Mac Apps that Make Me Happy in My Pants

[hector_rashbaum]

Rrowl.

With screwthedaisies switching to Mac this week, and tedious busywork awaiting me in Space 5, and nothing but stalled pr0n in Space 6, I finally have the motivation I need to write the guide to Mac software I couldn't live without (cue melodrama) I've been wanting to write. YAY.

Things I use regularly that didn't make the list: The iLife and iWorks suites, Adobe CS3 Design Premium, Firefox, Dashboard/Widgets.

I. Resources

When I need something new, or to re-download something old, I go here first.

A. Open Source Mac

A best-of list of free, open-source Mac software. When I say "hm, I wonder if there's an app that ______", this is my absolute first stop. Plus, I check about once a month to see if anything new and interesting's been added.

B. FreeSMUG

Far more comprehensive listing of free, open-source Mac software. If I can't find an app at OSM that'll do what I need, I stop here.

C. Lifehacker's Mac OS X and Featured Mac Download tags

I read Lifehacker daily, so I see these as they come in, but I'm also working my way through the archives (back to the release of Leopard, is my goal, but I'm likely to get bored before then). A lot of nifty, hacky-type little apps, mainly aimed at productivity and boosting what your system can do. My guess is I use about 10% of what gets posted here; totally worth it.

D. I Use This

I thought this was the most useless concept for a social networking site ever (networking based on computer programs OH GOD WHY)...and then I had to set up a new computer in Vermont, with my old one, my reference point, in NC...and I had a handy list of all the software I use and love right there to start from. Spiffo!

E. Apple's Downloads Page

This is really only worth it if a) you don't mind paying for software (if you haven't noticed, I'm a freeware sort of girl, lol) or b) you don't mind sifting for freeware and looking at a bunch of cool shit that definitely ain't free. I'll sift through here once every couple of months, when I remember.

II. System

Grease the wheels, tighten the bolts, run everything a little more smoothly.

A. Quicksilver

No Mac user should be without Quicksilver, for serious. At minimum, it's an app launcher - I hit ctrl-space, type a few letters, and from anywhere I can open anything. But you can set QS up to do so, so, so much more.

1. A Beginner's Guide to Quicksilver
2. Advanced Quicksilver Guide
3. Nine Time-Saving Quicksilver Triggers

B. Spaces (built-in to Leopard)

I thought about not mentioning this, since it's built-in and nothing you need to go download, but it's like my favorite thing EVAR so in it goes. What Spaces does, essentially, is create virtual desktops - up to 16 (4 rows, 4 columns). You can designate programs to open in specific spaces (for example, programming apps all open in Space 4, for me, design all goes in 5, writing in 6. Fun stuff is the top row, 1, 2, and 3). Or you can tell something to run in every space, so no matter where you are you can see it. Anything that isn't designated opens in the space you're in when you open it. I less-than-three Spaces liek whoa.

C. Wallpaper Clocks

This almost went in "frivolities", but eh. Basically, you download and install the program, then you can download a wallpaper clock from the site (or design your own, there are instructions on the site), and when you double-click it...voila. The program refreshes the wallpaper every minute, so you have a fully functioning clock with everything but a second hand on your desktop. YAY.

D. AppCleaner

One of OS X's shortcomings is there's no good uninstall built-in - you throw away the application, but that's all that gets trashed, so you're left with any files that ended up in any other folders. AppCleaner handles this beautifully, and uses so little memory I can keep it running constantly without trouble.

E. Proxi

I haven't played with this enough to get the full extent of its functionality yet, but it looks like it could be up there with Quicksilver as far as "omg don't use a Mac without it" status. Basically it's a group of application triggers - it's got stuff for the Apple remote, for iTunes, Skype, Mail, all sorts of popular apps - and you can create Applescripts to coincide with those triggers (plus the built-in scripts). All I use it for right now is to auto-update MoodBlast when iTunes changes; I plan to take some time real soon to just dig in and really see what this one can do

III. The Interblag

Without it, would my life have any meaning? ... Probably. But with these, I don't have to take that chance!

