What OS X Software Makes You Love Your Mac?

Starky

Starky

Starky

Associate
Joined
18 May 2009
Posts
125
Location
Glasgow, UK
Just thought that it would be cool to see what people like to run on their mac to enhance their experience - I know that a lot of the software will have Windows alternatives but fire away anyway! I won't post web addresses but googling them will serve you perfectly well.

SizzlingKeys

Great application that allows you to define your own shortcuts for iTunes. For instance I use alt+apple+direction key to skip tracks and control my volume and alt+apple+spacebar to pause or resume music. Makes it really easy to control what you're listening to while keeping iTunes in another minimised.

InsomniaX

This is a great app for apple macbooks as it disables sleep mode when you close over the case. This isn't great because it reduces air flow but I have never had any trouble using it. I regularly plug my macbook into my TV to watch videos or use it for music so this app is great!

Connect360

Lets you connect your mac with your xbox360 to share the music - a workaround to get over Microsoft not providing a connection client for macs.

iStat

This is a widget that most of you already have but it's an awesome way to monitor your mac on a basic level and it looks pretty!

Sing that iTune

Another widget - this will attempt to fetch the lyrics to any song that you're currently listening to. Doesn't always work but it's pretty decent and nice to have in the background

rEFIt

This is a cool program that forces your mac to always go to a partition selection screen when it boots up - so it's great if you have multiple OS with bootcamp or otherwise since I have forgotten to hold the option key many times when I didn't want to automatically boot into the default partition.



iPhone + Mac

These are probably available for the iPod Touch too

AirMouse

Well worth the money! Turns your iPhone into a sweet mouse and keyboard that connects wirelessly with your mac. I love it because I can control my mac from my couch while I've got it plugged into the TV to watch movies.



That's all for now - would be great to see what extra software you all enjoy using
 
A small selection:

Caffeine

Stops my Mac going to sleep, plus I get a cool little coffee cup icon up the top. :P

Skitch

Screen-grabbing, doodling and image uploading all in one app.

TextMate

Couldn't code without it. :)

Perian

So I can watch almost everything in Quicktime
 
Safari, Mail and Adium.

Yes, I know you can get alternatives for these on other operating systems but running in OS X, they're just amazing.
 
Skitch
Skitch is a killer app for me, the ease of taking and annotating screenshots or clippings, uploading them and providing me with a single click copy for the address is fantastic. I use it a lot.

1Password
I use this multiple times every day. Previously I had two or three specific passwords that I'd use for forums, shops and anywhere that used a password. Incredibly insecure. With 1Password I've now got complex passwords consisting of numbers, letters and symbols for all my logins at a minimum length of 14 characters, often up to 18 or 20 characters. Nobody should be able to guess those! There's also an iPhone app which syncs to the Mac so that I can retrieve passwords when I'm out and about.

Tweetiehttp://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/
Tweetie for my Twitter needs. A lot of people like Tweetdeck, I didn't like it but I do like Tweetie.

Chicken of the VNChttp://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/
I have one Windows PC on my network, it's headerless and runs my web/email/amateur radio systems. I access it using Chicken of the VNC.

TextExpanderhttp://www.smileonmymac.com/TextExpander/
TextExpander from Smile on my mac (I feel like Dave Hamilton when I say that) is great. It allows me to set up shortcuts for phrases that I type regularly and I use it a lot on a daily basis.

That's just a few of the apps I use regularly.
 
Caffeine

- Doesn't exactly make me love my Mac but fixes one of Mac's problem. If enabled it stops the screen from dimming so I can watch fullscreen flash videos without that problem.

Smultron & Cyberduck

- Makes all my web work so much easier on a Mac and it was one of the main reasons I got a MacBook.

Parallels

- Great piece of software used to virtulize Windows so I can still develop applications for Windows.
 
On a slight twist to the subject line, I wiped my Macbook and put Windows 7 on it and it worked like a charm. I like the hardware, but I'm still not a fan of OS X - I look after a small network of machines and coupled with our Leopard Server, I've had plenty of issues in the past that took some time to iron out. Saying that, I think the iChat software does a good job with screen sharing / video conferencing as well as being able to easily save anything to a PDF from the print menu. I was pleased to see that Eve Online have a Mac client so I can use that on my work machine when I'm not at home ;)
 
I'm also running Windows 7 with BootCamp - it runs really well, a lot faster than Vista did and all the drivers work perfectly. Stick with the 32-bit version though, I found the 64-bit version to be buggy when I was trying to install it on my Macbook (only have 2 Gig RAM though so who cares!)
 
Agreed, the Macbook I have isn't that fast and has a pants graphics card onboard. The 32 bit version ran well though even with Aero which was a nice surprise. I think it comes down to Windows 7 being a lot lighter than Vista. Certainly feels that way anyway.

By the way, not looking to start a flaming war here about Windows, I genuinely found it a mmuch nicer machine to use by replacing OS X.
 
Things
LaunchBar (better than QuickSilver (oh no he di..nt!!))
NetNewsWire
Safari (I'm over Firefox extensions)
Transmit
 
That have no equivalent on another OS (IMO):

iPhoto
Tweetie/Twitterific
Pages (I recently had a call to use it in Page Layout mode instead of the normal Word Processing and quite frankly it was awesome)
Skitch
iMovie
iStumbler
iStat Pro


Other amazing software:

iTunes
iCal/Address Book/Mail integrating with each other
Adium
Pixelmator
 
OSX makes me love my Mac, simply because it's just so clean and efficient compared to Windows. :p

But I also use these programs on a regular basis.

