textmate
Coda
To back up raquo here, Coda (http://www.panic.com/coda/) is my current editor of choice for most things. It's got great collaborative editing, a very nice UI, good syntax highlighting and plugin support.
Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?
21–30 of 143 posts
Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?
#221.) SteerMouse - tweak the mouse acceleration curve. If you're coming from a PC and you feel like your mouse doesn't move right, this will help.
2.) SizeUp - size and and position windows with hotkeys. For example, quickly set two windows to use exactly one-half of the screen each.
3.) Expandrive - mount S3 buckets, ftp sites, sftp sites as network drives. (Works great with textmate)
4.) Miro - excellent video player and torrent client with rss built in. Sort of like a torrent TIVO.
5.) Warp (http://www.ksuther.com/warp/) - adds some new methods for switching spaces. I have mine set to switch if I drag the mouse to a screen border while holding command.
6.) Also, if QuickSilver doesn't suit your tastes, give LaunchBar a try. Getting used to using one of those two apps pays huge dividends.
Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?
#23I'm recommending only free software here. 1. Adium for chat. It is just awesome. http://www.adiumx.com/ 2. Quicksilver. if you just want an app launcher spotlight is already good at that. http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-alchemy/downloads/list [edit: updated link to point to the recent versions] 3. Caffeine is small program which puts an icon on menu bar on which you can click to prevent your Mac from going to slee…
Why does anyone recommend Quickisilver? It's suffering from massive bitrot these days. Most users report frequent crashes, hangs, problems waking from sleep, and general slowness compared to Spotlight and LaunchBar?
I really wish it wasn't the case, but Quicksilver seems to have had its run and no one is stepping up to the plate to preserve it.
Most everything else you list is awesome though (although I think Evernote is far from essential and I'm not sure "free" is the right word for it ;)
Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?
#24Here's a related thread from last year:
- Ask YC: Mac virgin wants to know, what would you install? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=131241
My earlier list http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=131263 hasn't really changed but I do find the recently posted Black Tree Visor http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465334 to be very useful.
Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?
#25textmate
or, macvim (http://code.google.com/p/macvim/)
Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?
#26boundlessdreamz covered a lot, here's a few more (mostly commercial but still awesome): 1. Things - Awesome task management - http://www.culturedcode.com/ 2. Mailplane - If you use GMail this is a must. - http://mailplaneapp.com/ 3. AppZapper - Remove everything about an app - http://www.appzapper.com/ 4. LittleSnitch - Filters and prompts on outbound ip connections - http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.h…
I'll add my vote for Things! I was designing my own app to do this then Things came out. If you've ever been inspired by GTD - Getting Things Done, by David Allen, Things is an indispensable app, My third most used app next to Mail and Safari. It also has great support for syncing with the iPhone so you can take your lists on the road and store your tasks or ideas wherever you are.
Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?
#27I'm recommending only free software here. 1. Adium for chat. It is just awesome. http://www.adiumx.com/ 2. Quicksilver. if you just want an app launcher spotlight is already good at that. http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-alchemy/downloads/list [edit: updated link to point to the recent versions] 3. Caffeine is small program which puts an icon on menu bar on which you can click to prevent your Mac from going to slee…
Why does anyone recommend Quickisilver? It's suffering from massive bitrot these days. Most users report frequent crashes, hangs, problems waking from sleep, and general slowness compared to Spotlight and LaunchBar? I really wish it wasn't the case, but Quicksilver seems to have had its run and no one is stepping up to the plate to preserve it. Most everything else you list is awesome though (although I think Evernot…
I don't know about LaunchBar, but Spotlight doesn't offer the same things that Quicksilver does. Sure it does application launching, but Quicksilver does more, not to mention Quicksilver's recommendation algorithm is, in my opinion, better.
Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?
#28I'm recommending only free software here. 1. Adium for chat. It is just awesome. http://www.adiumx.com/ 2. Quicksilver. if you just want an app launcher spotlight is already good at that. http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-alchemy/downloads/list [edit: updated link to point to the recent versions] 3. Caffeine is small program which puts an icon on menu bar on which you can click to prevent your Mac from going to slee…
Why does anyone recommend Quickisilver? It's suffering from massive bitrot these days. Most users report frequent crashes, hangs, problems waking from sleep, and general slowness compared to Spotlight and LaunchBar? I really wish it wasn't the case, but Quicksilver seems to have had its run and no one is stepping up to the plate to preserve it. Most everything else you list is awesome though (although I think Evernot…
I only use it because it lets me define app-starting hot keys Command-F1, F2, etc. Mac OS X doesn't, as far as I can tell. Is there any other freeware app that will let me do that?
Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?
#29This post might be useful:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/110065/must-have-tools-fo...
It listed all the userful tools that would be relevant to a programmer.
Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?
#30I'm recommending only free software here. 1. Adium for chat. It is just awesome. http://www.adiumx.com/ 2. Quicksilver. if you just want an app launcher spotlight is already good at that. http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-alchemy/downloads/list [edit: updated link to point to the recent versions] 3. Caffeine is small program which puts an icon on menu bar on which you can click to prevent your Mac from going to slee…
Why does anyone recommend Quickisilver? It's suffering from massive bitrot these days. Most users report frequent crashes, hangs, problems waking from sleep, and general slowness compared to Spotlight and LaunchBar? I really wish it wasn't the case, but Quicksilver seems to have had its run and no one is stepping up to the plate to preserve it. Most everything else you list is awesome though (although I think Evernot…
It is still under development though. http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-alchemy/downloads/list
The original author has been hired by google and is working on google quicksearch box http://qsb-mac.googlecode.com