Top 10 Third Party Mac OS X Applications
I recently stumbled across a blog post where Om Malik, senior writer at Business 2.0 magazine, outlines his favourite Mac OS X applications, and why. Out of all his choices I would only have put two in my list, but then I'm sure we both do very different jobs, so that is to be expected.Anyway without further ado here — in no particular order — are my top ten third part applications and my reasons why.
- Quicksilver
- This is one applications that we both agree about. Quicksilver appears to be a application launcher when you first play with it but it is so much more than that once you delve a bit deeper. I use it to quickly fire off e-mails, append text to documents, control iTunes, open files, as well as the application launching that it is so good at.There are other worthy opponents in the same field (Butler, LaunchBar) but I find Quicksilver more aesthetically pleasing and the price is unbeatable — free.
- NetNewsWire Lite
- This is the freeware version of the RSS aggregator that Om had as one of his choices. Personally I've never felt the need for the 'Pro' features that are available from the full version so have always stuck to the 'Lite' version.I've been a heavy user of this application for the last couple of years with brief defections over to using NewsFire (whilst it was a free beta version) and Vienna (I quickly grew tired of it's navigation, although did love it's Growl integration), but have always returned to it quickly.
- SpamSieve
- For a long time I didn't suffer from spam, but recently this has changed. It's not that I was getting a lot, it's just that Mail's built in junk mail filters couldn't seem to catch persistent repeat spam concerning replica Rolex watches, viagra and penis extensions!!! Enter SpamSieve.SpamSieve adds Bayesian spam filtering to popular e-mail clients on Mac OS X and I have to say I am suitably impressed. After a initial learning period where it wasn't too hot at marking spam messages as spam and good messages as good it has solved my spam problem and I am happy to say that I am now spam free.
- Kinkless GTD (requires OmniOutliner Pro)
- Kinkless GTD isn't really an application, but is instead a free set of Applescripts that work with OmniOutliner Pro to create a framework for implementing David Allen’s Getting Things Done task-management methodology. Essentially what kGTD allows you to do is empty your brain of all tasks that you need to complete and allocate them to projects that you are currently — and potentially in the future — working on. Additionally you assign a context to each task, for example a task that requires you to buy a new lightbulb could be assigned the context 'errand'.Now the way that the GTD methodology works is that, whereas traditionally you would work in a project oriented mode and work your way down your project tasks, you instead work in a context oriented mode. What this means practically is that if you take the 'errand' context, mentioned earlier, that you may have many errands that you need to carry out for many projects but instead of going out numerous times to complete them you could complete them all in one trip, thus using your time more effectively. This same principal can be used across all your contexts and you should find that you are getting more done in the same time than you were before.What makes kGTD so useful is that you can quickly create new tasks via a Quicksilver trigger and then synchronise all your contexts with iCal and even your mobile phone or iPod so you can always have your tasks on hand.I probably am not explaining the whole concept of GTD and kGTD's role in implementing it successfully very well so if you want some further reading I would suggest taking a look at 43 Folders and specifically the kGTD section and Quicksilver section.
- TextMate
- For years and years I was devout user of BBEdit for my text editing needs but in the last six months I've moved over completely to using TextMate. This is essentially down to my increase in developing Ruby on Rails web applications and TextMate's native support for many shortcuts for defining functions and methods for Rails, and partially for aesthetic reasons — TextMate just feels much more like a Mac OS X application whereas BBEdit still has a feeling of OS 9 about it.Those reasons combined with the fact that TextMate's project handling options are far superior to BBEdit makes it a winner in my book.
- OmniGraffle Pro
- This is the premier charting application on Mac OS X, in my opinion, and is the same vein as Microsoft Visio on the Windows platform.I use OmniGraffle extensively in my job as a web designer to create site maps, wireframes, database schemas and various other drawings required for specifying projects fully in the initial stages. It has templates built in for many charting tasks and can also import OmniOutliner documents and will automatically draw a chart of your Outline in any style that you specify. The 'Pro' version has a few nice extra features such as Visio XML Import/Export and therefore gets my recommendation over the standard version.
- Synchronize! Pro X
- This application is an unsung hero in my view. It's probably one of the most valuable pieces of software that is used daily at my work but rarely have I heard anybody praise it.What Synchronize! allows us to do at work is have individual copies of the sites we are working on on multiple machines in the office and synch them up safe in the knowledge that things won't go tits-up. It performs incremental backups and synchronisations of folders or even full systems and also has a handy auto run capability that kicks in when specific volumes are mounted — this feature alone makes it worth the asking price as it automates the backing up of essential files.
- MK Console
- Mk Console is a simple application that displays logfiles of your choosing on your desktop. This is really useful if you have to monitor servers or you just want to keep an eye on what's going on on your machine.Personally, I have the contents of my Apache
error_logdisplay in a fully transparent window on the desktop. This way I have quick access — via a full screen Exposé — to debugging information whilst I'm developing sites. - Witch
- Witch is a system preference which, once activated, implements an Exposé of open windows. However unlike Exposé, where you have to scrub the mouse over similar looking windows to find out what the window name is, Witch displays a list of currently open windows grouped by what application they are associated with. From here you can select the window of your choice and either bring it into focus, close — this even works with minimised windows — or minimise it all without having to resort to using the mouse.An indispensible companion to Exposé.
- Growl
- Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X and as such isn't really an application. It's a framework that developers can hook into to allow their applications to send you notifications.Frankly I didn't see what all the fuss was about until I forced myself to give it a shot over a number of days and set up all of my Growl capable applications to use it. Now I couldn't live without it.For example, Growl notifies me when:
- SpamSieve has detected a spam message that requires confirmation from me
- iTunes changes track so that I can see what is next to play and what rating I have allocated it
- when I rate a track — using a Quicksilver trigger — in iTunes, thus confirming my action
- kGTD has finished performing it's synchronise or archive process it lets me know
- Safari has finished downloading a file
- hardware devices become available/unavailable.
Like Quicksilver, Growl needs a certain amount of configuration before you can get it to work the way you want it to work but, in my opinion, once you've used it for a while you can't imagine using Mac OS X without it.Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if someone at Apple hasn't been taking note and something like this appear in Apple's next generation of Mac OS X. You heard it here first!
So there you have it, my top 10 third party Mac OS X applications. Feel free to mention any you feel should be on the list as I'm sure there are plenty apps out there I'm not even aware that exist that could make my day to day work easier and more productive.