Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.
I’m about eight months into owning a Mac computer, and I can’t imagine using anything else. It took a while to get optimized exactly how I wanted it (I had Windows down), but I’ve finally got it working exactly how I want it to work.
The operating system has a couple of nice touches, but isn’t actually that different anymore, particularly since Windows 7 came out. What makes Mac OS different is the developers, the applications that are released with an incredible attention to detail, beauty and simple functionality. I’ve tried a lot of these applications. I’m a serial tester and adopter anyway, and getting onto a new platform was like being a kid in a candy store. Or a geek in an Apple store…
Anyway, after lots of time and searching, I’ve whittled down to the 11 applications I need, love, and use constantly. Some are big and do a million things, some are small and only do one. They’re all excellent; they’re all for the Mac (though not all are exclusive to OS X), and I love them all.
Fluid’s the application that lets you turn any webpage into its own, standalone application. That means no hunting through tabs to find your email, or losing your latest blog post when Firefox crashes, as it’s altogether too prone to do. They launch fast, can be found fast, and just feel better as standalone apps.
I’ve got Fluid applications for all these: Gmail, Google Docs, Facebook, Instapaper, Google Voice, WordPress, Remember the Milk, and Brizzly. It’s almost unfair to call this one application, because it’s really the thing that makes my workflow happen – it’s a fantastic program, one you get more value from the more you use it.
iChat, the default Instant Messaging application for Mac, works perfectly well – to be honest, I can’t really say Adium does much that iChat doesn’t, it just does it better. Adium links up with all my IM accounts and puts them in one window, is incredibly customizable, gorgeous, and just a pleasure to use. It’s also open source, and has a ton of add-ons (called Xtras) that make it even more powerful.
It’s definitely a personal preference, and little more, but I just enjoy using Adium. Plus, come on – that duck. It’s the bomb.
If you were to interview me for a job, and say, “what’s your biggest weakness?” I’d answer in about .25 seconds. I’d say something to the effect of, “my biggest weakness is that I hit snooze at least nineteen times every morning and there is no chance whatsoever of me ever being on time for work.”
Alarm Clock 2 is the best medicine I’ve ever found for this problem: it can wake my computer from sleep mode, play incredibly loud music, and force me to actually maneuver the mouse in order to shut it off. I can set multiple alarms (four, two minutes apart, is the key), and even have the volume gradually, so I wake up feeling like a million bucks.
I’m always sending people files, sharing pictures, and forcing all my friends to check out this funny video I just found. (By the way, best video ever.) Droplr is a little menu bar application that lets me drag and drop a picture, screenshot, note or file onto a little icon. Droplr automatically uploads the file, and gives me a link to it. I can tweet the link, use up to 1GB, and share all my favorite things with the world. I’d say more, but that’s really it – it’s a simple, hugely useful tool.
I’m something of a Gmail power user – it’s the only email client I use, and all of my various email addresses feed right into my Gmail. There are, however, a few things I miss in Gmail, and Mailplane – a desktop application for Gmail – adds nearly all of them back into the mix.
With Mailplane, I can drag and drop attachments into my email, resize and optimize pictures before attaching them, save things directly into Mailplane from Word or PowerPoint, use multiple Gmail accounts in one window, get pop-up notifications when I get an email, and much more. Mailplane makes Gmail fit much better within the Mac interface, and makes it feel like a desktop application.
Without going so far as to recommend torrenting, I’ll say that if you’re going to do it uTorrent is absolutely the best option out there. It doesn’t have a lot of features, but it launches in about a second, is great-looking, and doesn’t take a lot of memory from the rest of your computer, even when it’s downloading a huge movie completely legal document.
Every day, I get a little closer to never needing cable TV ever again, and it’s all due to Hulu. Hulu’s got the shows I want, fewer commercials, and a great interface for watching them. Hulu Desktop is designed as if it’d be for your TV, with a super-simple interface you can navigate with just the arrow keys on your keyboard. All the shows are the same as on the Web, but it’s a more native feel, and makes for what Hulu calls a “lean-back experience.”
My favorite thing about Hulu Desktop totally deserves its own paragraph: if you have a Hulu account (which is free), and you sign in with Hulu Desktop, it’ll sync what you’re watching between Hulu and Hulu Desktop. If you’re in mid-show at work, and then come home to watch the rest in Hulu Desktop, just fire it up and it will jump back to where you were. Totally seamless.
I’m a serial copy-and-paster, whether it’s copying links for blog posts or getting some choice quotes to share and amaze my friends with. Either way, Shovebox makes that whole process infinitely easier, because it’s a huge storage bin for all that stuff. Just drag a link, text, image, or whatever into Shovebox, and then it lives in the little menu bar icon until you need it again. It’s like copy and paste, times infinity.
If I come across a link I want to use later, I just drag it to ShoveBox. Then, when I need to link ShoveBox to the ShoveBox website, I can go find that link instead of hunting around for the website again. There’s also an iPhone application, meaning that I can store data on the go, and then get at it when I get to my computer – take notes, store links, or put something onto my desktop. ShoveBox is, essentially, a digital short-term memory.
I love how Macs handle applications. It’s a file, you drag it to the “Applications” folder, and you’re done. Well, mostly. Occasionally, applications will leave little traces on your computer, and that’s where AppCleaner comes in.
Drag an application into the AppCleaner window, and it will uninstall the application as well as search for and destroy any of those little traces. It frees up hard drive space, gets rid of “what the heck is that?” files, and keeps your Mac lean and mean.
To answer your question, no, I’m never going to shut up about Evernote, but only because it rules. One of the things I was most excited about when I got a Mac was getting to use the Mac desktop version of Evernote, which has some truly wonderful features (though the Windows version has caught up recently).
Evernote’s desktop client lets you access and edit notes offline, as well as see them all at a glance with the awesome thumbnail mode. Dragging and dropping a file adds it to a note, and I can even take a picture with my Mac’s camera, and add it straight into Evernote – that’s my go-to method of dealing with business cards. It would be a fantastic application all on its own, and the connection to the rest of the Evernote universe is just a bonus.
Anything that takes screenshots is totally unnecessary to most people, but if you’re in the market, Jing is definitely the way to go. With, like, three clicks, you can take a video or picture of your screen and share it on the Web or save it to your desktop.
It’s great for pictures (it’s what I use for all the screenshots on this site), perfect for explaining a problem or solution to someone (“click here, ma”), and much more. It’s totally free, and totally worth downloading just in case.
All right, there’s my list. Your turn! Many of you have been Mac users much longer than I have – what’s on your must-have list?
