I have had a handful of people write me after switching to Mac and ask me questions about what programs do I use. Since Steve asked me to do a post about it. This is the first of a few “Tour of My Mac” posts. These are the the Mac apps I use every single day. They come bundled with OS X or are free to download.
Safari
Apple’s Browser. I use Safari because it’s clean, easy to use and is significantly faster than FireFox.
Quicksilver
Without Quicksilver life on my Mac would be significantly less fun and less productive. After you download it, go directly to this post where after I spent a whole afternoon on Digg and Google finding some of the best tutorials available for Quicksilver I cataloged them.
NetNewsWire Lite
NetNewsWire Light is an RSS Reader. It gathers all the site feeds I’m subscribed to. I like having a desktop RSS reader because I don’t have to be conected to the internet to read them, so I can catch up on my feeds when I’m traveling.
I wrote an article to RSS and feed readers here. Also, you can download my OPML file to see what I’m subscribed to.
TextWrangler
I don’t do an extreme amount of coding so TextWrangler works great for me. I use it for all my HTML and CSS coding of TheFightSpot.com
iCal
iCal keeps me on track and on time to my schedule and meetings. I put everything in here. From when I’m getting up, to when I’m in the Prayer Room to meetings to time with my wife. My whole life is scheduled inside iCal. In fact, I just re-assessed my schedule.
Whenever I set-up a meeting, I always put the alarm on for 1 day in advance, that way I’m reminded about the meeting the day before. I also open up iCal every morning to look at my schedule for that day and see if I have anything going on I don’t remember.
Mail.app
Most people on OS X use Mail.app – nothing new there. But you can read how got rid of 2,000 old messages and how I now organize and handle all my email here.
Next I’ll be talking about the Apps I use every day that weren’t free. What free apps are you using?
18 comments
Phil said:
Bro, your iCal is packed! How do you find engouh different colour shades to tell them apart at a glance?
Of the free Apps I use, I have Quicksilver, Mail, Safari, iCal, MSN or Adium. I used to use Smultron for the bit of coding I do, but I got TextMate in the MacHeist bundle so thats not here any more!
Posted on April 12, 2007 at 8:20 am
Jackson said:
Mail.app, Camino (a Firefox-esque web browser), iChat, CyberDuck, iWeb, PageSpinner, MacTracker, and I’ll have Quicksilver when my MacBook comes back.
check out the complete list of apps here – http://www.jacksonbohlender.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry070314-133118
Posted on April 12, 2007 at 8:36 am
Ryan Couch said:
@Shawn: Is there a free mac app (for windows
that allows me to toggle your webpage from the old red couch design to the new? I like the new, but sometimes miss the big red couch, esp. considering my last name! jk 
Great podcast by the way.
Posted on April 12, 2007 at 9:51 am
{Shawn} said:
@ Phil: My iCal colors are shaded in groups. Green is meetings, black is prayer room, browns and oranges are work times, red is personal.
Is TextMate that good? It’s the only text editor I ever hear about.
Posted on April 12, 2007 at 9:58 am
{Shawn} said:
@ Jackson: I used to use CyberDuck. It is an extremely good program considering it’s free. But I ended up buying Transmit. I’ll get to that on a later post about my top paid for apps.
@ Ryan: I secretly designed a couple desktop backgrounds. And one of them features the red couch for old time’s sake. They’re on the downloads page.
Posted on April 12, 2007 at 9:58 am
Phil said:
@Shawn: I imagine if I was a more proficient coder I would get a lot more out of it. I wouldn’t have bought it had I not been getting the bundle, but having said that it is one of the few apps from it I still use. The auto complete of tags is quite useful, but like I say I don’t really know enough about coding to really do it justice!
Posted on April 12, 2007 at 10:14 am
Ryan Couch said:
@Shawn: Now my desktop fits my name. Thanks bro!
Posted on April 12, 2007 at 10:34 am
{Shawn} said:
@ Ryan: I wasn’t going to say anything.
Posted on April 12, 2007 at 11:10 am
Lynn said:
butler. it kind of sounds like quicksilver is similar.
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/System-Utilities/Butler.shtml
Posted on April 12, 2007 at 11:17 am
Idhrendur said:
Well, I’m not using free programs for Mac (they wouldn’t run on my machne), but I’m using a few:
Firefox
Trillian (ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, IRC all bundled together)
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (not normally free, but there are advantages to my school being a microsoft shop)
Microsoft Office (see above)
Incidentally, I saw some C-style comments in your code up above. That makes me happy.
Posted on April 12, 2007 at 11:48 am
loud said:
Vienna. Better than NetNewsWire (and Lite).
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/27372
BackLight. Use your screensaver as desktop background. Very cool effect.
http://freshsqueeze.com/products/freeware/
Mori. It’s like OmniOutliner, but cheaper and free. Highly recommended!! This is my notebook, GTD app, everything.
http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/product/mori
iController. Scrolls current iTunes in menubar, with Growl support.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/26395
ADIUM. C’mon, Shawn. You forgot the best one!!
and Adium Book (to add Adium contacts into Address Book).
Firefox — though slower than Safari, more pimpable. I mean… customizable. Especially for Gmail and Google uses. (And yes, I know Saft and all the Safari add-ons.)
VLC Player. I watch everything with that.
Desktopple — hide your desktop really quickly from the menubar.
Skype.
Journler. And yes, you CAN desktop blog from it. (I don’t use it anymore though.)
Butler is faster than Quicksilver, but Quicksilver is way more pimpable.
If I think of more, I’ll let you know.
Here’s the best list of menubar apps:
http://menu.jeweledplatypus.org/
Posted on April 12, 2007 at 11:53 am
Evan Olsen said:
I have iWindows. It’s sweet.
Posted on April 12, 2007 at 1:28 pm
steve offutt said:
shawn: tks for the post. looking forward to see more about good mac apps! this is going to save me so much time and effort getting my mac up to *blaze sauce* level!
Posted on April 12, 2007 at 2:40 pm
{Shawn} said:
@ Loud: I used to use Vienna but it was buggy and didn’t read all feeds the same. I like NetNewsWire Light a lot more.
Posted on April 12, 2007 at 4:33 pm
caleb vaughn said:
My favorite apps are:
iTerm (UNIX terminal),
Automator (AppleScripting for dummies),
Adium (best IM client ever),
AppleWorks (Apple’s old office suite. its pretty much abandoned, but still nice),
Firefox (i would use Safari or Camino, but they just ain’t “pimpable”), and of course
Quicksilver (can’t use a Mac without it).
Transmission (of all the BitTorrent clients i’ve used, this one is the best)
The full list of my apps is here: http://osx.iusethis.com/user/zer
Posted on April 13, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Jackson said:
I forgot the best ones! Fen�tres Volantes and DuckCall.
i get a new app every day from http://FreeMacWare.com..
Posted on April 13, 2007 at 3:55 pm
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Posted on April 16, 2007 at 5:50 am
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