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Ask HN: Just ordered my first Mac- what apps should I know about?
42 points by olegious on June 17, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 64 comments
Getting my new Macbook Air on Wednesday. I'll be using it for RoR and front end coding (not a dev but trying to move away from/add to the "Product Guy" label), VM (will run Ubuntu in a VM).

So far these are the apps I know about:

-Adium to combine all my chat accounts

-Growl for notifications

-iTerm2 seems to be an interesting terminal emulator

-Any Notepad++ equivalents on OSx? (I'll end up using Vim and some Notepad++ equivalent)

-Recommended email clients?

-Recommended media players? (I use VLC on Windows)

-Recommended calendar apps to sync with Google and Exchange calendars?

-CSS editors?

-Anything else that a Mac newbie should be told about?

Thanks.




Have you seen these threads?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2147642

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2161855

I found them pretty useful -- have a look!

Also have a look at this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3407705


Quicksilver http://qsapp.com/ - I never opened an application from Finder or Dock again.

From their site:

Quicksilver is a launcher utility app for Mac OS X which gives you the ability to perform common, every-day tasks rapidly and without thought. An introduction to Quicksilver's abilities include:

* Accessing applications, documents, contacts, music and much, much more.

* Browsing your Mac's filesystem elegantly using keywords and 'fuzzy' matching.

* Managing content through drag and drop, or grabbing selected content directly.

* Interacting with installed applications through plugins.


I thought Quicksilver was great until I realised Spotlight does the job just as well for app launching.


Colloquy[1] is a fantastic IRC client. TextWrangler[2] is one of my favorite text editors. If you're familiar with Linux, you'll want a package manager- popular options are MacPorts[3] or Fink[4]. As far as media players, VLC[5] has a very nice OSX port.

[1] http://colloquy.info/ [2] http://www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/ [3] http://www.macports.org/ [4] http://www.finkproject.org/ [5] http://www.videolan.org/


re: package managers.

Check our Homebrew: http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ and read a few articles about the pros and cons of homebrew vs Macports. It's a sticky topic.


Linkinus is a pretty nice IRC client as well. I believe I got it on sale on the App Store for like $5. I'm sure it's more now though.

I definitely suggest HomeBrew over MacPorts and Fink. I've had much better luck with it.

TextWrangler is a great free editor. I use Sublime Text 2 for anything that I may need some standard editing. For more complex stuff or if I'm doing more than opening a single file, I prefer MacVim.


It depends on what you're editing. If I'm ever writing any C/C++/Objective-C I ALWAYS use XCode even if it's only as a text editor and not a project manager/compiler, due to its fantastic syntax highlighting. TextWrangler's great as a replacement for TextEdit, but it doesn't do syntax highlighting as well as it could.


Agreed. XCode is definitely the best for any Cocoa/Objective-C tool. Though I've heard good things about AppCode lately.

I do some Ruby coding and for that I tend to use MacVim with a few nice plugins.


The first things I install on any Mac (and goodness knows there have been lot of them):

  - Google Chrome (http://chrome.google.com)
  - iTerm2 (http://www.iterm2.com/)
  - Xcode (http://developer.apple.com/xcode/)
  - Homebrew (http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew)
    - For emacs-snapshot, zsh, git, gnupg, etc.
  - Google Drive (https://drive.google.com)
  - Flux (http://stereopsis.com/flux/)
  - TextMate (http://macromates.com/)
  - VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc)
  - Transmission (http://www.transmissionbt.com/)
Then, things like the Sonos controller, the Rdio and Spotify apps, Adobe Lightroom 4, Photoshop, etc.

But the above are the ones that seem to make it onto every new machine in the first day or two.

Enjoy!


As a developer I very happy, that http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ exists. It's a package manager (#packages as of today: 2024), like apt or yum - with a very nice command line interface and a great community.

> Homebrew is the easiest and most flexible way to install the UNIX tools Apple didn't include with OS X.


If you don't like Quicksilver, Alfred is really good too (http://www.alfredapp.com/).