A. Adium (Chat)

I'm not sure Adium can live up to the hype I've been giving it to H. I love Adium. I want to marry it. Adium is a multi-protocol chat client that covers everything (including LJ Talk - separately from Jabber, so you can be online with an LJ account AND a Google account AND another Jabber account if that floats your boat). And there's a massive creative community, so you can find skins and emoticons and sound sets and menu bar icons and dock icons to fit ANY scheme - and if you can't, modification is EASY AS FUCK. When I change my wallpaper, step two is ALWAYS to coordinate my Adium, because it's so quick and easy.

B. Camino (Browser)

I have to confess, I don't actually use Camino anymore; I just don't like Safari enough to recommend it and don't feel I have to recommend Firefox. To be honest, I actually like the Camino experience out-of-the-box better than Firefox out-of-the-box - it was add-ons that finally made me switch back. But where Firefox always felt to me like a Windows browser modified just enough to use on a Mac (you can't even tab to a drop-down menu using Firefox), Camino is Mac native. If you can live without extensions, and with the occasional annoyance of web apps that check name rather than capability (Camino can do anything Firefox can, but you'll occasionally get turned away and told you have to be using IE or Firefox), I heartily recommend Camino.

C. Colloquy (IRC)

Easily the best Mac IRC client I've ever tried, and the only one to never ever give me any trouble. Remarkably easy to pick up and use, and nice to look at besides.

D. Cyberduck (FTP)

The icon is a ducky OMG so cool. I love Cyberduck with a white-hot, burning passion. Lightweight, quick, pleasant interface, easy bookmarking, and like everything else I love, free. I've tried omgexpensive Fetch, and even without money involved I like Cyberduck wayway more. Also...ducky!

E. Transmission (BitTorrent)

When I first discovered Transmission, I was fed up with Azureus to the point of tears. My old computer was slow anyway, and at some point Azureus switched to this flashy, overblown resource hog that, oh yeah, could also download torrents too, if I didn't do ANYTHING ELSE. EVER. Transmission is cute, mega-lightweight, much more Mac-looking, and it's a straightforward torrent client - no extra flashy bullshit. My favorite feature is speed limit mode - set a limit for up and downloads, and then you can limit everything with one click. Great for when I've been sucking up bandwidth and need to pretend I'm not 0:). For such a lightweight, simplistic client, surprisingly versatile.

IV. Multimedia

Movies and music, my favorite addictions.

Note: I use iTunes for my music library, so the music-related apps here are mainly iTunes supplements. I don't bother with a movie library, because I haven't found one with a broad enough range of supported filetypes...suggestions?

A. Audacity (Music)

I don't often edit music, but when I need to Audacity is a nifty app. People who don't grasp technology fully, like my mom, take for granted that I can do things like splice two songs together, or cut out a verse in the middle, or add another round of the chorus. Audacity is meant for people who know what they're doing far more than I do, but it's easy enough to figure it out that I can do the little projects I'm asked to do with ease, and impress the less technologically-savvy ;)

B. Handbrake (Video)

Handbrake might just make life worthwhile. Hyperbole? ... Okay, yes. But. Handbrake is a DVD ripping program. Not just ripping - ripping to the iPod compatible mp4 format. Pop in a dvd and 20 minutes later you can watch it anywhere. And if you don't have a video-compatible iPod, mp4s can be watched in any reasonably up-to-date copy of QuickTime. Versatile liek whoa, too - if you've got a tv show on dvd with one episode you haven't seen, you can have just that one episode for your wait in the doctor's office. Yaaaaay Handbrake.

C. iEatBrainz (Music)

The site was down so I linked to the I Use This page. iEatBrainz is a client to use with the MusicBrainz database, a big catalog of track information. You open it, choose tracks from your library, and it checks the track against the database. Imperfect, for sure - my favorite was when it tried to tell me a Hanson song was Maiden - but if you have a ton of music (say, 13,000-odd songs) and a desire to fix their artist-album-track number info, this is a huge timesaver even knowing it's only right about half the time, and you have to double-check every track before you let it go through with the fix.

D. iTunes Alarm (Music)

Does what it says on the tin. Lot of functionality for a little app - you can set regular alarms, one-time alarms, associate playlists or tell it to choose at random from everything, use it to stop music when you go to bed or start it to wake you up...or all of the above. Exactly what I need from an alarm, no more and no less.

