Dave Redfern's Post A Week

Week 02

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Favourite Mac apps

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Adium

With the Mac lacking a decent official MSN Messenger client I had to look elsewhere and the popular choice is Adium.  Adium is a lightweight instant messenger client which allows you to connect to most of the popular chat systems including MSN, Facebook, Google Talk, AOL, Yahoo and Jabber.  While I only use some of the basic function of this application it can be extended with some great plugins and themes to allow you to completely customise it to suit your needs.

Caffeine

Although this isn’t really an app I thought it was well worth a mention.  This sits in your menu bar and is a simple Boolean switch allowing you to force the computer to stay awake without any screen dimming or sleeping.  You maybe thinking why you need this? I use it all the time while watching youtube videos, BBC iplayer or 4OD.

Chrome

Chrome is the over hyped browser of the decade but despite all of its downfalls (which are a lot!) I still find myself using it as my main browser of choice.  I will never use it for website development but for everything else it is speedy, clean interface and reliable.  It still has a long way to come before it meets the feature list of Firefox but for general browsing it does the job well.

Coda

While not my favourite editor for building sites Coda is Macs answer to Dreamweaver.  It has a clean interface and is a slim lined version of the over priced competition.  The main reason I use it is because of the built in FTP which allows for easily modifying and uploading of files without the need of a standalone FTP client.  It is pricey compared to the other apps I use but a good investment for anyone who builds websites on a regular basis.  If you’re a programmer who doesn’t build websites I’d trying to find another application such as Textmate.

Google Quick Search

Built by the creator of Quicksilver this is the Google version.  It is very similar to Quicksilver for those who are familiar with that accept due to its age is lacking some of the advanced plugins available on Quicksilver.  Google Quick Search is an advance version of Spotlight.  It allows you to search your computer, browser history, application data such as emails, address book, itunes and internet application such as gmail and twitter.  By clicking Ctrl+space it launches a search bar and you simply type.  The beauty of this application is it learns from usage so I can now press F and it will immediately jump to Firefox despite that not being the first alphabetically.  For power users this is definately one to look into.

Littlesnapper

Littlesnapper is an app I have only recently started to use.  It is made by a British company called Real Mac Software and is effectively an image organiser.  I use this to collect screenshots and little grabs of inspiration while browsing the web.  The actually application is well designed but doesn’t have any special features from the regular organising features.  Where this application excels is taking full screenshots of websites.  With its built in shortcuts you can browse using Safari or Firefox and take a screenshot of not only what you see but the entire length of the website.  It will also store a link to that page incase you wish to revisit in the future.  Unfortunately it currently does not support Chrome due to the lack of support Chrome offers to applescript but you can use the bookmark feature which works in a similar way to the Delicious one does.  They also have an iPhone app.  Littlesnapper is a little expensive for what it achieves but I was lucky enough to get it in a Macheist bundle so picked it up for nearly nothing.

Notify

This sits in the menu bar and is effectively a email notifier.  You can get free applications from Google which notify you of new emails but this does a lot more.  It has email previewing, composing and multiple email accounts which means for most of your emailing needs you never need to open a full client or gmail.  One of the nice features is you can set it as your default email client so if you click any links in your browser to emails it will open in Notify rather than mail.  It isn’t free but I’m a sucker for looks and has won me over.

SMC Fan Control

Anyone who uses an Macbook or Macbook Pro will know that it can get extremely hot which is worrying when its on your lap.  After all there is some very sensitive bits underneath!  SMC Fan Control is a free application which sits in your menu bar and allows you to setup profiles to increase or decrease the speed of the fans.  With this you can then quickly switch from default to higher RPM on your fans to keep your laptop and lap cool.

Textmate

This is the worlds best text editor.  I have used this pretty much since day one on the Mac and does everything I could ever ask from an editor.  On first glance this is a very bland and standard editor but after a few days of playing around with the preferences, reading up on shortcuts, installing bundles you’ll soon find you can customise it to your exact needs.  Bundles are packs of code syntax, by default you get all of the popular languages such as HTML, CSS, JS, PHP but you can download ones for things like WordPress, Drupal, Code Igniter and Textpattern making it really easy to develop for these platforms.  I am sure if you don’t have the patients or time you will quickly be put off but with a little reading you’ll soon see the advantages.  It has become so popular that there is also a Windows port of the software called e editor.  This app is on the steep side for price, I managed to pick it up quite cheap under student discount a few years ago but since then the price has gone up but I’d still recommend it.

VLC

A very popular media player on Windows is also well known on the Mac.  VLC allows you to play pretty much any format of video.  It doesn’t support Flip4Mac WMC so you’ll still have to use Quicktime for that but everything else I’ve handled it has gone a great job.  Its a great alternate to Quicktime which I don’t rate.  There was talk about VLC ceasing development on the Mac due to lack of developers which I hope this project continues.

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Posted:
21 March 2010
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