Sublime Text 2 is pretty great (http://www.sublimetext.com/2).


Seconding Alfred.

ST2, TextMate, and MacVim are all good – I personally prefer MacVim.


Alfred is awesome. You can also write plugins for it!


I say go for Launchbar. The clipboard history is pretty rockin in my opinion.


I love Launchbar. Still need to try Alfred out.


Alfred has clipboard history also.


Try standard terminal, I prefer it to item 2.

Home brew or mac ports help install unixy tools. Work on the assumption that whichever you install, at least once a year you will have to completely remove it and reinstall it, as sometimes they get in a mess.

Apple mail is OK, I prefer thunderbird, but it isn't very Macy.

VLC tends to play whatever you chuck at it.

General note - HFS tends to get unhappy (performance-wise) if your drive gets more than about 85% full.

When I first got a mac I was tempted to install lots of hacks to standard apps and the OS. These seem much less popular nowadays, but still try to resist any, at least for a while. Mac OS X is very hard to debug if it starts to misbehave.

finally, never install the .0 version of any new OS :)


Sublime Text 2 (http://www.sublimetext.com/) and MacVim (http://code.google.com/p/macvim/) are my preferred text editors.

Sparrow (http://sparrowmailapp.com/) is my favorite email client.

I can't live without a window resizer on OS X. Use SizeUp (http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/) for easy window maximizing, half splits, and quadrant resizing.


– MPlayerX (http://mplayerx.org/) Great standalone video player

- Perian (http://perian.org) Perian lets quicktime run almost any video format. Unfortunately it's not under active development. Still useful to have installed regardless.

– Google Chrome (http://www.google.com/chrome) Don't install Flash unless you have to. Chrome has it built in. I use Safari for most of my browsing and switch to Chrome when I want to use flash.

– If you aren't going to install Flash, then install YouTube5 (http://www.verticalforest.com/youtube5-extension/) It's a Safari extension that lets you watch YouTube videos natively without Flash.

- Day-O (http://www.shauninman.com/archive/2011/10/20/day_o_mac_menu_...) Adds a drop down calendar to the menubar.

- Alfred (http://www.alfredapp.com/) Another vote for Alfred. Much quicker and more powerful than Spotlight.

- 1Password (https://agilebits.com/onepassword) Remembers passwords/logins and makes it super easy to auto login to sites.


DragonDrop (shake the mouse drop stuff in an always on top window, then drag it back out when you find where you want to drop it and it disappears)

Divy (Lay out all your windows on a grid extremely quickly)

Skitch (quickly marking up screenshots, photos, etc)

WeatherHD (Lap warming tool, also renders beautiful full screen weather for what's happening where you are/where you set it to)

Visual JSON (JSON validator, builder)

Crash Plan Pro (a pretty reasonably non-invasive offsite backup program)

1Password (Cross platform/Smartphone password autofill manager)

Camouflage (Hides everything on the desktop when you present)

Caffeine (Keeps the laptop awake while you're presenting)

Daisy Disk (Finds the crap you can delete and clean off the hard drive, quickly beautifully, and makes cleanup a joy)

Screenflow (Excellent videocasting/webcasting/tutorial making software) (Currently on sale at http://www.mupromo.com/ for half off its $99 pricetag with other stuff included)

Screenshots (Fantastic tool for taking a picture of exactly the section of the screen you want, and nothing more).

If you have iOS devices you like/use too, AirDisplay (makes an iPad or iPhone an extension of the mac desktop) and AirServer (makes the mac a mirror of the iOS screen using Airplay).


