Christopher S. Penn's Awaken Your Superhero - Latest Comments in Tools I use on my Mac

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

gWallet — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:34:58 -0000

Can we add Carbon Copy Cloner to the list? After using Time Machine for a few weeks and having less than satisfactory results with backups, I went back to my good old standby, and CCC hasn't let me down since.

http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

I think it's mentioned above, but I second onyx as well. Played with Cocktail for a bit, but found onyx to do just as good (or even better in some areas) and is free. :)

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Josh Nichols — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:43:06 -0000

Don't forget MacSaber. Personally, I have duels almost daily.

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Eric Blair — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:59:13 -0000

Aw heck, I forgot to mention DiskWarrior. It's not productivity software and for most people, it's not a day to day tool. However, I've been using it over the last 8 years or so and it has consistently been the most reliable hard drive repair tool I ever used. The only time it's failed me is when the physical hard drive mechanism has been damaged.

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Dan York — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:58:13 -0000

Chris,

Just found your great list through a tweet. I use many of the tools you list and will have to check out some of the others. The two not on your list that I use pretty much every day are:

- MarsEdit ($) http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/ for blogging. I tried both MarsEdit and ecto and found that I really liked MarsEdit better, especially with it's easy handling/insertion of images/media through a "library" feature. Some people may like the WYSIWIG editor of ecto better, but if you're okay with seeing HTML code in your post, I find that MarsEdit totally rocks.

- Skitch (free) http://www.skitch.com/ for screen captures that I want to put into blog entries. Allows me to easily capture a part of the screen, resize/crop/edit it, annotate it with text or drawings and then drag/drop the resulting image to MarsEdit for upload to my blog. Also allows me to upload images to myskitch.com so I can easily share them with people via passing around a URL.

I also like Jing ( http://www.jingproject.com/ ) for the similar purpose. If you want to show someone a quick view of something on your screen, it's simple and easy to take the screenshot (or a screencast-like video) and then get a URL to pass along to others.

Great post!
Dan

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Eric Blair — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:53:36 -0000

Here are two I haven't seen listed and are among the first things I install on a new Mac.

SpamSieve - best anti-spam software I've used, works across multiple email clients.
Launchbar - shortcut-based app launcher and switcher, among other functionality

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

David Beaudouin — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:43:18 -0000

Came to the party late, but thanks for this amazing list. Agree with Joe--OminOutliner is a must for me.

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Hieronymus Murphy — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:35:34 -0000

Two apps I really like are PopChar X (http://www.ergonis.com/products/popcharx/), which makes things like tildes and umlauts very, very easy to insert in text (no more remembering key combinations); and Style Master (http://www.westciv.com/), a CSS coding app that comes with an amazing array of how-to lessons, templates and documentation.

While neither app is free, I think they're worth every single penny.

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Joe Pikin — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:13:03 -0000

Gotta add one for yojimbo!
Omnifocus, Omnigraffle, OmniOutliner
i've also been digging bluephone elite

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Sam J. — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:01:46 -0000

Shocked you prefer BBEdit to Textmate (macromates.com)!

Also really do use QuickSilver every day.

And I'm a HUGE fan of the Omni family.

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Michelle/chelpixie — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:54:06 -0000

Don't forget Yojimbo. If you need a quick place to jot stuff down and keep it organized in one place. This is the organizer that rocks. Notes, passwords, bookmarks, photos and web pages. Save with a couple of keystokes in one program and you're done.

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

TechNomad — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:44:15 -0000

I find that I use xPad almost everyday. Mostly to take notes, but occasionally I'll start drafts of longer documents in xPad before I move them into a 'formatting' program. It's small, lightweight and easy to use without a lot of superfluous functionality.

http://getxpad.com/

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

AdPuppet — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:37:19 -0000

Here are some more for the list!

Appzapper $ (http://www.appzapper.com) - gets rid of preferences and other files installed on your computer from programs

Little Snitch $ (http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index...) - wonderful traffic monitor for seeing what apps are trying to phone home and shutting them down!