E. Moody (Music)

Moody is just the niftiest little app. I run it in every space so I always have access to it. What it does...you run it while you listen to music, when a song plays you click on one of the 16 colors in the window that goes with that song (for however you decide "goes with" works), and it'll add the tag associated with that color in the song's comment field. You can customize the colors, and the tags - I left it all default because as OCD as I am I'd spend HOURS choosing and associating - and use it to build custom playlists with iTunes smart playlists. I keep a running list of each tag going, so when I'm in the car about to go somewhere and have NO IDEA what to listen to, I can just choose the purple playlist (mostly power ballads), and set my alarm to the yellow playlist (stuff that makes me happy without fail).

F. Tubesock (Video)

Rip videos from YouTube FUCKYES. Also rip just the audio tracks from YouTube videos in mp3 format? DOUBLE FUCK YES. One of the few pay apps on the list, and worth every frigging penny. I believe it was sidewinder who first brought this to my attention, and omg yay for that. Because this has been one of the most invaluable apps ever - it's a low-fuss way to build a music video collection, or yoink a lolarious snl skit or trailer that's sure to get pulled, or grab a song you're not sure you can find on traditional downloading networks.

G. VLC (Video)

Watch every video format every conceived by man. Ever. Better quality and controls full-screen than QuickTime, on top of being able to play more things on heaven and Earth than QT could ever dream of.

H. QuickTag (Music)

It seems like everything on Earth uses tagging systems now, and for good reason, as far as I'm concerned. QuickTag is unobtrusive and lightweight, smartly fills your tags into the grouping field (meaning you can use it in conjunction with Moody without worrying about one wiping the other's tags), and makes it a snap to implement a tagging system in your iTunes library. My suggestion is to take a little time to sit down and work out a concise, non-redundant (do you need genre tags, with the genre field?) tagging system and stick to it. But then, I have OCD ;)

V. Programming/Writing

Text, glorious text, what comes next, glorious text...yeah, I got nothing.

A. Aptana (Web)

Aptana isn't pretty. And it's a bit of a resource hog. And I've found code assist to be a bit too slow to do me much good. But even with all that...it's my favorite IDE ever. Even better than Dreamweaver, but that has a lot to do with my flaming hatred for WYSIWYG, and Dreamweaver's love affair with it. Aptana's built for creating dynamic pages, so it has code support for tons and tons and tons of web-oriented languages. I built both The Prompt Machine and The Smut Generator entirely in Aptana.

B. CeltX (Screenwriting)

This is software entirely for screen-format writing, so I haven't used it much, but when I did it was a thing of beauty and a joy for the half hour or so at a time I wrote. The auto-formatting is a charm, there was absolutely no need to go in and manually clean up the way there so often is, and there are some awesome extras. If you don't do any screenwriting, the character database would be pretty useful if you've been wanting something to supplement a lightweight text editor - and CeltX is lightweight enough you won't feel silly using a beefy program for one feature.

C. Notebook (Personal Wiki)

I figure this is relevant under this category cause I use it for writing research. Notebook is, as the parenthetical notes, a personal wiki. The Mac version is self-contained and can be run on a thumb drive, which is awesome. I'm using it right now to research JBJ/Gore; I thought it'd be most useful for Gore, who I know little about, but it's about equal - organizing Jon's information into reasonable wiki format has given me some awesome insight for the story. BUT if you're the sort of person who gets caught up in perfect formatting and uniformity, like Miss OCD here, I'd actually recommend avoiding this.

D. Smultron (HTML, used for writing)

I used to use WriteRoom for fic and long or HTML-heavy LJ posts, and it was awesome; but it went pay and with the amount of free text apps no way am I paying for a simple writing tool. I had Smultron downloaded already for light coding that didn't need Aptana-level backup, and since most of my writing is for the web and includes at least a little markup, I thought I'd try writing in a program with syntax highlighting. Awesome idea; when I fic, I can get an idea of how much dialogue and bold/italics I'm using at a quick glance; when I write big LJ posts I can have a little extra markup support. Nifty. And if you, like me and many others, find Smultron ugly as sin, try the make Smultron pretty patch.

