I was just reading an article that I found on Digg, “Must-have Mac Apps for the New Mac Switcher” by Chris Thompson. I found the article full of things that I use myself, and thought to forward it to my friend Kim who just got her first Mac for Christmas (a shiny little white MacBook that she is just enamored with). As I was writing her an email, I realized that most of the applications mentioned were great, but much of it would not be applicable to Kim, as she’s a numbers girl, not a designer! Needless to say, her present from us was a copy of Office for Mac, but she still needed some help with what other resources were available to her.
It occurred to me that I needed to go through my own drive and make her a list of links that would be useful to her, as a new Mac user that needs some good productivity tools and a few things that would be just plain useful to her as well. I will include the list here, with an addition of some of the design tools that I find essential.
Productivity
- Anxiety, a lightweight to-do list that is compatible with iCal and Mail. Great for us scatterbrains! Free.
- Notebook, a gorgeous, wonderful app that is exactly what it says: a notebook. Perfect for notes, outlines, keeping track of files…. This is one of my favorite apps ever. Standard license is $49.95, but well worth it!
- Caffeine, for those times when you really don’t want your display to dim due to lack of activity (like when rereading blog posts before publishing)! Free.
- GoPlan.org is not a Mac app, but I feel the need to include it in this list, as it is such a timesaver, and is a great tool to have when working on a project with others. It is an online project management system, including tasks, chat, calendar, file uploads, and more. There are a few different subscription levels starting with–you guessed it–free.
Just Plain Useful
- iStat Menu is a great utility for keeping an eye on your system. View CPU usage, hard drive space and more in the menu bar. Free.
- EasyEnvelopes is a widget that makes addressing and printing all those thank-you cards from Christmas a snap. Free.
- iPhoto Batch Enhancer is an easy way to add an effect to a batch of photos with a minimal amount of effort. Free.
- Undercover, because we all drag our laptops everywhere with us. Like LoJack for Laptops, but built for Mac, and only $49.
- Delicious Library. This is my husband’s favorite application, considering that we own over a thousand DVDs, and probably two thousand books. You can check items out and in, add borrowers, even scan barcodes with your iSight to quickly catalog your stuff. $40.
Design Tools
- My absolute favorite web development app is Panic’s Coda ($69). If you prefer to do a lot of hand-coding, this program is for you. I prefer it over Dreamweaver. Combine a text-editor with a browser preview, a CSS editor, books, snippets and more, and Coda is what you get. You can even write Actionscript in Coda. And did I mention built-in FTP?
- My next favorite web development tool is CSSEdit ($29.95). When my right brain takes over and I can’t seem to parse my external style sheets correctly in Coda, it’s CSSEdit to the rescue. The X-ray feature makes it super-simple to locate which element I need to concentrate on.
Please post anything I might have missed in the comments!
