A while ago I wrote about the things that you most certainly need on your Macbook , or at least my take on it. Three quarters of a year on, I’ve made the full switch to Apple, and my desk is now also sporting a 24-inch shiny, aluminium iMac.
I thought therefore it was probably a good time to add and edit my original list, especially since I have now made the leap from Mac OS X Tiger to Leopard on both my machines and certain things are either irrelevant, more essential than ever, or just specific to desktop-based working.
So here is my all-new iMac Essential Selection.
AppDelete
This funky little freeware app has served me well of recent. With the need to remove quite a lot of old programs that I’m no longer using, the newest release of AppDelete swiftly removes any application and associated system files to the Trash.
Initially I was worried about losing some critical files (typical of my Windows-paranoia) but so far I’ve not encountered any such problem, and it does a very tidy job.
Caffeine
This is a DVD-watcher’s essential that I discovered a few weeks ago.
Caffeine is a truly featherweight program that has only two states with no configurable options – just ‘on’ or ‘off’ – and when ‘on’ ensures that your screen will neither dim nor sleep. Like matchsticks for monitors.
This was never a major concern for me on my Macbook as I only used it for work, but when watching videos it’s a bother to fiddle with the energy settings every time.
Camino
I didn’t really cover browsers in my last mac selection, but being as they come in a few flavours and I have the fortune of knowing most of the major ones inside out, I thought I’d share my choice.
Camino is Mozilla’s Mac-native offering, and though not ideal for developing (it can’t handle plugins like developer’s-dream Firefox), it is a beautifully quick’n‘slick.
If you use Firefox on a Mac and you haven’t tried the new version of Safari or Camino, do it for a week and you maybe be surprised at how slow Firefox can seem. If you are wondering what the pages look like (if you are worried that you are going to get some odd Konquerer-like experience) don’t worry – it’s Gecko, so it looks like Firefox, but feels like it’s drunk a crate of Red Bull.
Expanding Camino: MoreCamino & UserAgent
If you are going to run Camino, I strongly suggest the following two extensions.
MoreCamino is an extra preference pane and just a single file to be copied to your Application Support folder. For the sake of a few seconds to install the thing, you can benefit from Firefox-like Google searches from the address bar, instant search-as-you-type functionality and a couple of other things that I’m not that bothered about.
Secondly and more importantly if you are a Yahoo! Mail user, you’ll want to grab a copy of UserAgent – another small extension that allows you to bypass Yahoo!‘s annoying and not-turn-offable inbuilt your-browser-is-not-officially-supported message by pretending you are using Firefox.
Flickr Uploadr
Well, you might not be bothered if you don’t use Flickr, but then again, why aren’t you using Flickr?
Quick and easy, I used to use the Windows one, and now I use the Mac one. Flickr Uploadr is fully Quicksilver compatible too.
Transmission
OK, I used to use an app called bits on wheels, but when I saw Transmission and how truly simple the whole thing was I switched over. If you need a handy little BitTorrent client that doesn’t take up acres of screen real-estate, this is my recommendation.
MAMP
As I predominantly work with Apache/PHP/MySQL sites, having a development environment is key to everyday coding. If you are not a web designer/developer, this isn’t going to be much use to you, so I’ll let you skip to the next app.
Leopard comes with Apache/PHP/MySQL pre-installed, just not enabled. I used to use XXAMP on Windows for my development environment, but their Mac version is still very new, so I opted to try MAMP after failing to really get to grips with the default OS X installations (config file nightmare).
MAMP is very simple. You install it, you install the widget, you pick your default root directory for websites and then you’re off. Simple as that.
If like me, you want a little more control, you probably could do with upgrading to MAMP Pro, or if like me, you are feeling a little adventurous, you can use your existing apache knowledge to customise the shipped httpd.conf and your hosts file to get multiple Virtual Hosts. It just takes some of the headache out of setting up the environment.
gReader Theme (from HicksDesign.co.uk)
So this isn’t strictly a piece of mac software. I used to use it on Windows, and all it is a theme for Google Reader, but none the less, it makes the rather stark, white and blue interface a little more appealing.
For the sake of copying a CSS file into your Application Support folder, it will make your feed reader a much happier place to be.
Transmit
Cyberduck, I’m sorry to say, for me is dead, and Panic’s Transmit is the way forward. Trev has recommended this little FTP client to me again and again, but it wasn’t until last week I downloaded the trial version and have been FTPing gloriously ever since.
There are some great little features such as semi-direct FTP from one server to another. If you’ve ever had to switch servers, you’ll probably know how much double checking you have to do to make sure you have all the files you wanted – but this seems to be a thing of the past with Transmit. Again, full Quicksilver integration and ‘droplets’ which allow in-Finder drag-and-drop uploads a breeze.
Quicksilver
If you saw my last list, you’ll realise I’m repeating myself here, but Quicksilver really does need another mention. In terms of time-saving, this app is just awesome.
The development stalled for a long while, but is now back on track as an open-source project, and despite the improvement’s to Leopard’s Spotlight feature, it’s not quite time to give up on Quicksilver. Especially with the new and rather suave Cube theme (install from the plugins pane)
For those who don’t know what Quicksilver is, it’s a application launcher and system indexer that allows access to practically any aspect of your mac in a matter of keystrokes. Ctrl + Space brings up a floating menu that you can use to locate any application, file or folder, then carry out pretty much any action upon it.
