Seen + Noted

My Favorite Mac Apps

February 2nd, 2008

After owning a stellar MacBook Pro since November 2007, I have settled on what I consider a good bunch of add-ons after a few months of use. In fact, I was at Best Buy just the other night checking out their Apple display booth and had trouble remembering how to navigate the Mac interface in a basic manor without all of my modifications in place! Below is a list of my favorite Mac apps, and why they rock.

icon_sapiensSapiens
This application launcher has morphed into my most taken-for-granted application–I even paid for it. Instead of manually digging through the hard drive and rooting for random apps/utilities, one can make a circular motion with the mouse/touchpad and Sapiens will pop up to make things simpler to find. Sapiens starts out with a monkey brain, but after logging more and more hours of use it learns what app you will want to launch and presents a better series of icon options. It also works by typing the name of the app you want with the keyboard. It’s just really cute and slick, and I found it less intimidating than the similar (yet much more powerful) Quicksilver.

icon_xpadxPad
I was looking for something more intuitive than raw text editors and less cumbersome than an actual word processor for note taking and idea jotting, and xPad came along and saved the day. It’s just a subtle little app that holds a tray of saved documents next to a text editing window with simple formatting options. It was the main tool I used while building my website to save small groups of related code, lists, ideas and issues. Highly recommended, no-fuss note jotter.

icon_skitchSkitch
Sure, why would a designer who has the entire suite of Adobe creative programs want a tiny app that takes screenshots and lets you draw on them? Because it rocks, that’s why! It’s all about simplicity: drag in a picture, take a screenshot, throw on some fun pre-made graphics and labeling elements, and then share it without even saving by dragging it directly into apps, pushing it directly to your account/sharing the link and tons of other neat options. Talk about trimming the fat off. Invitation only beta though, so hit me up if you are interested.

icon_radioloverRadiolover
Okay, so I already used this app on my last computer, but it’s that neat. Radiolover will record internet radio stations and break them up into individual, labeled/tagged mp3s and import them into iTunes, ready to be sucked onto your iPod whenever you become bored with that stagnating collection of 3000 old songs. I do this every so often when I feel like I’m not hearing anything new that I like, and sometimes it really pays off and I discover a new band. Other times I just like to listen to a bunch of random 80s songs. Girls just wanna have fun, you know?

icon_hazelHazel
This app isn’t as exciting, but it does a good job keeping my Mac organized–also paid for this one. Basically, anything you want automated so that you don’t have to to do it yourself (emptying the trash, archiving the messy stuff that can accumulate on your desktop, deleting old confusing files in your downloads folder and highlighting new ones) can be accomplished using this app. I hear the aptly named Automator that comes with Mac natively can also do these things, but I got confused and felt more comfortable with this tool.

icon_marseditMars Edit
This is what I’m using right now to write this entry for the website. It’s a desktop blogging tool that allows you to easily write entries offline and outside of the blogging platform and also provides more options. It comes with handy dandy Flickr integration, so all I have to do to pull in a personal photo is choose it from within the Mars Edit interface and plop it in. I haven’t configured the preview option to look like my website theme yet, but so far I’m pleased with everything else I’ve tried.

Below is a list of other apps I use as well, no less important, just not as glitzy:

  • Fan Control - Great app to take control of my laptop’s cooling system and set a temperature range I’m comfortable with on this heat beast. See my preferred temperature range here.
  • iStat menus - Display a customizable set of icons and information about your computer’s memory, temperature, etc. in the top status bar.
  • Unarchiver - Expand virtually any type of compressed file (zip, rar, hqx, etc.) for free.
  • Growl - Often overlooked, this program utilizes the innate ability of many of your other apps to communicate with you through popup status messages about what they are doing.
  • PictureSync - The best way to get your pics into Flickr, Facebook, etc.

And here are some other archives of fun Mac apps to explore:

(special thanks to Elliot Jay Stocks’ tutorial on how to create the transparent pngs from application icons which prettied up this post!)

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