antfullpac

We have all been there. You need to use your colleagues computer for some reason and after a few seconds realise they haven’t got “that” app that you always use installed. You sit, shaking your head in disbelief, and wonder how they manage to get through the day without it. OK maybe that’s a bit strong but it made me think that there are a number of Mac apps that I really wouldn’t want to be without.

1. World Of *nix Totalfinder The Missing File Manager For Mac 2017
2. World Of *nix Totalfinder The Missing File Manager For Mac

Whether it be my simple program launcher, my preferred version of Terminal or my Finder replacement. These things are personal so I thought I would share my top ten Mac apps I can’t live without. I am not talking the big apps, rather the little apps or utlities that just make my daily work life a little bit easier. – I was never a power user but loved the ability to quickly launch apps from a keystroke. Given it’s lack of development (although recent activity looks promising) I moved to the recent offering from Google. This reduces the need to have all my common apps in the dock and also has nice integration with Spotlight search.

A similar solution is offered by the recently launched. – Indispensable for Terminal users. Allows your session window to drop down (just like a visor) with a user specified keystroke. – Admittedly cross platform but a great way of sharing files and doing quick and dirty version control.

– A command-tab replacement. Witch allows you to switch to not just the app but one of it’s potentially many open windows. – Billed as “The Finder reinvented”. Check out the dual pane file browser (hard to live without once you have used it) and the drop stack, two of the many great features. – When activated stops your Mac going to sleep! Great for presentations or watching your “on demand” TV shows.

– Multiple IM accounts in one app. Support for AIM, GTalk, Facebook, Yahoo, Jabber and many more. – Not an iPhone simulator, rather a pixel-accurate web browsing environment—powered by Safari—that you can use when developing web sites for iPhone. – My preferred text editor for everyday use. Code, articles, HTML etc. The shipped and downloadable bundles speed things up no end.

Worth the time getting to grips with. – My Twitter client of choice for personal use. Really looking forward to see how the development team integrate the innovative Tweetie2 for iPhone features. Undoubtedly there’s plenty more, what have I missed?

What should I be using? What can’t you live without?. I’m surprised no one has FULLY DESCRIBED Textexpander, “Save yourself time and effort by typing short abbreviations for frequently-used text and images.” Very very good app, you can even pre-format stuff on your clipboard with it, example: Copy an image URL, then JUST TYPE a shortcut “iimg” for example and Textexpander will put tags around the URL, then move the text pointer to the far right so you can continue working and don’t distract yourself.

Hope I explained myself. Also can have some shortcuts that will only work on apps that you define, frequently used text (name and address for example). Also I’d recommend a clipboard manager: Jumpcut, open source (. Thanks for an awesome post, Keir. A few of my can’t live withouts. SizeUp from Irradiated Software.

Windows management on the Mac has always.really. annoyed me. SizeUp allows me to set any window to a preset size on a single keypress.

I couldn’t live without it. The Hit List from The Potion Factory Things is way too simple, Omnifocus is too complex. The Hit List is just right. A gorgeous interface that just fades into the background and lets you concentrate on what you’ve got to do. You can control everything from the keyboard. Concentrate from Rocket/RoobaSoft When I get distracted as a freelancer, Concentrate helps me to get focus back.

I can set it to block distractions for 40 minutes whilst I concentrate on work. Mail and Twitter begone! Vitamin E from Public Space Just started using this one, but it’s looking very promising. I have lots of days where I can’t get going with work. Vitamin E helps me to get started. You tell it the next microtask you want to achieve in the next 10-20 minutes, and it sets a timer going.

It’s great for focussing on small chunks of what might be an overwhelming task. DropBox Sure it’s been mentioned many times, but DropBox is just a part of my filing system now.

Can’t imagine life without it. Not a single mention of VirtualBox?!

I find it indispensable – only on the Mac can I develop & test in almost every OS & browser. Right now I’m running an instance of Windows 7, about to try and install IE9 so I can test a web app on another VM I’m running – an instance of a Linux server. It also lets me play with many smaller, obscure OSs such as Oberon. Grab it at virtualbox.org Another essential for me is shades (charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades). I find my iMac’s screen is too bright when working in the evenings. Shades helps dim the screen to a more acceptable level.