Want to open a word document without trawling the filesystem – you can. Want to instantly bluetooth sync your phone – can do. Want to create a new text file on the fly – completely possible.
If you can get into using it, it will speed up your workflow.
iWork, Numbers
Since my last evaluation of Apple’s own iWork suite, the addition of Numbers, the spreadsheet application has added to the desirability of the package. Much in the same vein as the other offerings, it makes a good all-round accountancy log.
Generally, iWork’s ability to handle Microsoft Office documents is fantastic, but I wish that saving files back into their original .doc, .xls and .pps formats wasn’t quite so much of a clicking-trail.
Actually, I’m not fully decided on my choice of office suite at the moment. Matt recommended NeoOffice as a suitable replacement to the rather clunky basic OpenOffice app, and which I found useful for a while, but Google Docs has actually proved it’s weight in gold over the past few months when I’ve collaborated on projects that were separated by the Atlantic Ocean.
Bento
Now this is a odd one. I’m not really recommending it as such (it’s not fully baked yet), but more expressing my intrigue as to this new, preview-only app from Apple-subsidiary, Filemaker.
Bento, which is named after the compartmentalised Japanese lunchbox (think sushi/sashimi), neatly and smartly fills the gap in iWork that Access bulkily fills in Microsoft Office.
I say this because it is not a power-user application, but if as I suspect, it does become part of the iWork suite, I think it will become indispensable at home and in the office.
Until now, creating a database has really been the preserve of the software engineer, but this very elegantly and simply allows anyone to tap directly into their existing Mac databases (your media collection, your Address Book and iCal) and combine that data with your own custom collections of information to provide new and exciting catalogues and databases.
The examples provided are things such as sports-team tracking, room-booking, class-monitoring – all the sorts of things until now might have required a much heavier-duty and costly solution.
This is definitely one to watch.
Honourable Mentions
New to Transmit, I am also new to Panic’s other major offering, Coda. I’m in the process of looking at scaling down my current editing processes to something a little less heavy, and this program appears quite promising. I have to admit, I’m not entirely sold – inline editing such as tag wrapping and auto-completion lacks somewhat, but the file-management aspect is a definite plus. I’m still undecided whether this is my next purchase.
Automator for a long time wasn’t on my list of favourite applications. I struggled to see it’s use. Macro recording was one of the things I sorely missed from Windows 3.1 onwards, yet Automator still seemed to be taking a step backwards.
However…
I have since discovered the wonders of what can be done with Applescript in combination with Automator, and have produced some nice little routines which I now use to maintain my photo collection, my development environment and well, not much else at the moment, but I do have a list of things I want to try and batch up in the near future.
Productivity Tips
There are a few other little productivity tips I would like to share now also.
Active Screen Corners/Hotspots
OS X allows you to setup four hotspots on your screen (each corner) where, if you thrust your mouse, you can control certain Expose and screen functions. This is great if you need to quickly disable your screensaver, turn on your screensaver or sleep your screen – all things I need to do regularly. To set them up, visit the System Preferences > Expose & Spaces.
Inserting Odd Characters
As a Windows user, I used to know all those useful keycodes for strange characters. OK, well I knew two – the copyright symbol (Alt + 0169) and (Alt + 0232). Exciting eh?
Well for a convert, this is all different now, so I thought it might be worth mentioning that if you quickly need to insert the copyright symbol on a mac, it's Alt + g (not really logical is it?), and to add an accent is far easier than remembering a whole code – Alt + e once, then just follow it with the letter you want to accent (such as an a, e or u).
Other diacritic marks are achieved with other Alt + combinations, but a good way of making sure you can reference these shortcuts quickly is to enable the language icon in the menu bar, which provides very quick drop-down links to the Keyboard Viewer and Character Palette. Do this in System Preferences > International > Input Menu and tick the two options mentioned. A little British (or other) flag will appear next to the date.
Making The Date Better
Talking of the date – it always annoyed me in Windows that I had to hover to get the correct date, and on Mac to have to click on the menu bar time. A problem no longer. Taken from a Lifehacker tip, simply open the International System Preferences pane as in the previous tip, but select the Formats tab instead.
Now click on the Customise button in the Dates section. Change the show drop-down to Medium, then copy the contents of text field below.
Cancel the page, then click on the Customise button in the Times section. Once again, select Medium from the drop down, then paste in the copied block in front of the time. Press OK and see the date magically display next to the time in the address bar.
If you are a Leopard user, you may also have noticed that the iCal icon now updates the date in real time if you keep it in the dock, but I still quite like it up in the top right-hand corner.
Navigating Menus Using The Keyboard
I could continue to go on at length about this, but you’re probably bored stiff if you’ve even got this far, so I will conclude with this final Leopard-only tip.
Press Ctrl + Shift + ? on most applications and the help menu will drop down. Now start typing what you are looking to do. Copy, Paste, New Smart Folder (this is how I discovered this) and the help menu will not only show appropriate topics, but also the menu item you might be looking for. Another couple of keystrokes to select the item might have stopped you from touching the mouse all together.
Conclusion
There are loads of brilliant little apps and shortcuts out there, and these are just the ones I like/find indispensable. If you have others, feel free to share (until the comments close).