Today marks my 1 month anniversary as a Mac switcher. I’ve enjoyed every moment with my MacBook Pro. Each day I look forward to what new features of OS X I’ll find. Normally what amazes you one day you will take for granted the next. This is not the case with my MBP or OS X. I’m amazed on a daily basis at how glad I am that I gave Apple a chance and made the switch.
The past month I’ve learned allot and found many tools that help me accomplish tasks. I’d like to share those tools with you today. With a few exceptions, most of the software that I use and have come to love is FREE! This means that you’ll be able integrate most of the software listed below into your work flow at no cost. How great is that?
Desktop Software
Adium: This is “THE” instant messenger client for the Mac. Although iChat its nice, Adium allows you to communicate through all of the major IM services. AOL IM, Jabber, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, .Mac, and Google Talk are all supported by Adium. (free)
Photoshop CS2: Photoshop is the defacto in terms of image editing, processing, and creation. If you’re serious about producing stunning images or want the power of a full featured image editor look no further. With layers, channels, action scripts, and filters you have all the tools to unleash your creativity.
Cyberduck: Occasional to regular FTP use can be handled by this full featured FTP client. I use Cyberduck everyday while working on this site and it suits my needs just fine. It offers secure transfers through multiple protocols, bookmarked servers, external file editing, and server/host synchronization. (free)
Firefox: I don’t know why, but I just can’t get used to Safari. Maybe its because I come from the Windows world and have just gotten used to Firefox. I just love the all the great plugins that are available for Firefox. (free)
Google Earth: Ever wanted to visit the Colosseum in Rome, or Ayers Rock in the Australian outback but don’t have the time/money to get away? Nows your chance. Google Earth provides fairly high quality satellite images that span the globe. This tool also gives you information about roads, restaurants, and even 3D models of buildings. (free)
iEatBrainz: Everyone has those mp3 files that have no ID3 tag information and the filename doesn’t provide any clues either. Enter iEatBrainz. By looking at the audio fingerprint of music files iEatBrainz is able to determine the artist, track name, album and more. If you’ve been struggling to tag your mp3’s give this tool a shot, it’ll save you loads of time. (free) My Full Review
ImageWell: Although Photoshop is full featured and can do just about everything, for the smallest of tasks its a bit overboard. When all I want to do is crop an image or compress it a bit I use ImageWell. Its quick and does the trick. (free)
iStumbler: I use iStumbler to collect information about the WiFi networks in my area. It tells you the MAC addresses, channel, signal, and noise information about any access point. If you have to do any site surveys or troubleshooting iStumbler will come in handy. (free)
Keyword Manager: One of the readers of this blog recommended this iPhoto plugin to me. Its hard to put into words how much time Keyword Manager has saved me. I was able to quickly add keywords to my photos. This plugin even allows you to set up hierarchies of keywords. This allows you to do things like add city, state, and country tags all at once.
Microsoft Officer 2004: Not much to say about Office that’ll be new to any of you. One thing thats important to note is that Office 2004 is not a universal binary, so it runs a bit slow. Supposedly the next version will natively support Intel processors, which will bring it up to speed.
Quicksilver: I have yet to master Quicksilver, and I doubt that I ever will since there are so many features. Using a few simply keystrokes you can open applications, email pictures, and move files. This is the most powerful launcher you’ll ever find. (free)
TextWrangler: While working with code one of the most important features of a text editor is syntax highlighting. TextWrangler not only highlights syntax but provides tabs for open files. I still don’t have much time under my belt with this application, but the more I use it the more I like it. (free)>
Transmission: Want to effortlessly download a torrent file? Install Transmission and never struggle with torrents again. Other than selective file downloading this application does everything I could want in terms of torrent transfers. (free)
WhatSize: You only have so much hard drive space. Its best to keep tabs on your available space before things get out of control. WhatSize informs you of exactly whats eating up that precious storage space. (free)
You Control: Tunes: Listening to iTunes while you work is pretty common. But nothing kills your productivity more than tabbing back and forth to iTunes to skip or repeat a song. You Control: Tunes places back, forward, pause, and play buttons in your menu bar. Even cooler is that it allows you to rate the currently playing track via the menu bar as well. (free) My Full Review
Show Desktop: If you’ve made the switch from the Windows world you might miss the ’show desktop’ button in the quicklaunch bar. Well this application mimics that. Throw Show Desktop in your dock, then simply click it to hide all applications and minimize all finder windows. (free)
Dashboard Widgets
iStatPro: If you’re into stats you’ll love iStatsPro. Literally any statistic you might want to know about your Mac is displayed in this widget. CPU, memory, hard drive, network, battery and temperature information is all displayed. (free)
RadMovieTimes:Need to find out when the latest blockbuster is playing at the cinaplex? Fire up your dashboard, select your theater, then tab through until you find your movie. This widget has saved me many visits to Fandango. (free)
TV Tracker: My cable TV package doesn’t include one of those user controllable TV guides. I only have the old school guide that you have to wait while it scrolls through all of the channels. With this widget however, I can surf the guide at my own leisure and even select which channels I want to appear in my personal guide. (free)
Image Shackle: A few days after getting my MBP my wife asked me how she could easily resize images to send to friends and family. The simplest solution I could find was Shackle. Just drag your photo onto this widget, select your size and click ‘Shackle’. The resized image will appear next to the original. (free)
ImageShack Dashboard Widget: To post images online to use in forums or comments this tool is amazing. Simple yet powerful. Just drag the image you want ImageShack to host onto the widget. You’ll then be provided with a link to the image that you can use as you see fit. (free)
Gmail: This widget allows me to see unread mail messages in my Gmail inbox strait from the dashboard. There are many similar widgets to be used with other email services. For Gmail this was the best that I found. (free)
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Curious to know why you don’t use F11 to show desktop.
