Posted on June 12, 2006 at 08:50 UTC,
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Per the request of a few switcher friends, I’m posting great Mac software that I use in my regular day-to-day life:
- BBEdit – Even though it does look a tad retro, it’s an amazing text editor that does everything I want and then some. Other editors do have some similar big-name features but the fact that BBEdit has everything a text editor needs is just perfect. From snipits, to a full HTML tag library, to HTML Tidy, to the most amazing search tool ever made, to all kinds of text-processing features, BBEdit has everything.
- Yojimbo – Made by the same great people who wrote BBEdit, Yojimbo is a personal information manager. It can hold PDFs, notes, passwords, and serial numbers. I previous used Apple’s Keychain for the last two, but things got all muddied because of auto-save information, etc. Yojimbo may not be feature-heavy, but it does things right. It’s simple, has Spotlight integration, and just quite simply works without having to give it a second thought.
- Quicksilver – A lot of people are just now starting to talk about QuickSilver, but it has been a favourite of mine for quite a while. It’s hard to explain this application, but basically, it allows you to control your entire computer without ever having to navigate via mouse. It has stunning visual effects and what’s great is that you can always find new ways to use it with plugins.
- NewsFire – NewFire is an RSS reader that just looks and feels like it belongs on the Mac. Unlike other readers, there’s no toolbar buttons or complex preferences. It just displays the information in a way that’s quick-to-access and very clean. This is the kind of application that takes five minutes to learn and then you’re off–no reading a manual or help files necessary. It’s a great alternative to Safari which has a tendency to add duplicate items on frequently-updated feeds.
- Synergy – Quite possibly the best $5 I’ve ever spent on shareware. There’s a lot of applications that allow you to control iTunes via the keyboard, but this is the best one that I’ve found. It fetches album art covers from Amazon, too!
- SpamSieve – If Apple’s junk mail filtering doesn’t do enough for your inbox, take a look at this application. Since training it, I’ve had absolutely no spam reach my inbox and only the rare false positive. Currently, it sits at 99.8% accuracy and it’s been that way for over a year.
- SSHKeychain – It crashes occasionally but it’s usefulness is far more important. SSHKeychain will load and save your SSH keys to allow password-less connection to remote servers. It’s essential for me because this is how I backup a lot of my things with CRON.
- SuperDuper! – I used to use EMZ/Dantz’s Retrospect backup to perform the incredibly important function of nightly backups (yes, nightly). However, in the now-famous comparison of backup software (which I happen to have lost the link for), SuperDuper came out on top. I also changed because SuperDuper allows you to clone your entire drive so you have a bootable backup in case the stuff hits the fan. All you do is change your startup volume and go (it also makes testing your backups much easier).
- Awaken – What’s better than waking up on a Monday morning than getting your favourite tunes played to your groggy self? Awake in an alarm clock that plays iTunes playlists when it wakes you (and your computer) up from sleep. You can schedule playlists for different days and times (for instance, I make sure “Walking on Sunshine” is played on Monday mornings to help take the edge off of having to go back to school).
Of course, Apple Mail, Adium, Interarchy, Photoshop, Xcode, MS Office 2004, and Keynote are all essential applications, but those are all fairly common and well-known.