Ask HN: What are some well-designed, but less well-known native Mac apps? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What are some well-designed, but less well-known native Mac apps?

#41

Post by leesalminen » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

caleblloyd wrote: post #28

Sequel Pro is the best desktop app I have used to manage MySQL databases by far. I haven't had a Mac in years and haven't found anything near as good on Windows or Linux.

Same here. I still use it even though it crashes when closing a tab on latest MacOS. I’ve tried TablePlus and always end up back at Sequel Pro.

Re: Ask HN: What are some well-designed, but less well-known native Mac apps?

#42

Post by greymalik » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

jnieminen wrote: post #21

omarhaneef wrote: post #9

Ok folks, if there is a first prize I think I’m going to win with this entry: Scrivener

One should take a look at Ulysses too.

What would you say it does that Scrivener doesn’t? Or does better?

Re: Ask HN: What are some well-designed, but less well-known native Mac apps?

#43

Post by leesalminen » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 1:54 PM UTC

SomeOldThrow wrote: post #39

barrowclift wrote: post #19

Paw is hands-down the best REST app one I’ve ever used, and it’s a glorious, native macOS app. If you have any use for such a thing, give it a look.

I use it too and save often folks, it crashes frequently. Still a much, much, much better interface than postman/insomnia.

I use it frequently and have never had a crash. Wonder what that’s about

Re: Ask HN: What are some well-designed, but less well-known native Mac apps?

#44

Post by haasted » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

Contexts allows me to cmd+tab into specific windows, rather than an entire application. Literally did a little dance when I found this, as it was the only thing I missed from windows. https://contexts.co/

Re: Ask HN: What are some well-designed, but less well-known native Mac apps?

#45

Post by Zarel » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

caleblloyd wrote: post #28

Sequel Pro is the best desktop app I have used to manage MySQL databases by far. I haven't had a Mac in years and haven't found anything near as good on Windows or Linux.

Sequel Pro crashes every time you close it (supposedly 1.2 fixes this, but it's still not released yet), and doesn't support asking for confirmation before committing changes (so a typo can accidentally make an unintended change).

I've switched to TablePlus, which is also Mac native and seems better in every way: https://tableplus.com/

(It even has a dark mode!)

(But on the other hand, Sequel Pro is open-source and TablePlus isn't, which might also affect your decision.)

Re: Ask HN: What are some well-designed, but less well-known native Mac apps?

#46

Post by taneq » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

ScottFree wrote: post #24

Anything by Rogue Amoeba. I'm not sure there's anything "clever" about the design they choose for their apps. They're nice to interact with, they do the obvious thing and they're well engineered (rarely crash, don't have memory leaks, etc). https://rogueamoeba.com Reeder 2. The one thing it had that other RSS apps didn't have is collapsable columns. Accounts was the leftmost column. When you selected an account, it w…

> I'm not sure there's anything "clever" about the design they choose for their apps.

That's a feature in itself, though. Being clever usually means you're being at least somewhat unpredictable, which is bad for UI. It's much harder to come up with a simple design than a 'clever' one.

Re: Ask HN: What are some well-designed, but less well-known native Mac apps?

#47

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #35

BOOSTERHIDROGEN wrote: post #6

Scapple, inshort

Scrapple is $18. Hooray for sanely-priced indie Mac software! It even has an .edu license for $14.40.

Yeah, that's definitely a downside to this market.

I've come to accept it. I would have missed out on a lot of really great software otherwise, that ultimately proved worth their price.

(I don't think $18 is bad either, I was a little more miffed that e.g. Fission cost $30 for a pretty basic audio editor. But, again, it paid off.)

Also worth considering: these prices are one-time, unless a new version includes massive changes, and even then you can keep using your old release. I greatly prefer this to subscription models!

Re: Ask HN: What are some well-designed, but less well-known native Mac apps?

#48

Post by hutattedonmyarm » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

caleblloyd wrote: post #28

Sequel Pro is the best desktop app I have used to manage MySQL databases by far. I haven't had a Mac in years and haven't found anything near as good on Windows or Linux.

I've been using it for the last few weeks and while I do have some nitpicks, I like it! It crashes every now and then when I close a tab and I wish that when manually adding a new row I could select the value of a foreign key from a dropdown instead of entering it manually. But both get in my way rarely enough that I still like it

Re: Ask HN: What are some well-designed, but less well-known native Mac apps?

#49

Post by SomeOldThrow » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

leesalminen wrote: post #43

SomeOldThrow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it too and save often folks, it crashes frequently. Still a much, much, much better interface than postman/insomnia.

I use it frequently and have never had a crash. Wonder what that’s about

I use it pretty heavily myself so I might be mischaracterizing the actual rate.

Re: Ask HN: What are some well-designed, but less well-known native Mac apps?

#50

Post by memorycafe » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

VueScan by Hamrick Software. Scanner software -- Mac drivers for about a billion current and older (otherwise unsupported) scanners. Great support, regularly updated. I use VueScan with an old Nikon Coolscan color slide scanner, and VueScan provides better functionality than Nikon. I can now use my no longer supported Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M sheet fed duplex scanner.