I’d love to have something meaty and heady to write about today, but I’ve got nothing. So, because some folks have asked for it, and because Kenny did it, how about a simple list of the tools I use on my Mac everyday and couldn’t live without? I consider myself a bit of a software minimalist—I don’t use a lot of the geeky tools many web pros do. I try to only have what I think I really need. Note that this only includes native Mac software, not web apps I use regularly. Here goes:
Browsing
- Safari — I have many other browsers installed for testing, but Safari’s my day-to-day browser. I’ve been tempted to switch to Chrome at times (for speed reasons), but Safari’s integration with iOS keeps me on it.
- Mail.app — I use OS X’s built in mail app, and I’m very happy with it, since Lion.
Development
- Sublime Text 2 — I spend a ton of time in my text editor, and until recently, I was a die hard TextMate guy. I switched to Sublime Text 2 out of frustration that TextMate was no longer in active development. Predictably, as soon as I did, TextMate got a 2.0 alpha. I’ll certainly check it out as it progresses and consider switching back, but for now, I’m generally happy with Sublime Text 2.
- GitHub — Obviously, this implies I use git for version control. I use it religiously, for just about any file I edit (not just code). I use GitHub’s Mac app a lot for basic git stuff. It doesn’t go very deep (I’ll head to the command line for that), but what it does, it does elegantly.
- XCode — I’ve only recently started diving into Mac and iOS development, and doing so means spending time in XCode. So far, I’m impressed by it.
- Querious — A handy graphical way to browse and administer MySQL database. To be honest, the fact that this exists is the only reason I still use MySQL regularly. If there were a Querious for Postgres, I’d never touch MySQL again.
- Terminal.app — I don’t use any of your fancy terminal replacement apps. The built in Termnial.app is good enough for me, and I spent a fair amount of time on the command line.
- Languages — Python, Javascript, and Objective-C are the languages I use most often on my Mac. Occasionally Ruby. This is mostly a matter of personal preference (I like Python better than its alternatives) and necessity (I don’t like Javascript and Obj-C so much, but I don’t really have a choice if I want to write web and iOS apps, respectively).
Graphics and Design
- Adobe Photoshop — I’ve been trying to break free of Photoshop for years, but so far, nothing else has stuck. I’m experimenting with Pixelmator now (it’s very impressive), and I’ll also try Acorn, but for the moment, Adobe still has me by the balls.
- Adobe Illustrator — My job doesn’t require me to work in vector very often, but when it does, Illustrator is my go-to tool.
- Fontcase — Like every font management tool ever created, it’s buggy, slow, and annoying, but I don’t know of anything better.
Personal Information Management
- Address Book, iCal — I use Apple’s built-in tools here, again for their integration with iOS, and because I prefer not to install stuff that isn’t necessary. If the built-in tools are good enough, I’ll always prefer them to anything third party.
Social
- Twitter for Mac — Suck it, Mike Davidson.
- iChat — Again, I tend to prefer the built-ins to anything third party.
- Carousel — A fun instagram viewer apps for Mac.
Media consumption and organization
- iTunes — All of my music, movies, and TV flow through iTunes. Integration with iOS and Apple TV keep me from going anywhere else.
- iPhoto — I manage all my photos with iPhoto. I don’t need anything fancier. Love, love, love the Photo Stream featured added with iCloud.
- Reeder — My favorite feed reader on any platform.
- Automatic — A handy tool that monitors the TV shows I love and downloads torrents for them automatically in the background.
- Unison — When Automatic fails me (by downloading a show in standard definition or simply by missing an episode), I use Unison, a great usenet reader, to pick up its slack.
- Turbo.264 HD — A combination of hardware and software, this little tool makes converting my TV shows from .avi and .mkv formats to H.264 so fast and easy. Love it.
There are other apps installed on my Mac, but these are the ones I feel like I couldn’t live without. Perhaps another mindless day I’ll similarly list the stuff I use on iOS.
You should give Sparrow a shot if you use GMail primarily. It has great integration all of the labels, etc.
I also think that HandBrake could be a good alternative to Turbo, but I’m not sure if it does H.264.
Hey Dave: I’ve tried Sparrow. It’s well-done, but not enough so that I’d install it over the built-in. Like I said, I’m a minimalist. Also, Handbrake is great, but it doesn’t do hardware acceleration of H.264 conversion like Turbo.264 HD does. It you don’t want to pay for a dedicated H.264 chip, then I’d recommend Handbrake, yeah.
Funny you say that about TextMate and looking for a good replacement, I am still stuck in that limbo of resenting TextMate but not comfortable with anything else yet.
You’ve made me think about giving Sublime Text 2 another go. Another contender might be Chocolat App soon too, have a try - love the interface.
F*#king TextMate!
Scott: Yeah, Chocolat looks really nice. I feel like it’s a bit less complete and ready for prime time than ST2, but it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on!
After talking to Noah Stokes (@motherfuton) and Jonathan Christopher (@jchristopher) on Twitter, I’m wondering if TVShows isn’t a more up-to-date, active version of Automatic that I mention above. Also, Noah pointed me to iVI, which looks like it may be a great addition to my TV show setup, in that it pulls metadata for shows automatically. I’ll be trying it out right away.
Coda is defiantly my preferred editor, I did use TextMate for a while but didn’t feel comfortable with it. I also love Versions for SVN and command line Git is fine. Great to see some love for postgresql!
Jon: Panic makes great, great, great Mac software and Coda is no exception. But to me, it always felt like a web design tool and not a text editor. It seems very focused on HTML/CSS, and PHP, and not very suitable for any other languages (including you know…English). Great software is all you need is HTML and CSS, but just didn’t feel very flexible, to me. I don’t want to write HTML in a different tool than I write Python in.
Have you ever tried Echofon?
For the Tv Show bit I use Plex and only Plex, works great!
Kim, I’m sure Plex is great, but I won’t do anything that requires me to jailbreak my Apple TV.
I like sparrow even i am using a free version. One thing i dislike about sparrow is its search tool.
It’s cross-platform, so not very pretty, but RazorSQL was helpful when I recently had to jump head-first into a big dump from Postgres. They list some 32 databases it can connect to, which seems hard to believe. But so far it’s been perfectly functional.
Almost exactly the same apps as I with a few notable exceptions: iTerm (better split handling, non-native full-screen, etc) and Sequel Pro (which is pretty much the same as Querious only free; if Querious adds Postgres support before Sequel Pro, I shell out the $$ for it instantly).
Also, you should check Tower (Git). Even though I spend almost more time in the command line than anywhere GUI, git lacks a decent UI (non-GUI). Until things like A Better UI for Git become a reality, I can’t minimize the value of a good UI, graphical or not, for Git.
As for Sublime Text 2, I’m giving it a serious try these days. Long time TM user, I converted to Vim/MacVim last year, after putting a week into learning it. To this day, I can’t deny its power and value (having my config on my local machine and any server I frequently manage is a HUUUGE plus and so is using Prompt on the iPad and have “my” editor with me on the go). :) Having said, ST2 is really impressing me. I was having a few issues with my Vim configuration (trying to get all 1337 and things are not working all too well) and having some tight deadlines this week pushed me to really give ST2 a serious-productive-under-stress try. :)
Thanks for sharing. It’s always fun to read about other people’s preferences/choices… :)
Alec: RazorSQL is hideous! o_O “No GUI” > “Bad GUI”, IMHO.
Always cool to see how the Hot Dog is made
Right now my favorite is Tinker Tool for displaying hidden files on Mac. I use it mostly for .htaccess adjustments with the HTML5 Boilerplate.