Thanks for making sure I knew about the F11 command. Many people are not aware of it. I love Exposé and find it incredibly useful. To answer your question…
I use both F11 and the Show Desktop app. I find F11 great for when I need to do something quick in the finder or hide windows from spying eyes :) But one disadvantage of using F11 is that if you open a new application or tab to an already running application everything slides back onto the screen again and clutters up my workspace. With Show Desktop everything is hidden or minimized and I windows stay that way even when I open new ones. I hope that answers your question.
Try:
NetNewsWire
TextMate
HoudahSpot
Disco
Delicious Library
Super Duper
Yojimbo
Thanks for the suggestions! I’ve heard of NetNewsWire and TextMate, but the rest are new to me. I’ll give them a shot :)
Thanks, Nick, I’ll have to check out Show Desktop.
The one app I can’t live without is Overflow. Though recently I’ve added MagiCal to my must have list.
Overflow looks pretty nice. There never seems to be enough room on the dock… :( I heard once that you could drag your applications folder onto the dock. Then when you clicked on it a menu would pop up with all your applications in it. I haven’t been able to get it to work though. Maybe I mis heard/read something.
I usually bring up the dashbaord when I need to quickly look at a calendar. Does MagiCal integrate with Apple’s iCal? If it did that would be a great reason for me to use it instead of the dashboard calendar!
you should give drag thing a shot.
it is well worth the money…
i love it…
also soho notes is a good one.
Wow, DragThing looks incredibly powerful from what the animation on their website. And $12 isn’t bad either.
Did you mean Zoho Notebook? I’ve used some of the software in the Zoho suit and I could see them seriously competing against MS Office in the next few years.
drag thing is worth the money. i set mine up perfectly and it is very unobtrusive.
Soho notes. http://www.chronosnet.com/Products/sohonotes.html
Hi Nick
Re: dragging applications folder to Dock
You can - but you need to put it on the right hand side of the vertical divide on the dock (by the trash).
Hope that helps
D
Thanks for the tip Dave. I was wondering why I couldn’t get that to work. Actually, lately I’ve been thinking about removing almost everything from the dock and just using quicksilver to launch everything. I’m starting to use quicksilver for more and more as it is. I suppose that its just a matter of time before I try it.
Must admit I’ve not used quicksilver - I stopped using Macs just before Tiger came out (up til that point I was adminning a network of OSX and WinXP machines).
I’m on my way back though - got a Black Macbook on order :)
Definitely give Quicksilver a shot when you get your MacBook! Its one of my favorite apps.
exactly how or what do you use keyword manager for?
i am a tad bit confused by the interface.
Keyword Manager is basically a different way to apply keywords to your pictures in iPhoto. By adding keywords to your photos you can use the search feature in iPhoto quite effectively. The Keyword Manager application allows you to set up keyword hierarchies. For example, I have a location keyword for where I took each picture and the location is setup in a hierarchy.
Country > State/Province > City > Place.
Once you setup your keywords and put them into hierarchies all the hard work is done. To add a keyword to a photo you simply begin typing the keyword into the quick assigner window. The keyword will use auto complete to expedite the process once it finds a match to what you are typing. So if I took a picture at Safeco Field in Seattle, WA in the United States all I would have to do is start typing the word Safeco. The quick assigner window would auto complete Safeco Field for me and then I could just hit the return key. By giving a picture the keyword Safeco Field it will also receive Seattle, Washington, and United States as well.
This might seem a bit overboard. But I have 5000 pictures and having keywords assigned to them all makes finding certain pictures a 5 second job instead of 5 minutes :)
If you are looking for a decent FREE alternative to Keyword Manager check out Keyword Assistant. 99% of the people that use an iPhoto keyword plugin probably use one of those two.
Good Luck!
gotcha, are you using a library manager or are you using 1 huge library?
i am currently in the process of trying different libraries to see if that will help the too many pictures making things slow issue.
I’m using one library at the moment. I’ve been thinking about splitting my pictures into year based librarys. I kind of like having everything available all at one time though. I’m sort of banking on iLife 07 to fix the slow down issue :)
I am currently using iPhoto and Aperture.
so they have 2 different library things going on.
I am in the process of splitting my iphoto libraries because of the speed. by year is a good idea. the problem is that every year, we take more and more pictures. being as though they are digital keeping them is not an issue.
i guess i will toil through a couple of library managers and come up with one eventually. i am also trying to get them labeled correctly to. splitting the libraries is tough too because when you are working on a project that requires pictures from different years sucks…
basically there are scenarios on both sides of the fence that make it tough to use the other.
have you tried coversutra for that same thing that you use you tunes for?
cover sutra rocks… and the girl that makes it is cute too :)
Jeff, I haven’t tried it out yet. Maybe it’s because I just payed my taxes and owed a ton of money, but I tend to try to find free alternatives when I can. I do however think that its cool that Coversutra integrates last.fm into their software and has support for the Apple remote :)
Coversutra really rocks and serves many purposes.
the disk really looks good on the desktop…
If you like cover art on your desktop you might like Clutter. Its provides a unique way to control what’s playing in iTunes :)