Yet Another Switch Page 2.0
It’s been 4 years since I switched to the Mac. A few years ago I made a page for other switchers. I’m making a new list, as a lot of my friends have finally switched themselves, or are thinking about it. Please share and add your favorite apps in the comments.
The List
Here is the software I use, in order of importance to myself.
- QuickSilver: If you don’t like using the mouse, this is your friend. It’s not just an app launcher, with the power of chaining, I can create tasks in RTM , straight to iCal, Calculator, and send quick emails with text snippets
- Terminal.App: This comes with OS X, and is still my prefered method of navigating around the system. Vim is part of the install as well, so 90% of the times, it’s all you need. Terminal, Vim, and ssh … you’re in heaven.
- If you use Leopard (10.5.x), Terminal has tabs, and is a lot more powerful than the Terminal of Tiger (10.4.x). I recommend using the plugins by Ciarán Walsh
- Evernote I love the fact that I can access my notes over the web, iphone, and locally.
- Postbox . Even though this is in private beta, it’s my mail client of choice. The latest beta release allows for 3 pane views. I’m hoping they’ll add GPG/Enigmail support soonish as well. But the UI, and look and feel is much better than Mail.app.
- AdiumX : Best multi protocol chat client for the Mac. (Pidgin for Mac basically).
- XAMPP Even though OSX has PHP 5, and Apache built in, the PHP is weird, and I need MySQL as well. Xampp provides me with the Apache 2, and PHP 5 build I need, so I can do development locally.
- Colloquy: The Best IRC client for Mac OS X evar. Unless of course you have shell access somewhere, then stick to screen + irssi.
- Growl: Awesome notification system for internal system events. AdiumX installs this, or you can get it yourself
- Omni Outliner Pro This is the best note taking, note making app out there. If you attend meetings, you need this software
- 1Password This is the best password manager for OS X, and all your browsers. More importantly, this is also a password generator. So for all the new sites I visit and sign up for, I can now use a truely random password, and not variations of the same 5-6, like I used to.
- iWork No matter what version you get, this is a very capable suite. I prefer it over Office for OSX. The only time you’ll need MS Office for OS X, is when you need Entourage
- iChat. It comes built in with Leopard, I love using iChat for it’s screen sharing capabilities, because now I can trouble shoot things for people much more efficiently.
- Skype Skype is a great cost saver for international phone calls with the outsourcing teams, as well as a great replacement for IM, when you need truly real time chat capability, or conferencing
So what do you use on your new Macs ?