E. JJEdit (Java)

There isn't much to say about this one. Pleasant little Java IDE, about as simplistic as it gets in the best way. I had a bitch of a time finding a decent Java editor for Mac when I was suffering through Java class...this was a Godsend.

VI. Miscellany

Doo-dads is an awesome word, y/n

A. Lego Digital Designer (Toy)

The parenthetical should actually say marketing tool - you build a lego creation and then click a button that takes you to the online Lego store where you can buy the kit to build your creation in person. But ignore that step, and just PLAY WITH AN UNLIMITED SUPPLY OF LEGOS. FUCK YES.

B. Pixen (Pixel Art)

Pixen wins the award for best app I have no legit use for. I have a hard time describing it because I tend to describe in terms of other programs; I Use This says Pixen is like a powerful MSPaint, which is way underselling it, or a simpler Photoshop, which...nope. It's designed for small-scale artists; people who work with sprites, stuff like that. I use it for RF icons a lot of the time, 80x80 is a good size to work in Pixen with. Basically it's for working pixel-by-pixel, or as close to that as you can get. I love it.

C. MoodBlast (Status Updating)

The usefulness of MoodBlast is directly proportional to the amount of social networking services you use that it supports: iChat, Skype, Adium, Twitter, Jaiku, Tumblr and Facebook. Basically, you set a keyboard shortcut, bring up the window, and use it to set one status message for every service. You can use it to set your currently playing iTune as your status (I use Proxi to send the iTunes command to MoodBlast when the song changes; otherwise you have to manually set the status every time). It's nice if you use a few of those services enough to need regular status updates - even if you use only one of the web-based ones, it's nice to have a desktop status updater - if not, don't bother.

That's mah list *phew*. I might, possibly, depending how bored I get and how stalled the porn stays, post with a more in-depth look at how I'm using some of the apps where I didn't really mention that.

- Fin -

Comments

[stonefinder.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is a good resource. Thanks!

[hector-rashbaum.livejournal.com]

I've been planning on doing something like this for AGES, lol

[heatherwells.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Wheeeeeeee! This is awesome.

When my Biffno gets derailed because I'm playing with Legos, though, IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!

[hector-rashbaum.livejournal.com]

it's okay, we can compare Lego structures and the severity of our derailings

btw I finally got a chance to look at Jer's Novel Writer a bit last night and OMG AWESOME.

[heatherwells.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Is it? Yay! I need to check it out alongside Scrivener, which, you know, since it's why I wanted the Mac in the first place (along with, of course, the Mac's being Intel based and reeking of cool these days). Scrivener was the third thing I installed on the 'book. :D (Now I have to get over my new-toy-antsy-excitedness so I can sit down and play with Scrivener.)

[hector-rashbaum.livejournal.com]

I only looked at Scrivener a little, enough to determine that (being someone who writes pretty exclusively to post online, not for print) it didn't suit my needs even a couple bucks' worth. From what I saw, JNW isn't too different - but I didn't dig too deeply into the features of Scrivener.

[heatherwells.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

For a short story, I wouldn't bother with either, but for the novels clunking around in my head, the ability to organize--and quickly look up notes and bits I've already written--is attractive. I particularly like that both Scrivener and JNW aren't as specific as yWriter is. yWriter has tons of boxes to fill, like Hal at Spacejock Software grabbed ten books on writing a novel, each book specializing in a specific facet of novel-writing, and then used the terms in the books to create his interfaces. (What he really did, I'm sure, is create a program that works the way he does; it's just way too specific for me. Scrivener and JNW are more freeform--Scrivener particularly since it doesn't even try to categorize your info into "people," "places," and "things.")

[hector-rashbaum.livejournal.com]

Yeah. And that's part of why I instantly like JNW better - I don't do enough novel-size projects to make paying worth it.

And heh, the entire reason I want to learn to program in Cocoa is so I can code a program to write how I like to write, because I am OMG SO SICK of compromising.

[heatherwells.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

:D Yes! Programmers do, everyone else makes do. :D