the gallery above, we’ve compiled 18 paid apps worth the money.
Have a favorite paid app we didn’t mention? Let us know what it is in the comments.
Image: Flickr, Rob Boudon