I also find RipIt (thelittleappfactory.com/ripit) + HandBrake (handbrake.fr) + FrontRow handy to reduce clutter from my life. Buy a box-set, rip it, transcode it, drop the files onto an external Firewire drive, and store the box-set away in the attic. Not a single mention of VirtualBox?! I find it indispensable – only on the Mac can I develop & test in almost every OS & browser. Right now I’m running an instance of Windows 7, about to try and install IE9 so I can test a web app on another VM I’m running – an instance of a Linux server. It also lets me play with many smaller, obscure OSs such as Oberon.

Grab it at virtualbox.org Another essential for me is shades (charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades). I find my iMac’s screen is too bright when working in the evenings. Shades helps dim the screen to a more acceptable level. I also find RipIt (thelittleappfactory.com/ripit) + HandBrake (handbrake.fr) + FrontRow handy to reduce clutter from my life. Buy a box-set, rip it, transcode it, drop the files onto an external Firewire drive, and store the box-set away in the attic.

I’ve only been using a mac for a few weeks- One thing I couldn’t get my head around was the ‘maximize’ button in finder, didn’t really maximize in the literal sense of the word Anyway, I found Cinch which is essentially Windows 7 Aero snap feature, drag the window to the left and it snaps to the left hands side and fills that portion of the screen, drag to the top and you get a true full screen- really made the transition easier for me. And at $7 really is a bargain Other than that Things for sorting my lists out, Growl for some nice translucent pop up boxes that tell you useful stuff Coda + Dreamweaver / Photoshop + Transmit, for getting websites sparkly and online Kismac-NG and iodine / WEP cracking/ DNS tunneling.if your stuck at hotel and need emergency WiFi also XBMC (www.xbmc.org) incredible media center alternative to Front row plays just about anything you throw at it and looks stunning, like Boxxee without the social elements (not mac specific but hey). Anyone know a good app for recording desktop videos (screen casts for making tutorials, software and web site demos, etc)?

I use a many of the apps list, but downloaded a handful to try out. My items, minimizing overlap: Aquamacs Emacs Transmission LittleSnitch VLC Grab – native and fast with shortkeys Chrome – full screen just added. All it’s missing is bookmark tags like ff. Otherwise, it’s blazingly fast. Extensions: + amazon universal wishlist; finally an agnostic wishlist that grabs h1 and title tags + g todo and g cal + pixel ruler + one-click email this page when i have to do serious development, i retreat to firefox.

But for everything else, chrome it is I’ll check back for more. Keep ’em coming! Skitch – – Screenshot software (Free) QuikSilver – – App Launcher Extraordinaire (same guys as Visor) (Free) Caffeine – Already mentioned by someone above (Free) Tweetie – Mentioned above (Paid) Hazel – – Cleans folders with rules you set/moves files I recently bought this and it is very handy as i’m lazy and dump everything in the one folder (Paid) Dropbox – Mentioned above Grand Perspective – – Shows you how your Hard Disk space is being used by the use of different Coloured/Sized blocks screenshot – (Free) I used to hate Macs, now I absolutely love ’em (got 3 at home, 1 at work). Well the default rules are for the downloads folder, it moves Images to your Pictures Folder, Movies to your Movies Folder, and Music to your. Music Folder. So as soon as I drop an image onto my Desktop it whisks it into my Pics Folder.

You can setup your own rules and apparently link it up with Automator Workflows too if need be. There is a 14 day trial, I tried it for 30 mins and then bought it (I will get round to setting up new non-default rules to look after other file types, PSD,.dmg etc.). Awesome list! Couple missing for me:. Things – Task management. Seriously, I’d be lost everyday without it. FileShuttle – If you have an FTP server and need to share your stuff fast and easy, this is the app for you.

Take a screenshot, it gets uploaded automatically and pastes the url to your clipboard. Want to zip files?

No worries, drag/drop the folder to the icon and it’ll do everything for you. It lacks some features, but man, it’s awesome, simple and fast. Versions App – I must admit, I HATE svn. No real reason, I just hate it. But this little app makes life so much easier! Clean, simple interface with fast action!.

VMWare – As a FED, I really appreciate having a quick virtual machine that can run multiple software without slowing down. VMWare is the best when it comes down to it.