Things I haven't seen here yet:

1. Backblaze for off-site backups: http://backblaze.com 2. Dash for access docs: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dash-docs-snippets/id45803487... 3. Solarized and ir_black themes for Terminal and all editors: http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized / http://blog.toddwerth.com/entries/13 (I use ir_black w/ Terminal.app, terminal Vim and the sidebar fork of Macvim: https://github.com/alloy/macvim/wiki/Screenshots) 4. This fork of GitX: http://gitx.laullon.com/ 5. DTerm (pop-up terminal emulator for the occasional 'less README'): http://decimus.net/DTerm 6. XScope (rulers and stuff for UI design): http://xscopeapp.com/ 7. LittleSnapper (tried everything, this is the fastest and cleanest way to collect UI inspiration – Skitch + Evernote would be my second choice): http://www.realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper/ 8. Found (don't use this much, but it's awesome. Indexes Gmal, Dropbox and Google Drive and lets you search and launch files – a bit like Alfred): https://www.foundapp.com/ 9. DaisyDisk (essential harddrive file visualization): http://www.daisydiskapp.com/

And, another shoutout for Quicksilver – more powerful than Alfred.


1. Backblaze for off-site backups: http://backblaze.com

2. Dash for access docs: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dash-docs-snippets/id45803487....

3. Solarized and ir_black themes for Terminal and all editors: http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized / http://blog.toddwerth.com/entries/13 (I use ir_black w/ Terminal.app, terminal Vim and the sidebar fork of Macvim: https://github.com/alloy/macvim/wiki/Screenshots)

4. This fork of GitX: http://gitx.laullon.com/

5. DTerm (pop-up terminal emulator for the occasional 'less README'): http://decimus.net/DTerm

6. XScope (rulers and stuff for UI design): http://xscopeapp.com/

7. LittleSnapper (tried everything, this is the fastest and cleanest way to collect UI inspiration – Skitch + Evernote would be my second choice): http://www.realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper/

8. Found (don't use this much, but it's awesome. Indexes Gmal, Dropbox and Google Drive and lets you search and launch files – a bit like Alfred): https://www.foundapp.com/

9. DaisyDisk (essential harddrive file visualization): http://www.daisydiskapp.com/


Just out of curiosity, what makes Quicksilver more powerful than Alfred?


These are the things I use daily (most are free!):

[Development] Spotlight - OSX built in app launcher etc SourceTree - GUI Git/Hg/SVN client. HomeBrew - like apt, yum package manager MacVim - Coming from the GUI world look at Janus iTerm2 (Zsh, OhMyZSH plugins) MAMP - Apache, MySQL etc dev env (like XAMPP) $ CSSEdit - GUI CSS editor, mainly use vim CyberDuck - (s)FTP Sequel Pro - MySQL GUI, SSH connection $ Parallels - VM

[Calendars] - iCal or $ Busy Cal [Mail] - OSX Mail [Office] - $ iWork, LibreOffice [Feed Reader] - NetNewsWire [Torrent] - Transmission [Transcode] - Handbrake

[Utilities] $ little snitch - Network monitor MenuMeters - Free limited version of iStatMenus Flip4mac WMV in Quicktime Perian (Make QuickTime like VLC) TwoUp - free window basic management RightZoom - Maximise zoom button ClipMenu - Multi Copy, Paste board UnArchiver - File Decompression CleanArchiver - File compression (sans .DS_Store) NameChanger - GUI for mass renaming files Onyx - System maintenance and set extra OS defaults Click2Flash - Extension in Safari blocks flash defaults to HD mp4, right click to download video.


BusyCal looked good. Until I saw it was $50. Plus another $40 to allow syncing?!?

Sorry, I find it really hard to justify nearly $100 for a calendar app.


Interesting - I haven't actually reviewed my Mac's config in a while - I might pick up a few goodies in those lists myself. For what it's worth, this is what I would automatically install on any new Mac:

- iStat Menus: RAM, network and CPU usage right in your menu bar. Ridiculously useful.

- Video player: VLC

- FTP: CyberDuck. Desperately slow to launch and not a big fan of the UI but it's free, it works and I use FTP rarely enough to never have bothered looking for something better.

- gfxCardStatus - not necessarily a must-have but quite handy to see which app is causing your Mac to switch to the battery-sucking discrete GPU.

