My OSX Essential Apps in 2011

Apple 27" iMacAfter 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.
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By Michele Neylon

Michele is founder and CEO of Irish hosting provider and domain name registrar Blacknight.

18 comments

  2. you’ll be wanting to get Alfred instead of Quicksilver – it’s far nicer, faster etc

  5. Alex
    I’m happy with QuickSilver – especially since they’ve started maintaining it more actively again
    Michele

  8. I’d hardly use Twitter’s design as a good example of anything 🙂 I’ve always thought it was pretty hideous

  9. 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.

  11. 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

  12. 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.

  14. @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

  16. 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.

  17. @Patrick
    Thanks for that tip – I’ll give it a go. The stability issues with both Tweetdeck and Seesmic have been very annoying!

    Michele

  18. +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

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