After my issues with the Lion upgrade I ended up wiping the hard drive on my iMac and doing a completely fresh install.
I posted previously about a “spring clean” on a Mac and which applications I considered to be “essential” (and why)
That was almost two years ago, so while it’s still a handy point of reference for me it’s due an update.
So my essential software list in 2011 is probably not that different, but it’s still slightly different:
- Evernote – I use it for keeping track of my “todo” lists
- DropBox – very handy for sharing files between multiple locations.
- Quicksilver – while Lion’s “Launchpad” goes some way towards providing this kind of functionality it’s still not there yet as far as I’m concerned
- Skype – I’ve been using this a lot over the last year or so to communicate with industry colleagues.
- Microsoft Remote Desktop – for accessing Windows servers ..
- Last.fm – I listen to music while working (and playing) so Last.fm is my tool of choice.
- Tweetdeck / Seesmic – both are social network clients. Seesmic uses Microsoft Silverlight and hasn’t been “happy” since I upgraded to Lion. Tweetdeck uses Adobe Air and seems to be more stable since the upgrade
- Pixelmator – handy for editing screenshots, photos etc
- Flickr – the Flickr desktop tool for uploading photos
- Blip.tv – for video uploads
- iShowUHD – for doing screencasts / tutorials
- Video to Flash Converter – one of my hobbies involves films, so being able to convert .mov to .flv is handy for blogging ..
- Ecto – desktop blog software.
- Mac Update Desktop – very handy utility / service that keeps track of the software you have installed and lets you know when updates / upgrades are available. It also does a good job of managing the downloads and installs.
Related articles
- Apple OSX Lion Turns My Desktop Into An Expensive Paperweight (michele.me)
- Apple OSX Lion Upgrade and First Impressions (michele.me)
A very nice guide. I also include VLC just for playing all movie files…
you’ll be wanting to get Alfred instead of Quicksilver – it’s far nicer, faster etc
Great list, I would add
VNCViewer, TextWrangler, Sparrow and Filezilla
Barry
Fair point – I hadn’t thought of it, as the machine I was working on was my office one
Thanks
Michele
Alex
I’m happy with QuickSilver – especially since they’ve started maintaining it more actively again
Michele
Jamie
What is Sparrow?
I assume TextWrangler is some kind of editor?
Michele
TextWrangler is a brilliant editor with inbuilt FTP/SFTP Client. I really cant recommend it enough! http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/index.html
Sparrow is a mail app that matches the twitter design – http://sparrowmailapp.com/
I’d hardly use Twitter’s design as a good example of anything 🙂 I’ve always thought it was pretty hideous
I really like sparrow mail for accessing gmail. I very rarely use the website anymore.
I use mail for exchange and imap accounts. I really dont like having gmail synced with mail, 4237 MB of mail seems to just destroy the mail app.
I’d recommend CoRD (http://cord.sourceforge.net/) over Microsoft Remote Desktop
Adium probably needs to be in there
Obviously I’d throw in PhotoShop but I think you’ve got that covered with your graphics app.
I LOVE Versions if you’re dealing with SVN
VirtualBox if you’re running some VMs for windows testing
UnRarX cus people still send rar’s for some stupid reason and The Unarchiver is borked with Lion
Tweetdeck will always be in there for me as well
FileZilla always going to be on any machine I have as well.
Espresso is my editor of choice … I just love it .. v2 is underway at the moment .. I guess that’s just one of those things one loves their editor of choice
I quite like Chicken of the VNC for my VNC stuff, as Shane mentioned CoRD really does kick the arse off Microsoft’s Remote Desktop. Transmit is an excellent client for ftp/sftp/s3/webdav. iTerm2 (iterm2.com) is an excellent terminal client and I’m also a big fan of Reeder for RSS.
@James – what does iTerm2 offer that the standard terminal lacks?
Thanks for your comment
Michele
@Michele iTerm2 is more configurable than the standard Terminal.app. For example, you have Profiles which can be setup for different servers that you connect to. I got used to using it a couple of years back because it offered tabs before Apple got their act together and introduced them to Terminal.app
@James
So it’s a bit like the iPhone app?
That could be useful 🙂
Michele
Useful list, Michele. Thanks for that.
My favourite Twitter app right now is YoruFukurou. It is a native Mac OS X app, not relying on Air, Silverlight or whatever else. It is fast and multi-account. Its only drawback is its name, I would say.
Agree that TextWrangler is a excellent text editor, and a must have for those who do programming or scripting.
@Patrick
Thanks for that tip – I’ll give it a go. The stability issues with both Tweetdeck and Seesmic have been very annoying!
Michele
+1 for Alfred – nice itunes player in it too
I like Plex for video
AppZapper is great for nuking apps and their associated crap
Divvy is a handy tool for quickly laying out apps on a screen