- Email: MailPlane (gmail / google apps only). I have to say that I've never found what I would consider to be a great email client for my taste on either Mac or Windows. So these days, I stick with Gmail's web interface (which I'm not a big fan of either but there's no native app that I find any better).

- Text Editor: TextWrangler. I still prefer Notepad++ though (in part because TextWrangler, like so many apps on Mac OS X, is so slow to launch).

- DaisyDisk - for later when you'll inevitably run out of disk space.

- Parallels Desktop for Windows + Remote Desktop Connection to manage Windows servers. I wish there was a better RDP client and a decent SSMS-like SQL Server client.

- Apps that used to be must-have but that I no longer use: HandBrake (DVD ripping), LiquidCD (CD / DVD burning), NetNewsWire (RSS)

That's about it. Random stuff that you might or might not need: Acorn (simple, cheap image editor), CoconutBattery, Hues (standalone color picker), iStumbler (Max OS X's NetStumbler), MacHg (Mercurial client). You can try Sparrow for email too.

That's it - have surprisingly few apps actually.


BTW, I hope that you upgraded the RAM in the Air to 8GB if you intend to run a VM on it. Trying to work on both Mac OS X and a VM on 4GB is quickly going to get very painful.

TBH, if I was going to buy a new Mac today, I'd go for the new MacBook Pro, purely for being able to have 16GB of RAM. Even with 8GB, my Mac still regularly struggles to keep going when I've got my VM up together with a web browser and XCode (and let's not even talk about Photoshop) on the Mac side.


I just bought a late 2011 15" MBP - stuck 16GB of RAM in it and it is so much smoother.


Better RDP client = CoRD (http://cord.sourceforge.net/)


  Try out ZSH if you want to try something slightly different to Bash
  Package Manager: Homebrew - https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew
  Terminal/Emulator: iTerm2 - http://www.iterm2.com/
  Vim running in iTerm2 via Homebrew
  Chat Client: Adium - http://adium.im/
  MySQL DB GUI: Sequel Pro - http://www.sequelpro.com/
  Mail: Sparrow - http://sparrowmailapp.com/
  Git GUI: GitX (L) - http://gitx.laullon.com/
  Window "manager" : Shiftit - https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt
  General productivity: I love QuickSilver, however it's been crashing
  quite frequently on me since I installed Lion, so I'm giving Alfred a try at the moment.
Note: all of the above are at least free (lite), if not completely free. I was thrown completely in the deep-end with terminal vim and just took to it as part of my "getting used to Mac" steps, which I think benefited me with respect to getting down with the nitty gritty of it and not complaining it was different to my Notepad++ experience prior on Windows.


Apps that I install immediately upon re-installation or a new Mac:

* 1Password - Password facilitator (http://www.agilebits.com, buy the Mac App Store version)

* OmniFocus - GTD/Todo list (http://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus)

* OmniOutliner - Best list makinga pp ever (http://www.omnigroup.com/omnioutliner)

* OmniGraffle - Great for development purposes (http://www.omnigroup.com/omnigraffle)

* Acorn - Quick image editing (http://www.flyingmeat.com/acorn)

* VoodooPad - Personal Wiki (http://www.flyingmeat.com/voodoopad)

* Byword - Markdown editor (http://bywordapp.com/)

* Dropbox - Duh (http://www.dropbox.com)

* Fantastical - Calendar app (http://flexibits.com/)

* Launchbar - Launcher (http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/)

* Reeder - Google Reader client (http://reederapp.com/)

* Transmit - SFTP (http://panic.com/transmit/)

* VLC - Video (http://www.videolan.org)

Along with iA Writer, Writeroom, Sublime Text, etc etc... there are a lot of great apps. The above is my favorites.


* Witch (http://manytricks.com/witch/) - Gives you Alt-Tab (Window switching) alongside the default Cmd-Tab (Application Switching).

* Moom (http://manytricks.com/moom/) - allows you to move windows around a lot easier.

* TotalFinder (http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/) - Finder with tabs and other useful bits.

