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It's pretty safe to say I spend 12 hours or so a day on my Mac — or a Mac. So I thought I'd document, if not the what of the check I'm doing, then the how. Here they are. I tried to break them down by category, because nobody can really use a laundry list of 20 or 50 or 100 things presented in a blog post, just laid out there as if it were helpful.
Excuse me for a side rant:
Less is more. Please accept this! I'm not channeling Samuel Beckett here, to say the least. Less! Seems like everyone makes Top X lists these days. 35 this. 50 that. 100 the other thing. Maybe they're link-bait posts. It must be effective, because they're everywhere. But why is it that nobody seems willing or able to parse through the datamass and recommend a useful number? For example, how is the "Top 100 Tutorials" post supposed to be more useful than the "Top 5 Tutorials"?
Anyway, here are apps I find useful. Mayb you will, too.
Communications, Connectivity, Community
Dropbox — Technically not so much a Mac app as a software-as-a-service app, Dropbox is my new favorite way to share and back up certain files on my Mac. This is what MobileMe was supposed to be. Dropbox is cross-platform, too.
Mail.app — I've tried many email apps of the years, and I keep coming back to Mail.app. The others range from teh suck to leaky resource hogs to head-scratch-inducing huh? Hawkwings has nice info that makes Mail.app really not absolutely terrible.
Tweetdeck — I was using Tweetdeck for my desktop Twittering, but when I realized it was consistently missing tweets by my favorite group-focused friends, I went looking for something else. So I tried Seesmic, but it has the same problem. Tweetie doesn't seem to have decent workflows for someone following a lot of people. So Tweetdeck it is ... until I find something better, which I hope is soon.
Skype — I rarely use Skype for calls, but we use it at work for IM. It's handy because it takes no centralized setup, effectively drills through most firewalls when traveling, and encrypts the messages, making it reasonably safe for things like passwords. I just wish it didn't draw so much in resources.
Colloquy — I've had some strange buggy experiences in the past with Colloquy, but for now it's working adequately for me. #drupal et al. are my daily background channels.
Snackr — This has become my favorite RSS reader, especially since NetNewsWire jumped the shark.
Browsing
Safari — Lately Firefox has gotten to be just too slow and cumbersome for me, so I've relegated it to second browser status and shifted to Safari for my primary browsing. This would not have been the case if it weren't for Glims, which does some nice usability-improving enhancement to the Safari UI.
Firefox — There still is no better browser for web development itself. While Safari's Developer Tools are handy, the plugins available to Firefox (including Firebug, Web Dev Tools, and a few others) make it the go-to browser when analyzing and developing a website ... or any browser-based system.
Fluid — This is a nifty app that makes dedicated web browsers for specific sites you designate. I use it for Google Calendar, the mediocre CRM service we use, the mediocre ticket- and time-tracking system we use, and our own Client Support Center. Based on Safari, it keeps a light footprint on the computer resources and makes webapps somewhat easier to stomach.
Graphics Etc.
OmniGraffle — This has become almost too good to use for wireframing. Too often I find myself doing detail work rather than focusing on the information architecture and overall page layout. So lately I've started using....
Balsamiq Mockup — This is a cross-platform (via Adobe Air) desktop app for creating low-fidelity wireframes. Once you get used to the UI, which takes only an hour or so to get to where you don't have to think and ponder on how to do your next step, it actually becomes a very useful tool for fast wireframing without getting sidetracked by visual design temptations. A couple of nifty features I like are the ability to easily link a button or link to another Mockup wireframe (making clickable wireframes) and the ability to place "sketchified" images. Balsamiq also has versions for plugging into centralized systems, for collaboration.
Adobe Illustrator — Let's face it, for all of Adobe's problems, Illustrator is still a pretty nifty app. The gold
