What's on my desktop

Yesterday’s post about Firefox raised some questions about what else is on my desktop. I have to admit I feel much more productive on Macs. I’ve also selected the apps that really enhance my productivity. Macs have excellent apps. These are the ones I think help the most with little comments as to why I’ve selected them. Some of them have windows or Linux equivalents for those of you who haven’t switched or find other platforms work better for you.

Just search for any of these on versiontracker (dead link) or google it if it’s not there. (oh, and stop mailing me about this stuff. Use the comments feature at the bottom of posts. You can subscribe to comments and the blog via rss too.)

MacJournal

Best app for journalling, writing and blogging. Love it. The fact you can now post everything (cept embedded pictures) directly into WordPress even makes it better.

AdiumX

Kicks Fire’s butt and uses all the protocols. Love the photo address book integration so that I have little piccies of my friends while talking to them. Well thought out client and it’s not even at version 1.0 yet.

NetNewsWire

The best rss reader hands down. You even get the pictures in the feed window so you can basically avoid going to web sites altogether. Really great.

Firefox

Safari is nice, but Firefox beats it and everything else. Switch. Extensions, themable and open source nd standards. Very nice. Theme: Qute. Extensions: Sage rss, Web Developer, OpenBook.

QuickSilver

Rocks! Basically it’s Tiger’s new Spotlight feature. Love it. Has made me way faster. Command-Space and then type and hit return. Launches apps and I love the fact it gives me piccies of my friends for the addressbook entries. Stellar.

SizzlingKeys for iTunes

Great little app to control iTunes from the keyboard. Great. Free.

Meteorologist

Menu bar app for worldwide weather forecasts to see if it is raining on my friends and what the forecasts are for the next little while. Great. Free.

Menu Calendar

Nice menu bar pocket calendar and scheduler works off iCal.

Acquisition

For all your P2P needs. Best client out there for file sharing on the Mac

Tomato Torrent

Scalable, downloadable networks for popular files. Rocks ! This is the way to get large files over the net in a timely manner.

CocoaMySQL

Nice graphical interface for MySQL. Use it all the time. Great for backup dumps, design and simple browsing or editing fields.

ChronoSync

Live and die by your backups. I lost this program for a simple feature : it auto backups my important directories to my iPod when I plug the iPod in. Brainless backups. Love it.

iClock

World clocks menu bar + stock quotes. Great little app to complement Meteo.

iTerm

Much better terminal with tabs like in Linux. Great for the power CLI user.

Moneydance

Very good multinational finance app though lacks feature richness of Quicken. Still great for all your needs including tracking, planning and budgeting. Runs in Java son on Windows, OSX or Linux. This or gnucash via fink are about the only things that work for me.

Fink

All the free open source software ports you can get. Makes OSS work on the Mac. Fantastic piece of work and makes the switch from Linux to Mac painless.

SnapNDrag

Nice screen capture utility with drag out pictures. I really like it.

SubEthaEdit

Best text editor for the Mac. Much better than BBEdit and it is also collaboration enabled so multiple people can work on one doc at the same time. Fantastic.

FastTrack

Project management app like MS Project and imports MPX. Pricey but pretty good. Another area like financial apps where not a lot of good choices.

TimeLog

Great little integrated time logging app for my consulting. Easy to start/stop timers and keep track of everything as well as figure out how much those deadbeats owe you.

iTunes

The greatest music program I have ever used. Love it. And works so well with my iPod.

iPhoto

Fantastic photo app. Even better when web enabled with myPhoto. Still wish it had hierarchical folders though. Maybe the next version.

iCal

Standards based calendaring app, with multiple calendars. Great. Lot of things I could think to add but it does the job and does it well and in a lightweight way.

Mail.app

Well done, standards based mail with speedy search. Love it.

GPG

Cause you should always encrypt. Excellent implementation. Works great for me.

GPGMail

Cause encrypting mail is something we should all do. Well implemented GPG plugin. Highly recommended.

MailPriority

Another plugin for mail to allow you to urgent or low priority the mail.

GPGKeys

Graphical GPG/PGP key management app. Beats doing the CLI thing.

Fugu

Excellent GUI scp/sftp interface so you practice safe file transfer. This app is indispensable in my opinion and if you’re using FTP it’s not a good thing.

Colloquy

Fab open source IRC client that takes the sting out of being a beginner but is amazing for experts as well. Have to love it even though I find myself using IM much more these days.