My list of frequently used Mac applications

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Posted by Wes Perdue
Aug 10, 2010 at 01:47 AM

All,

For what it’s worth, here is my list of frequently used Mac apps and what I most frequently use them for. It seems appropriate since we’ve been talking so much lately about Mac apps.

Regards,
Wes

Mac apps I use daily:

TextMate - the most powerful and elegant text editor I’ve ever used, and I’ve tried many on the three main platforms. I draft short works here. I’m mostly a plain text guy.

Evernote - my notes repository for all aspects of my life.

OmniFocus - I manage all my projects and tasks here.

Notational Velocity captures ephemeral notes.

LaunchBar - allows me quicker, keyboard-based control of many aspects of my Mac.

Text Expander - fills in dates/timestamps and email signatures.

FireFox, as I’m addicted to a few particular extensions.

Pandora (the AIR applet) and iTunes - music.

SugarSync - backs up data automatically as I work and syncs crucial data to the work PC.

Mail.app - email.

Side note: Evernote, OF, NV (via Simplenote), iCal, and my contacts sync automatically to my iPhone.

Close to daily:

OmniOutliner - mostly simple outlines.

Tinderbox - powerful, elegant, and a challenging learning curve. I brainstorm here.

NovaMind - elegant mind maps and a powerful presentation tool.

KeyNote - presentations.

DevonThink - journaling, plus serious research.

Entourage - work email.

Excel for work spreadsheets.

Numbers for personal spreadsheets.

Every so often:

VMware Fusion - Windows XP, mostly for VPNing to work and for Outlook/WebEx meeting integration (which Entourage can’t do).

Adobe Lightroom - photography.

Carbon Copy Cloner - disk image backups. Cloning - it’s the only way to be sure. :-) Seriously, I clone weekly to an external FW drive that’s exactly the same model as my internal drive. If my internal drive fails, I’m a drive swap from being back up and running, and then a SugarSync away from having all my current data.

VoodooPad - my software inventory and other long-term reference items, like my web app subscription renewal schedule.

Scrivener - drafting longer form writing.

Nisus Writer Pro - medium-form rich text writing, and finishing longer form writing.

Bookends - academic reference management. Integrates beautifully with NWP.

Yojimbo - software license keys.

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 10, 2010 at 02:46 AM

Good topic, Wes!

My list, remembering that I’m in the PC world at work, so this is for personal projects -

- MacJournal, daily journal and miscellaneous writing
- Tinderbox, analysis and thought tinkering
- Personal Brain, trying to make this my go to information manager, but that’s still a work in process
- Yojimbo, for quick clips from the web
- Bento, for structured data (e.g. keeping my reading list)
- Scrivener, for writing projects
- Sandvox, for web site maintenance (although if I were starting the web site now, I would use Word Press, I think)

Software I’d like to use more:

- Curio
- DevonThink
- TaskPaper

Steve

Posted by Hugh
Aug 15, 2010 at 10:52 AM

There’s been a lot on this forum recently about applications such as Scrivener, Curio and DevonThink Pro which I use regularly, so I won’t dwell on those.

Here are three that have been mentioned less often or not at all:

DevonAgent: http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/devonagent/
Concentrate: http://getconcentrating.com/
OfficeTime: http://www.officetime.net/

DevonAgent is just as interesting as DevonThink Pro. It calls itself a research assistant. For me it’s a very useful web crawler/relevance marker, working hand in glove with DevonThink. Concentrate is well worth investigating by those who spend many hours at the screenface. There are cheaper ways to promote focus and flow (the free Freedom app, for example, or a collection of Applescripts), but Concentrate is very versatile and can do much more. OfficeTime is a time-tracker; there seem to be loads of them now for all platforms and online, but OfficeTime is the best I’ve found on the Mac.

I’ve also collected various free or inexpensive utilities, including Hazel, Caffeine, SizeUp, Quicksilver, KeyCue, KeyClick, Tiler, CoconutBattery, Onyx, Growl and (of course) Dropbox.

Posted by rogbar
Aug 19, 2010 at 04:37 PM

My list is not too different from Wes’s:

OmniOutliner for most of my organizing and for daily working on notes, projects, thoughts, etc.

DevonThink for journaling, and research

Evernote for the information I want to keep synched with mobile devices

Notational Velocity for on-the-fly notes, like a scrap pad

OmniFocus for managing my To Dos

Pages for word processing

LaunchBar (tried Quicksilver, but prefer LB)

Bento for keeping track of inventories

Delicious Library - books, music and DVDs

QuicKeys - for macros (this replaces TextExpander for me, and does a lot more, too)

ScanSnap - the greatest scanner ever

Quicken 2007 (because it prints checks while the newer Quicken Essentials for Mac doesn’t. Amazingly.)

iCal, Address Book and Safari

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