Path Finder was a point of preference thing for me – it constantly bugged me that I had 2 things doing the same thing open, so it had to go. The only thing I used it for was tabs anyway, and I can get that with TotalFinder now. HyperSpaces is further customisation for Spaces. Coming from a Linux-ish background, I really got used to multiple desktops and my workflow reflects that. HyperSpaces lets you customise each space and gives some nifty customisable hotkeys to navigate them. I seem to have a bug at the moment, where navigating between spaces natively just crashes all the time, but HyperSpaces works fine, so that’s another reason I use it.

You hit on the best of the best (QSB, Dropbox, Visor, Adium, Tweetie), but here are a few others that are (or are becoming) part of my “starter kit”:. AppTrap: background process that helps clean up the detritus after uninstalling an app. I try lots of software.

World Of *nix Totalfinder The Missing File Manager For Mac 2017

Better Touch Tool: It’s not particularly attractive (I hope they’re working on that), but I love being able to customize a few gestures (like Firefox’s 3 finger up/down swipe for home/end) for other apps. It recently added an Aerosnap-like feature that’s really useful. Growl: Not sure how this didn’t make the list, but there it is. Perhaps you didn’t consider it an app, but Visor isn’t either–technically speaking. iStatMenus: If for no other reason than the replacement date/time menubar bits that include a dropdown calendar. SizzlingKeys: Having moved from Quicksilver to QSB, I missed using hotkeys to control iTunes without iTunes having the window focus. Porticus: Sometimes it’s just nice to be able to visualize my MacPorts packages.

DiskInventoryX: Where did my disk space go? Querious (by Araelium Group) for managing MySQL DBs Billings 3 (by Market Circle) for managing project quotes, billable hours, invoicing and accounts receivable Tweetie (by Atebits) the best desktop Twitter client around also looking forward to an upgrade to Tweetie 2 soon Skype It’s cross-platform, but I couldn’t operate without it. Get a Skype phone number and the ability to call phones (instead of just other Skype accounts) Automator Great for setting up custom automated workflows for tedious, repetitive tasks. Great list, thanks. I wasn’t aware of Witch; looks like it could be a good replacement for LightSwitch from Proteron (which I had to stop using with Snow Leopard, if I recall.) Looking at my “open on login” apps, I’d add the following to apps that I can’t live without:.

World Of *nix Totalfinder The Missing File Manager For Mac

BusyCal. Simply amazing replacement for iCal. Syncs with Google Calendar, is compatible with iCal data, etc. Tremendous attention to detail. Storage of sensitive information (passwords, serial numbers, notes, etc.).

1password. Storage and browser access of site login credentials. TextExpander. Very powerful shortcut replacements app.

Find documents. Search Google. Super simple, and elegant, task management. (I use this for high level overviews, and use calendar todos in BusyCal for low-level tasks.). Just Notes.

Simple note taking app, syncs with the SimpleNote service and app on the iPhone. Menubar utility to dim all but the front window. Great for focusing. Not really a Mac app, per se, but rather the Mac component of the iPhone app. No better way to share clipboards between a Mac and iPhone. For $50 per year, it’s like an in-the-cloud Time Machine.

Unlimited data (seriously, I’ve got nearly 500GB there). Keir, I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with Backblaze. It works transparently in the background, throttling its used bandwidth if you ask it to, and I hardly notice it running. The people behind Backblaze received a huge amount of attention not long ago, when they “open sourced” their hardware design, which allows them to economically offer unlimited storage for $50/year. That gave me a lot of confidence in the organization behind the product. Finally, I’ve had to recover files several times now, and it’s worked perfectly. It’s a funny thing how people using the same platform, (probably) working in more-or-less the same field, gravitate to such different tools.

I can’t imagine wanting or needing any of the applications in this list, but then again I’m of the general philosophy of relying on built-in OS tools as much as possible. I use almost no third-party utility apps.

There’s a website for that. Keeping the computer from going to sleep? Hot corners and Energy Saver configuration take care of that nicely.

Anyway, here’s what I can’t live without on my Mac: 1. Photoshop (bloated as it is) 2. TextWrangler (I code in Coda but TW has some great tools Coda lacks) 4. IWork (Pages and Numbers; I’ve only ever fired up Keynote by accident) 7. Preview (yes, Preview! Better PDF viewer than Acrobat) 8.

Parallels Desktop w/Windows 7 (for testing, but I kind of hate it) 9. Mail (easy to forget but it’s always open!) No revelations here.

But I think it reinforces the philosophy of relying on what the OS gives you and not bogging down the system with tons of add-ons. It’s slow enough as it is.