- Safari
- Adium
- Transmission
- Genesis Plus (naughty!)
 
iTunes, iPhone, OS X itself and the simplicity of some day to day tasks. Oh and the ability to save to PDF without having to install 3rd party software.

But for me its the combination of all the small improvements, the touch pad on my MBP in OS X is so refined compared to W7 on the same laptop and even any other laptop i've used out there. Others just feel so cheap and useless.
 
I wanted something that 'just worked' allowed things to be done quickly. I find I do the things I need without the machine getting in the way.

Mail
Used for domestic mail, it's integration with Spotlight means it does everything I need.

AddressBook
Contacts - it's looks like an LDAP front end and it's almost that (NSData instead) but it works and integrates with things.

iCal
Used for keeping me in check. Also syncs with my mobile phone via MissingSync

MissingSync
Can be without this now. Syncs all the calendar, address book and other things to my mobile phone.

iTunes
No explanation needed - just does it's thing and also syncs to my iPod nano that I use for sport/drumming etc. I got the nano as it's solid state.

iPhoto
Great app.. still use the iPhoto 6 that came with my MBP and Tiger! I use it for photo store and organisation.

Safari 4 beta
I use this as my main browser. I have firefox 3 if I run into site trouble (it's nice but a little chunky for my tastes).

NoteBook
This is a simple application but some how I find more and more uses for it. It's a bit more than a bullet list for Todos.. but having multiple todo lists for things (projects) and being able to make a virtual day book with links and things make it worth it.
Very useful for creating outlines and working at an abstract level.

Sykpe
This I couldn't do without. It's my only IM and VoIP client.

BeerAlchemy
Simplifies beer making considerably (I home brew). Helps remembering what to order and also means you don't have to sit with a pen and paper to calculate the amounts, timings etc to get the designed beer (I did it manually once to get a better understanding but never again!).

NeoOffice
Well I've been using NeoOffice - mainly the spreadsheet for financial planning and the word processor for domestic letters. Although free/open document I find it a little clunky and disjointed - so I'm seriously considering a move to iWork (currently trying the trial) instead.

Preview
People don't praise this enough.. I used to use Gimp/X11 for resizing and converting pictures but Preview now resizes and converts (along with some other basic tools) and has made Gimp redundant for my needs.

SmcFanControl
Mandatory application for nVidia cursed MBP owners. It allows me to monitor and control the fans to stop the temps rising dangerously high. Allows me to set fan speeds for charging too so the hot battery doesn't cause the machine to heat up too.

Parallels
I've used this since 3.0 and now 4.0. In the last job I used this for all my business work - faster than my laptop and ran XP32 with Office and other applications without a hitch. There's something funny watching people see it start windows in a window.. then running into fullscreen for a presentation etc.. :D Using parallels transporter this is so simple to take the old laptop and within a few hours you're working in a VM.
I've used this with RedHat linux Advanced Server 64bit for demoing work software too. Ran perfectly after converting the VM machine from VMware.
So impressed with it, that a work colleague bought it for his new MBP and did the same!
I've also used this at home with ubuntu for gcc development for blackfin based robotics.
In short - this is an awesome application and I certainly got my money's worth out if it.

ChickenOfTheVNC
Awesome application for those that use headless VNC-enables boxes.

Cyberduck
Another awesome application - an FTP client.

LittleSnitch
Great little application that makes me feel a little safer being able to see and control network i/o from each application.

Reason
I nice DAW for playing around with. Currently my attention has move to drums (Roland MIDI V-drums) so this is getting less play time.

VDrumLib
A useful tool for rearranging the sound libraries (and loading new ones) for any Vdrum kit.

RapidWeaver
An interesting idea, makes website updates quick but it's nothing more than a lazy CSS organiser and a set of modules to do make cookie cutter sites. Coda may be more inline if you want anything other than the standard set as you have to 'develop' for RapidWeaver rather than RW support your development. Jury still out on this one.


Other's I've looked at...

Omnigraffe Professional
Hmm this is nice and shiney but is missing a lot if useful functionality present in Visio. If you're a business user of Visio (and use it regularly) then you'll feel limited by it (even the Pro version). In short it's expensive for what it is.

Sibelius 5
This is an awesome piece of kit. Quick, accurate and technically excellent. However it's really focused on musical score (paper sheet) production and as such isn't suited for my purpose. MIDI input is good but it's not a realtime performance tool like Logic. Slightly clunky compared to a pen and pre-printed staves paper when composing but the same could be said for all software based input.

Finale
No. Something just turns me off about this compared to Sibelius not sure if it's the company itself or the user interface..

SmartScore Pro
Crashed more than once in use. Still a way behind Sibelius/Finale. User interface is confusing and cluttered without any way of freeing you from it (ie done by a programmer rather than a UI expert!). If they sorted that out - then it could have promise.

Guitar Pro 5
A useful application however after moving away from the guitar this is now not really used as much as it was. Also has some serious limitations (ie it can have two notes of different length at the same interval in the bar - instead you have to split into two tracks).

StoryMill
I went through a spate of looking at book authoring software. This is more scene based and provides a tools set of character database etc. You could do all this with Notebook and Pages.. although it does have (like Pages) an awesome fullscreen mode - just a completely back screen with green writing just like an old VT terminal :D
 
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iLife
iWork

Tweetie
Cha-Ching
Delicious Library

Final Cut Studio - I don't run it at the moment but I used to use it on a 24" iMac and no other video editing suite comes close.

And, of course, OS X itself. Yes Windows 7 is good and far better than Vista but it still gets in the way of my workflow. OS X is where I feel at home.
 
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