* CoRD (http://cord.sourceforge.net/) - Decent RDP client (better than the official Microsoft one).

* Caffeine (http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/caffeine/id411246225) - Stops the screensaver activating at the click of a button.

* CleanMyMac (http://macpaw.com/cleanmymac) - Can strip the unwanted language packs etc from applications saving you a significant amount of space.

* Enqueue (http://www.enqueueapp.com/) - Decent iTunes replacement, with FLAC support.

* Flu.x (http://stereopsis.com/flux/) - Warmer screen during dark hours, makes it easier to work in dim light.

* SourceTree (http://www.sourcetreeapp.com/) - Decent GUI Git/Hg/SVN client.

* GrabBox (http://grabbox.devsoft.no/) - Instantly throws screenshots into your Dropbox public folder.

* iStat Menus (http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/) - Memory and CPU utilisation in your menu bar.

* YoruFukurou (http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/yorufukurou/id428834068) - Decent Twitter client with muting rules etc.


I used and loved TotalFinder, but it was sooo buggy (specially when copying large files off external drives) that I ended up uninstalling it in disgust. I'm using vanilla Finder.app right now, and don't miss it terribly.

If you need a 'Finder Pro', I suggest PathFinder. version 6 looks promising. I might be tempted to buy it: http://cocoatech.com/pathfinder/


I don't know if many people agree with this, but I would also recommend you to give Apple's built-in OSX apps a try before installing replacements. I've used Mail, Calendar, Address Book and Terminal for many years without feeling a compelling need for alternatives. They usually work well if you're happy with the way they've been designed and don't try to bend them too much to your old habits.

Other apps that I always install on new Macs are Homebrew, VLC, Adium, MacIrssi and then the usual stuff that's on any PC (Spotify, Skype, Dropbox, Minecraft, F.lux).

And yeah it's important to install Xcode, otherwise your system doesn't have a C compiler so you can't do much. I think Git is also included with it.


DVD Ripper is an excellent tool that I use often. If you deal with video you will want to install Handbrake, too (and of course vlc).

Geektool is an excellent tool that makes a lot of stats about your Mac on the desktop, it's infinitely customizable, but has a steep learning curve, maybe to be installed in the second batch.

I hate iCal, although it does integrate different calendars. I think it and Mail tool are some of the poorest designed Mac software (e.g. compared with Outlook) but what are you going to do.

Secrets is another advanced tool, that exposes many hidden setting for the Mac.


I'm a big fan of Jumpcut (http://jumpcut.sourceforge.net/), a dedicated clipboard manager. Several other tools that include clipboard management have been mentioned but if you don't want the rest of the functionality, this is great for it.

iCal and Mail do a fantastic job syncing with Google and Exchange, so I use those.


* iWork - Cheaper than Office and better in my opinion

* Transmit - FTP

* Pixelmator - 90% of Photoshop without the high cost but still with a slick interface

* Cornerstone/Versions - SVN

* Textmate - Code editor

* Wunderlist - Todo list

* Fantastical - Easy way to access and add dates to your mac calendar

* Concentrate - Block HN and other stuff when you need to get things done

(Note: Most of these are not free and are between $10-$80 but well worth it in my opinion)


I purchased two apps within the first few weeks after my switch to a MBP:

1) Moom (move/zoom windows) - http://manytricks.com/moom/

2) TotalFinder (enhances the finder) - http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/

Some other must haves for me:

* MacVim

* Alfred

* Cyberduck

* Homebrew

* VLC


stuff I have installed

* rather than vanilla vim, try MacVim

* textmate is popular, though I don't use it

* tunnelblick for vpn management

* video: vlc, but mplayerx and MPlayer OSX Extended are popular options

* TotalTerminal (make terminal show/hide with a keystroke)

* cyberduck (ftp/s3/whatever file transfer client)

* keka as unarchiver

* xchat aqua as alternative irc client


I don't really see the point in Growl, and it is now a payed app, so you could skip it, unless your workflow requires you to be notified of something immediately.

