Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?

#61

Post by chris24 » Sun, May 17, 2009, 5:19 PM UTC

lmoorman wrote: post #44

1password. A must that makes your life much easier.

1Password's nice, but I've found Sxipper [1] to be better if all I need to use is Firefox. Sxipper has a really nice way of handling password changes, multiple accounts, and comment forms.

[1] - http://www.sxipper.com/

Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?

#62

Post by tortilla » Sun, May 17, 2009, 5:21 PM UTC

crad wrote: post #19

boundlessdreamz 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…

Mailplane is great, especially if you have multiple gmail and google mail accounts.

Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?

#63

Post by chris24 » Sun, May 17, 2009, 5:27 PM UTC

quizbiz wrote: post #59

What about... games? :P

World of Goo is a must-have, even for non-gamers. It's makes for a nice break from doing actual work. ;) http://www.worldofgoo.com/

Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?

#64

Post by juliend2 » Sun, May 17, 2009, 5:39 PM UTC

I just reinstalled my mac today. Here is what i installed so far :

1-quicksilver

2-iTerm (terminal. with tabs)

3-Photoshop CS3 (cs4 is slow on my macbook)

4-Transmit

5-DropBox client

6-Textmate

7-Git

8-The Hit List (best osx app for lists)

9-LimeChat (irc client)

Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?

#65

Post by arupchak » Sun, May 17, 2009, 5:40 PM UTC

raquo wrote: post #14

karl11 wrote: post #2

textmate

Coda

Coda is expensive ($99) but the convenience of working on remote files via SFTP within the program is unmatched. If your session gets disconnected in the midst of editing a file, nothing to worry about, Coda will automatically log back in for you and update the file you were working on when you save.

Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?

#66

Post by cglee » Sun, May 17, 2009, 5:42 PM UTC

phn1x wrote: post #11

I see a lot of people recommending virtual pc but does anyone have anything to say about vm fusion? A buddy of mine was going to hook me up with a copy. I've used virtual PC on linux quite a bit but I was always frustrated with the lack of ability to bridge the networking.

Fusion is awesome, especially their "Unity" feature.

Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?

#67

Post by JoshRosen » Sun, May 17, 2009, 5:46 PM UTC

Gitx is a native OS X GUI for git. It comes with a nice command line tool, gitx, that works like gitk. http://gitx.frim.nl/

Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?

#68

Post by Oompa » Sun, May 17, 2009, 5:47 PM UTC

Skeuomorph wrote: post #47

boundlessdreamz wrote: post #8

I'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…

This list is great. Here's some more "FREE" software (some would appreciate a donation/purchase but are not crippled): 1. This may be obvious but as of the latest version, you don't gain much from a corporate email program like Entourage. I use Apple Mail, with IMAP and Google Apps for Your Domain. One account has 3.8GB of email and another has 4.1GB, according to Google. It scales fine and stays in sync across devic…

I find GrabUp (http://grabup.com/) better than Skitch, mainly because I never use the extra features that Skitch gives on top of just taking a screenshot and uploading it.

Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?

#69

Post by sreitshamer » Sun, May 17, 2009, 5:54 PM UTC

Nambu Twitter client. I like it much more than Tweetdeck.

Re: Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac?

#70

Post by makecheck » Sun, May 17, 2009, 5:58 PM UTC

Some of the things I use:

- DragThing; you will never miss Apple's Dock, this is an absolutely essential desktop enhancement, e.g. to create multiple tabbed docks anywhere you want, with themes.

- OmniWeb (now free); I've tried many web browsers, and I like this best. Safari engine.

- MacTelnet (tabbed terminal). It now works for local programs and not just servers, so I use it instead of Terminal.

- SnapzPro X (or alternatives), useful for doing more intelligent screenshots or video captures.

- DesktopCalendar (by Takashi Hamada), a really nice use of space and very configurable. Also has a menu option.

- Growl, for pretty and unobtrusive notification windows. This is actually really well supported by 3rd party applications.

- SCPlugin, if you're a Subversion user; nice Finder integration.