OnyX (http://www.titanium.free.fr/) - Mac maintenance made easy

Screenflow $ (http://www.varasoftware.com/screenflow) - easy to use, powerful screencasting client

iStat series...program or widget (http://www.islayer.com/) - your Mac stats at a glance!

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Mary N — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:09:48 -0000

One of the programs I can't live without, as an Instructional designer/help desk for faculty is Skitch. Great for quick screen captures when trying to solve a problem long distance.

It's from Plasq http://skitch.com/

Another Plasq product that I love to use for creating training is Comic Life $

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Enkerli — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:06:58 -0000

OmniOutliner (an outlining program) is one reason I missed the Mac so much during the dark days of my life as an XP user. The Omni Group's other productivity apps might be even better for some people (OmniFocus, OmniPlan, OmniGraffle). They will release OmniFocus for Touch devices (iPhone, iPod touch), which might make it a dream come true for many people.

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Jeff Glasson — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:04:02 -0000

I highly recommend checking out Skitch - excellent program for quick image capture/manipulation/sharing.

Watch the demo video and you'll be sold (even though its free)!

http://plasq.com/skitch

-Jeff

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Cearum — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:32:17 -0000

I like to use apatana for my web development. It has a nice interface (in my opinion) plus it features a nice ftp upload/download for files. It's essentially a dreamweaver replacement. It's great for RoR development as well.

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Jimi — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:02:03 -0000

Hello, i'm looking to try QuickSpace X, that is in your list, but the developers site don't work.
Do you have some notice? It's possible to download it from some other site?

TIA
Jimi

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

yolantevonscheuÃŸlich — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 03:34:11 -0000

SuperDuper is as it says, hands down the most usful and it-life-enhancing app for me .

recently i came upon SafariStand
which i use mainly for the session restore funktion.

http://hetima.com/safari/stand-e.html

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Amy — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 08:01:16 -0000

Cyberduck fan here too.

I like a tool called VoodooPad, which is a sort of mash up between a desktop wiki and a text editor.

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Peatmoss — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:01:42 -0000

StumbleUpon is how I found this too, really cool little add-on http://www.stumbleupon.com/
Transmit is a very nice FTP program

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Ricky — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 00:37:12 -0000

I have to get on the GraphicConverter bandwagon too. It's the single best Photoshop clone ever. I've been using it for...well, since the '90s. And yes, BBEdit is the best text editor ever, but it's also the best HTML editor.

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

COLORADO BOB — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 05:34:25 -0000

Chris .... One I've really been using that's not a Mac item is Stumble Upon. It's how I got here.
Julian .... Graphics Converter - Ditto
Gif Fun is a great little program from Stone :

http://www.stone.com/

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

gecko — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 06:45:16 -0000

I'm sorry, I mistyped that link. The correct link is http://www.arizona-software.ch

Please excuse me.

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

gecko — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 06:30:34 -0000

One tool I use every day on my Mac (as a Manadarin major) is a simple, yet INCREDIBLY powerful vocabulary builder called ProVoc. This program is a definite must see for anyone learning a language. You can build your own dictionary of words (in any language you please, you just have to add it to the list), as well as download premade ones. You can also design your own quizzes and have weekly or even daily reports made out showing how well you do on your own quizzes- in order to hopefully see some improvement, or learn which way is fastest for you to learn effectively. The method by which you add new words is streamlined well enough to make the task of adding 10 or 1000 new works easy and practically fun! As a student of Russian, Latin, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish, I really wish I had known about this application earlier. It would have saved me countless hours of writing words and characters on flash cards.

The application is free (but not under GPL to my knowledge) at: http://www.arizone-software.ch under the applications menu on the left.

Re: Tools I use on my Mac

Julian Hebbrecht — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 23:38:37 -0000

One of the Mac applications I love most is Graphic Converter. It not only opens images in any known format but is also great for slide shows. That it NEVER crashes is also a great plus.
Another one is Paparazzi that takes pictures of webpages and downloads them in JPG format.
A third one is AppleWorks - especially the drawing module that allows me to move text boxes and images around freely over the page to create the exact page layout I want - something that word processors don't allow. Wouldn't know what to do without it.