Media player: I prefer mplayerx to VLC. mplayerx is on the app store.

Text: macvim and sublime text 2.


The Growl developers really messed up on this. Growl is now actually something that developers include in their applications, you don't need to install it at all.

You only need to install the app for backwards compatibility with apps that haven't upgraded. Since it was open-source, there is a fork that you can install for free: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/41038/growl-fork


Well, you may still want it if you want to build some custom scripts that need notification, so the fork is probably your best option.


Can't recommend Sublime Text 2 enough.

Same with Sparrow for (non power use) GMail.

Currently enjoy Found (over Alfred and Quicksilver) as a Spotlight (native to OS X) replacement -- it's free in the "App Store"


This is my current setup. The real essentials are Dropbox, ST2 and Homebrew, but these are all amazing pieces of software:

- Sublime Text 2 editor (even has a vim mode) (http://www.sublimetext.com/2)

- Sparrow, but you might be happy with the native Mail app (http://sparrowmailapp.com/)

- Media: iTunes and Quicktime do a good job, VLC occasionally.

- Handbrake for encoding (http://handbrake.fr)

- Transmission (http://www.transmissionbt.com/)

- Dropbox (http://getdropbox.com)

- Cloud app: instant, easy uploads (http://getcloudapp.com)

- Twitter's official client (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twitter/id409789998)

- CSS: uh? There is Coda/TopStyle/Espresso, but ST2 is enough

- Github for Mac (http://mac.github.com)

- Versions for SVN (http://versionsapp.com)

- Sequel Pro (http://www.sequelpro.com/)

- Homebrew package manager (http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/)

- ImageOptim (http://imageoptim.com/)

- CodeKit or LESS.app for LESS/Coffee compiling (http://incident57.com/codekit/)

- MS Office: yeah (it's much better than the windows version). Just hide the cruft away (MSN etc) after installing.

- Wunderlist to-do app (http://wunderlist.com)

Nice to have / superfluous:

- Mou markdown editor (http://mouapp.com/)

- Cathode: vintage terminal emulator (http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/)

- Lidpop: make noises when you close/open your lid (https://shinyplasticbag.com/lidpop/)


For the last six years I used to sit down with my Mac newbie buddies helping them to get essential tools that make life on Mac productive. This culminated in a short list that I recently put on my blog. You might find it useful: http://live.stanklimoff.com/post/22395549588/ten-first-thing...


For security:

PREY: http://preyproject.com/ KNOX: https://agilebits.com/knox

Don't set your Mac to auto-login on your main account. I use an empty account that starts up automatically. It has no real data and Prey is installed on it. Set the screen to lock after 1 min of not using it. I keep important stuff in it's own Knox vault.


As far as graphic editors go, my favorite is Pixelmator.

Most people don't need Photoshop but still want something that supports layers, does image manipulation basics and feels like a happy OS X citizen.

On the other hand, GraphicConverter is the Swiss army knife of image formats and is even more powerful. GC can read virtually any image file ever created. It's a little more buggy, and the UI is less modern/fancy, but oh so handy.


Janus MacVim distribution - editor

VLC - video player

iTunes - music

Alfred - launcher

Divvy - window management (can create hotkeys for resizing/positioning windows)

Kaleidoscope - great diff tool

I use the default Mail and Calendar apps


I'm a big fan of fluid http://fluidapp.com/ which lets you containerize web applications into a single app like thing. Also for mail, I'm a big sparrow fan.

If you need flowcharting/diagraming similar to Visio, Omnigraffle is great.


1. For Notepad++: I use TextWrangler (decent syntax highlighting for PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby, JS, C++, HTML)- for CSS see footnote.

2. But you said you wanted to move away from coding? If you're into design, I recommend: InkScape and GIMP as must-haves on any fresh Mac install.

3. For email, I stopped using email clients a long time ago, and this isn't really Mac specific, but I'd recommend OtherInbox to organize your mail in your browser, on an iPhone (if you're getting one of those), which leades me to...

