Yeah, I bought a mac - now, what software can you fine people recommend for me.

I've browsed old posts (I lurk all the time here), and I already intend on purchasing OmniOutliner and Scrivener as most of what I do is writing.

But, to all you who use Macs, what are the apps you most strongly recommend?

Here are the applications that reside in my Dock Bar:

Finder
Mail
Safari
Scrivener
Tinderbox
Bento
iPhoto
iTunes
Sandvox (an easy to use web site builder and manager)
MacJournal
DevonThink Pro
Bean (a lightweight, free word processor)
Pages (Apple's word processor)
Voila (a screen capture program)
TheBrain
VMWare Fusion (so I can run ConnectedText)
Yojimbo
OmniOutliner
Evernote

As you can see, there's a bit of redundancy here (good luck with avoiding CRIMPing). If you have heavy-duty research material to manage, then DevonThink is probably the class of the info managers. But if you're not going to amass tons of research, then a more lightweight program like Yojimbo or Together might work better.

For lightweight structured data, I like Bento, a very easy to use database.

Since you're trying to avoid CRIMPing, I won't recommend Tinderbox (although it is still my favorite Mac program, even if it isn't the one I use the most).

Steve Z.

To Steve's excellent list, I'd add the following:

Two heavyweight applications for specific jobs:
Omnifocus (task manager)
iBank (personal finance)

A nice free simple word processor:
Bean

Back-up:
Super-Duper (Apple's Time Machine is fine for files, but Super-Duper incrementally clones your disk)

Of course:
Dropbox

The Apple equivalent of MS Office (more limited, but cheaper):
Pages
Numbers
Keynote

A programme to allow you to run Windows software on a Mac (for the pretty rare occasions when you can find no Mac equivalent):
Parallels

And a list of simple utilities, most of which are inexpensive and exploit the Mac system to help knit different applications together:
Hazel
Caffeine
Growl (the earlier free version)
Launchbar (or the recently updated Alfred)
Concentrate
Cobook
QuickCal
Blotter (puts your calendar on your desktop)
Minco (a nifty task timer)
Minuteur (a scriptable "tea timer")
1Password
Default Folder
Mailtags
Coconut Battery
Formal Address
TextExpander
Wallpaper Wizard
A feature of the Mac platform is that there are many utilities like these available.

This is a good review site (featuring articles by Steve Z.):
http://mac.appstorm.net/category/general/
It's also good for learning about the little utilities, like those above.

And "Mac at Work" by David Sparks is an excellent perspective of the best of the entire Mac software waterfront.

H

First, welcome to the Mac. It's a great platform.

As to programs, I can add little to the list that has already been posted by Stephen and Hugh. I would only comment that if you don't want to use Microsoft Word, or indeed any of Microsoft Office, grab yourself a copy of Libreoffice. It's a version of Open Office, and it runs great on my MacBook Pro. Opens and saves in Microsoft Office format. I would second (Or is it third?)the recommendations for Devonthink Pro. I use it all the time and love it. I actually ponied up for the Devonthink Pro Office version.

Jim

If you do any sort of academic work, get Papers2 to wrangle journal articles.

http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/



DaXiong wrote:

Yeah, I bought a mac - now, what software can you fine people recommend for me.

Hi.

What I recommend in addition to the apps/tools mentioned:

* Curio - there is a great review/how-to by Steve on http://mac.appstorm.net/reviews/office-review/curio-a-workshop-for-your-creative-projects/
* NeO - an alternative to OmniOutliner (http://d-lit.com/macosx/neo_outliner/
* the freeware tools XMenu and Wordservice (and off course Devonthing) by Devon Technologies (http://www.devontechnologies.com/download/products.html

Have fun, Franz

CircusPonies' Notebook is a very nice program; I haven't seen many outlining tools that have a personality like it does, even if it doesn't really support the "big" features from some tools like cloning.
Scrivener is nice for writing.
Vitamin-R is nice for tracking things you're doing /right now/.
Mellel is pleasant to use, but you can do the same things in OpenOffice for cheaper (I sort of picked it up on a sale shortly before my mac died, and never could find a use for it. I've been told Mellel is very stable for curating several hundred page documents in.)
1Password is useful to keep around since the open-source KeePass does not work very well on the mac.

