Generalisms, Tech Stuff

Suggestions for Mac Apps

24 Apr 2010  •  Written by Mark

So thanks to @Afrihost, I’m soon to be migrating to Mac with the new MacBook Pro – one of the new ones with the Intel i5 processors. This’ll be my first time working fully on a Mac and I’m looking for some suggestions for applications that are recommended for web designers etc.

I’ll have Adobe CS4, but i’ve heard Coda is fun to use? What about FTP? Other productivity apps? Wasn’t there a bundle on offer a while ago that offered a few top apps at a good rate?

Give me some suggestions please?

8 Responses to Suggestions for Mac Apps

  1. Welcome to the world of Mac (said with a bit of jealousy)

    I love MacRabbit’s Espresso for Coding.
    Things for to-do rocks!
    Transmit for FTP is sexy.
    Tweetie is obvious for Twitter.
    The bundle gets offered by MacHeist.

    Enjoy the magic ;)

    iaan  •  24 April 2010 10:01 pm
  2. Tx dude. Forgot tweetie have a mac app too. Appreciate the suggestions

    Mark  •  24 April 2010 10:13 pm
  3. First off, Congrats!! :)

    These are a few apps that I enjoy using:

    I like Things for organising my to-dos (http://bit.ly/bi3Giy).
    Textmate for codey things (http://bit.ly/bHkQt4)
    Time Out for stretching & relieving eye strains
    Adium for IM (http://bit.ly/a6HT2q)
    Quicksilver (http://bit.ly/aUjelc)
    Transmission for torrents (http://bit.ly/drJPlh)

    Have fun! :)

    Christina  •  24 April 2010 10:17 pm
  4. I would add
    quicksilver
    Perian (codex pluggin for quicktime)
    Jitouch
    Things (repeated because it’s awesome)
    Adium (chat)
    The Unarchiver
    Shovebox
    Tweetie
    Facebook and gmail notifies
    Handbreak

    Nedend  •  24 April 2010 10:46 pm
  5. First off, congratulations on the win!
    There are already some good ones mentioned above… but here are my must haves:

    TextMate (Super Text Editor)
    ProjectPlus for Textmate
    CSSEdit (Name says it all)
    MAMP (=LAMP with an M)
    Transmit (FTP)
    YoruFukurou (Twitter client, i think its better than tweetie)
    VLC + Perian (for all you media needs)
    LittleSnapper (screenshots, etc)
    BetterZip (for your zips)
    Fluid (For SSB e.g. gmail, rtm etc)
    QLcolorcode (Quicklook Plugin http://code.google.com/p/qlcolorcode/)

    Enjoy your new mac.

    mozami  •  24 April 2010 11:31 pm
  6. Coda is great for all-in-one-web dev. It has an integrated terminal which Espresso lacks. Both are good though.

    Quicksilver – launches apps and so much more.

    JustNotes. A desktop client for SimpleNote.

    ClickToFlash & FlashBash. Keep things running smoothly limiting Flash.

    OmniFocus is another good tasks app – very much geared to GTD.

    OmniGraffle is a good tool for diagramming, MindManager is for mind-mapping.

    CoRD for connecting to remote Windoze boxes.

    Moneydance is good for personal finance.

    Transmission for torrents.

    Skitch for capturing/annotating/sharing screenshots.

    Johan  •  25 April 2010 12:52 am
  7. Thanks for the awesome suggestions so far! Gonna have lots of downloading to do!

    Mark  •  25 April 2010 10:12 am
  8. OK, this is a long list, but I find that I have need of all of these at some point. The items marked with “*” are not free:

    Applications:
    =============
    * 1Password to store login details for websites

    Adium for instant messaging

    Audacity for quick audio editing

    * Audiobook Builder to convert multiple audio files into single M4B (iPod / iPhone Audiobook) files

    * BBEdit for coding

    Boxee for media playback on an external screen (or TV) with a better interface than FrontRow

    Chicken of the VNC for remote desktop logins

    Colloquy for IRC

    CSSEdit for CSS coding

    Cyberduck for FTP / SFTP / SCP

    Dropbox for synchronization and backup of documents / photos / other media across multiple platforms and machines (including your iPhone)

    HandBrake for ripping DVDs

    iArchiver to extract RAR files that were split into multiple segments

    * LittleSnapper for screenshots and editing thereof

    MacPorts for Darwin ports of Linux commandline utilities

    MusicBrainz Picard to assign ID3 tags to incorrectly- (or not at all) tagged MP3s

    MySQL Workbench for database design & management

    NetNewsWire for RSS feed reading

    Notational Velocity for notekeeping

    * OmniFocus for outlining

    * OmniGraffle for visual design (think MS Visio on steroids)

    OnyX for system maintenance

    * PDFpen for more PDF document modification functionality than Preview offers

    * Pixelmator as a cheaper option than Photoshop for quick image editing

    PwnageTool for unlocking and jailbreaking iPhones / iPod Touches

    Quicksilver for application launching and GTD shortcuts

    Remote Desktop Connection for RDC logins to Windows machines

    Stuffit Expander for archive support the OS doesn’t have by default (excludes RAR archives, see iArchiver and UnRarX above and below)

    Switch for quick conversion of audio file formats

    Transmission for Bittorrent downloads

    TweetDeck for Twitter

    UnRarX for RAR archive support

    * Versions for Subversion

    VirtualBox for virtualization

    VisualHub for conversion of video files

    VLC for playing video media

    Plugins and System Utilities:
    =============================
    BetterTouchTool for additional gesture support on the touchpad and Magic Mouse

    Connect360 to stream media from your Mac to your Xbox 360

    Flip4Mac WMV to add WMV and WMA audio codec support

    Growl for system notifications supported by several applications

    MacFUSE and NTFS-3G to add write support for NTFS drives (by default OS X can only read them)

    Perian to add multiple audio and video codecs

    SynergyKM to set up a Synergy service that will let you share one keyboard and mouse across several computers (move the mouse out of the left side of your Mac’s screen onto the right side of the Windows PC’s screen next to it, copy and paste across computers, etc.)

    Willem  •  27 April 2010 12:47 pm

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