Mac OS Apps

A selection of software I’m running on my MacBook Air

I just upgraded my laptop so now is a good time as any to take stock of which apps I’m bringing over from my old machine.

Browsers – I work on the web all day and need to make sure the sites I work on look good in all browsers. I often have one browser cookied with all my default identities and then use the other two as test browsers where I clear cookies & cache on a regular basis to start fresh.

• Google Chrome
  • Pocket – to save longish articles you want to read later
  • Save to Google Drive – useful for uploading screen captures to Google Drive library where thumbnail view can be used as a library of site designs
• Mozilla Firefox
  • Abduction! – adds “save page as image” to File menu so you can archive pages for later
  • Adobe Flash – yeah, it’s still needed sometimes
• Apple Safari

Apps from the App Store

• Numbers – spreadsheet of choice
• Keynote – prefer it to PowerPoint
• TinyGrab – great for quickly sharing screenshots to illustrate something
• Pixelmator – a low cost alternative to PhotoShop. I prefer Paint.net but that only runs on Windows.
• TextWrangler – my text editor
• Twitter – yeah, I use the app.
• My Balsamic – used less now that the team is on MyBalsamiq
• Caffeine – great little menu bar item that will keep your laptop from going to sleep

Apps downloaded from elsewhere

• Day-o – very simple menu bar calendar. Minimalist.
• FileZilla – an FTP client
• Audacity – sound editor
• Skype – for group chat & voice
• Omni Disk Sweeper – delete files with extreme prejudice