Academic Mac users might find this interesting:

"What software do I really need for academic work on Mac?"

http://blog.macademic.org/2014/07/04/starting-from-a-clean-slate-a-minimal-set-of-academic-software-for-mac/

For the basics (eMail, calendar, simple notes, etc.) I stay inside the OS X ecosystem: Mail, iCal, Notes, TextEdit, Reminders, etc. I'm not constrained by whatever limitations they have, and like how easily they work with each other and sync through iCloud. I have tried many alternatives, but find I'm happy keeping it simple.

As for larger tasks, I start pretty much everything in OmniOutliner, and keep track of tasks with OmniFocus. They're seriously well-made apps. And after years of DevonThink, I now use Evernote for logs, journals, collections, notes, etc. I liked DT's complexity and features, but Evernote is almost as fully-featured, and it's sync-capabilities to all my devices makes it far more useful for me.

I have tried several times to use Scrivener for starting and larger projects, but keep going back to OmniOutliner. YMMV.

Hm - I'm quite happy with KeePass on the Mac, but then I don't use it to do sophisticated things like paste passwords into web pages (I use Apple's own KeyChain for that). It's excellent for maintaining multiple copies of valuable encrypted data across multiple repositories (e.g. Dropbox, OneDrive etc.).

Thanks for the tip about NEO – looks pretty cool!

I also use a couple of other goodies:
- OmniFocus 2 (vastly superior to their first effort; also iPhone, still awaiting iPad version)
- Airmail (nice, reliable e-mail client)
- LibreOffice (instead of tentacular Microsoft Office, which is just as irritatingly intrusive on the Mac as its Windows cousin; LibreOffice is impressively compatible)
- Remind Me Later... (freebie that sits on menu bar and allows you to enter events directly into Calendar using 'natural language')
- Remind Me (ditto for creating instant reminders, although I no longer use it now that I've opted for OmniFocus)
- DayOne (for journalling more or less everything; also iOS)
- StampNote (for taking fast notes of timings; also exists as an iOS app)
- ForkLift (fantastic file manager with dual panes AND tabs, also sync, (S)FTP and FXP support: expensive, but 'you're worth it')
- Opera (to my surprise, probably the best browser I've used on the Mac, although it's a bit energy-intensive)
- MetaNota Pro (for elegant Markdown notetaking)
- Trash Me! (for nuking apps when you decide you've indulged in excessive CRIMPing)
- Collective (very nice clipboard-collecting utility)
- DisplayPad (for turning my iPad into a second screen for my MacBook – not as good as the alas discontinued DisplayLink used to be, but acceptable)

Cheers,
Bill

In addition to all the fine applications mentioned so far, there are two categories of app that I use constantly on my Macs. A shelf to drag clippings and files to temporarily and then drag into other applications, email, etc. The second category is screen clipping. There are dozens of apps in each of these categories, which all do pretty much similar things. My favorites are:

1. Yoink, or Dropzone 3, for shelf
2. ShotsBrowser, or FlySketch for screen clipping

Forgot a few others:

1Password is a fantastic app for very securely storing passwords, log-ins, etc. Totally reliable, and it syncs effortlessly to my iPhone and iPad, so I'm never without this information, and I'm confident it's as secure as can reasonably be expected.

Alfred is a wonderful utility - more than just an app launcher. I've tried Launcher and Quicksilver, both of which are excellent, but I keep coming back to Alfred's elegance.

Keyboard Maestro - I have lots and lots of time-saving macros I use everyday from this app. It's well-designed, reliable, and highly helpful. QuicKeys is also very good, but I give the edge to KM.

I prefer Apple's own Pages and Numbers to Word and Excel, partly because I like staying in the Apple ecosystem when possible, and also because they're beautifully designed apps - and like so much else in OS X, they provide an appealing environment in which to work.

And, of course, can't live without the ubiquitous DropBox. Eventually, I'm hoping iCloud Drive (in the next OS, Yosemite) will cover everything, but for now, DropBox is terrific.