4. Google Chrome for your browser.

5. (Apple's built-in) Spotlight's pretty good for searches (use command + space to access spotlight search), google desktop isn't required.

6. VLC has a good Mac OS X port for video playback.

7. The other stuff you need to know about, are screencaptures are done via Command (apple key) + Shift + 3 for the whole screen, or replace 3 with 4 for snipping part of the screen

8. Since your new Macbook Air will come with Lion with the new scrolling paradigm, I would change the swipe under System Preferences > Trackpad options (you can find this via spotlight or the mac icon on the top left corner of your screen) and uncheck Scroll Direction: Natural, so you get back to your usual way of scrolling things. (First main annoyance with the new Macs).

P.S. vim is still available in Mac OS terminal.

.css files are by default loaded in (Apple's) Dashcode, which suffices for syntax highlighting and editing.

Links:

http://www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/

http://inkscape.org/

http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html

http://www.otherinbox.com/

http://scottlinux.com/2011/07/20/os-x-lion-how-to-reverse-sc...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61544

http://www.google.com/chrome


(Haven't read other suggestions. Certainly all of these have been suggested before, in that case bump the vote count on those apps!)

- First thing you should do: Install Homebrew: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/

- IRC: Colloquy - http://colloquy.info

- Editor: Sublime Text 2 - http://www.sublimetext.com/2

- Launcher: QuickSilver or Alfred

- Lion's Mail.app is great. I used to use Sparrow (http://sparrowmailapp.com) on Snow Leopard, but don't need it anymore. It's a little buggy and I like Mail.app's UI better.

- IMPORTANT: Check http://gpgtools.org for a simple app that lets you manage PGP credentials and use them in Mail.app and elsewhere (don't miss this one)

- RSS reader: Reeder - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reeder/id439845554?mt=12

- You're new to Mac, so install CheatSheet (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id529456740?mt=12) to learn keyboard shortcuts by heart (press down CMD key for 2 seconds to get a list of all shortcuts)

- Check this blog out - it has plenty of great stuff about OS X that even veteran OS X users don't know (trust me, I know a lot of them): http://www.macyourself.com

- You'll inevitably wonder what 'ocspd' or 'mdworker' are, when using 'ps -Ac' or 'top' (spoiler: ocspd is for certifications, and mdworker, or metadata-worker is a process that gathers information about files and feeds them to Spotlight for search), so install atMonitor (http://www.atpurpose.com/atMonitor/) instead of searching for process names on the Internet. It offers tons of other cool features.

- Markdown Pro (http://www.markdownpro.com) and Mou (http://mouapp.com) for Markdown.

- As much as I despise iTunes, nothing comes close to it (unfortunately) in terms of media management.

- Bartender - tidies messy menu bars: http://www.macbartender.com


If you do anything with a lot of private network web development Gasmask is a must. It is a great little host file switcher.

http://code.google.com/p/gmask/


http://sites.google.com/site/yorufukurou/home-en

Yorufukurou - hardcore twitter client


You might like Things, if you're into stuff like that:

http://culturedcode.com/things/


thoughtbot laptop script https://github.com/thoughtbot/laptop


Xcode -- don't you want to write iOS apps?


once mountain lion releases, I don't think you need adium and growl


* Adium is great.

* Growl works very well but the whole notification business (emails + builds + IM + song details…) can be counter productive. Use it lightly.

* iTerm2 is the most modern terminal emulator you'll find on Mac OS X. I use it only because I wanted 256 colors and I'm not on Lion. I've never used its more advanced features.

* I don't know Notepad++ but I would say Sublime Text 2 (http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-2-beta) and TextMate (http://macromates.com/) may do. You could also try a full blown IDE like Aptana (http://aptana.com/) or RubyMine (http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/). If you already know Vim, MacVim (https://github.com/b4winckler/macvim) is the way to go for both the GUI and the CLI.

* Apple's own Mail.app works well. I've never felt the need to use another app. Microsoft's Outlook is pretty good, too.

* VLC is the obvious choice on Mac OS X too. You might want to install Perian (http://perian.org/) to add support for many exotic formats to Quicktime. For audio, Cog (http://cogx.org/) is nice.

* You don't need a CSS editor. Just use your code editor.

---

You might be interested in a few other apps:

* ClipMenu (multiple clipboards) http://www.clipmenu.com/

* Burn (disc burning) http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/Pages/English/home.html

* Charles (http debugging) http://www.charlesproxy.com/

* DejaMenu (access the menubar from a contextual menu) http://homepage.mac.com/khsu/DejaMenu/DejaMenu.html

* HTTP Client (http debugging) http://ditchnet.org/httpclient/

* Notational Velocity (the most elegant AND efficient note taking app ever) http://notational.net/

* Quicksilver (Quicksilver) http://qsapp.com/

* ShiftIt (window positioning) https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt

* The unarchiver (opens exotic archive formats) http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html

* Yummy FTP (the best FTP client on Mac OS X) http://www.yummysoftware.com/

* VirtualBox (virtual machines) https://www.virtualbox.org/

* SourceTree (Git/Mercurial GUI) http://www.sourcetreeapp.com/


bootcamp


F.lux and Clipboard make my life better.


I prefer Alfred (http://www.alfredapp.com/) over Quicksilver.

Recommending:

1. https://github.com/Lokaltog/vim-powerline

2. https://github.com/revans/bash-it

3. https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive, https://github.com/tpope/surround

4. The https://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree

5. http://bywordapp.com/

6. http://bbt2.drikin.com/

7. http://willmore.eu/software/isolator/

8. https://gist.github.com/2260182 (OS X for Hackers)

9. Cathode (http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/, for shits and giggles)

10. DiffMerge (http://www.sourcegear.com/diffmerge/)

11. Electric Sheep (http://www.electricsheep.org/)

12. Gridwars (http://gridwars.marune.de/)

13. Integrity (http://peacockmedia.co.uk/integrity/)

14. httrack (http://www.httrack.com/)

15. iSoul (http://code.google.com/p/isoul/)

16. LittleIpsum (http://littleipsum.com/)

17. KeyCastr (https://github.com/sdeken/keycastr, more shits)

18. LiveReload (http://livereload.com/)

19. Mactracker (http://mactracker.ca/)

20. Onyx and/or Maintenance (http://www.titanium.free.fr/)

21. MAMP (http://www.mamp.info/)

22. MacVim (http://code.google.com/p/macvim/)

23. Patterns (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/patterns-the-regex-app/id4294...)

24. Mou (http://mouapp.com/)

25. mutt (http://www.mutt.org/)

26. Pixelmator (http://www.pixelmator.com/)

27. ProCSSor (http://procssor.com/)

28. Reeder (http://reederapp.com/)

29. Skim (http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/)

30. Slammer (http://ringce.com/slammer)

31. Q (http://www.kju-app.org/)

32. svnX (http://www.lachoseinteractive.net/en/community/subversion/sv...)

33. SSHTunnel (https://github.com/primalmotion/sshtunnel)

34. localtunnel (http://progrium.com/localtunnel/)

35. The Unarchiver (http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html)

36. Homebrew (http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/)

37. VLC Player (http://www.videolan.org)

38. Compass/SASS/LESS (http://compass-style.org/install/, http://sass-lang.com/, http://lesscss.org/)

39. Pandoc (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/)

40. http://code.google.com/p/zen-coding/


Isn't Electric Sheep taxing on bandwidth? Running that + Cathode + Transmission should drain your battery in a couple hours...


Agreed. I rarely use Cathode. I played with it for a weekend, but the vintage floss is quite distracting and sensationalist. Depending on the settings you use, it can run the GPU like a mad horse. So you're right on that.

Electric Sheep is graphics intensive for sure. One can regulate Electric Sheep by many means, and the app allows for the prevention of downloads. It usually does 40MB/day after downloading the first flock.


#27 is http://procssorapp.com




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