OSX apps that keep you hooked to your Mac?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4124915

by factorialboy • 14 years ago

5 22 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Sure Apple's hardware is great. Very stylish, very sexy and sleek.

But at the end of the day, its the software that makes you productive. Or keeps you entertained.

Which are the OSX apps that keep you hooked to your Mac / Macbook / MBP?

Thanks!

dylanhassinger• 14 years ago

Finder

cpt1138• 14 years ago

Inspector and Omnifocus

codyjames• 14 years ago

Alfred

runjake• 14 years ago

Notational Velocity. I know about ResophNotes, etc, but they don't cut it.

bbgm• 14 years ago

Omnifocus (Omni products in general), Keynote, Alfred, Papers2, Scrivener (although there is a Windows version now), All the text editor options (Notational Velocity, Nottingham, etc)

shasty• 14 years ago

OSX itself keeps me hooked to my Mac. I can find anything I need for this platform. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

shebson2• 14 years ago

It's only loosely an app, but having a real unix terminal (without having to run a VM) is the biggest reason I'm hooked.

factorialboy• 14 years ago

Almost every Linux distro gives you a terminal. :-/

balac• 14 years ago

And an arguably much better terminal at that. That being said this is still a huge advantage over Windows.

bdunbar2• 14 years ago

I use Linux (and Solaris, and BSD ...) on a regular basis.

But whenever I use linux on the desktop, the provided terminal feels rinky-dink compared to iTerm2.

shebson2• 14 years ago

Of course! I probably should have clarified and said something like "being able to run a real terminal alongside programs like Photoshop without having to us a VM has me hooked." I love linux, but there's a lot of software I use every day that only exists for mac/windows.

jayfuerstenberg• 14 years ago

MarsEdit & Coda

joshstrange• 14 years ago

XCode

seclorum• 14 years ago

Same here. I only have a Mac so I can develop for iOS with it.

There is no other reason to have it, in this house - everything else I do with my Mac, I can do equally well if not better with my Linux workstation.

Its just that its almost impossible to work on iOS without XCode, and so far the XCode VM I set up for the purpose isn't as performant as my MBP.

I'd love to ditch the MBP, though, and just have a plain ol' Linux workstation. I don't see anything terribly unique about OSX in comparison.

dholowiski2• 14 years ago

BBEdit, terminal. Also, not an app, but not having to screw around to make things work. This alone gives me a huge productivity boost, over Linux or Windows.

AjJi• 14 years ago

I believe that "not having to screw around to make things work" doesn't apply to windows, or at least, not anymore. Do you recall specific situations where something worked out-of-the-box on Mac but required "screwing around" on a windows machine?

mcrider• 14 years ago

Getting new devices to work (though thats probably just in the olden days as well). Also; Cygwin.

dholowiski2• 14 years ago

Terminal. Git. Wifi. App store & re-downloading purchases. Imovie with direct YouTube upload. These all often require screwing around or installing addons in windows. All worm flawlessly out of the box (OK I movie takes 3 or 4 clicks to buy/install) on my mac. These are just the firs few things that came to mind.

bdunbar2• 14 years ago

iTerm2.

It's humble. But every time I use linux I find myself missing the little features that iTerm2 provides.

bdwalter• 14 years ago

Pathfinder

brandoncordell• 14 years ago

iTerm2 running tmux. That's where I run vim and irssi.

As for GUI stuff.

* Alfred - Alfred will make you 100 times more productive moving around your system.

* Spotlight - Even if you don't use Alfred, spotlight will make you more productive

* AppZapper - Uninstalls apps and removes all the little things that get left behind when dragging apps to the trash.

* Automator - A lot of people don't ever learn automator, but I think it's the best thing ever. It comes with OS X and it's awesome. I write little tasks all the time for example, I have an automator task that zips my project directory with a timestamp in the name and moves it to dropbox every day at 4:55pm for backup.

* Billings - If you do contract work Billings is amazing

* Github.app - Amazing tool

* Growl - Amazing nofitications

* LittleSnapper - Fantastic tool for keeping track of screenshots of designs and such

* Mou - Great little markdown editor

* Propane - Fantastic campfire client

* Skala Preview - Allows you to connect to photoshop and see your iOS psd's realtime on your iOS device

* Textmate - Amazing text editor

* Transmit - Best ftp client hands down

* Wakeup Time - Turns your Macbook into an alarm clock

Maximal• 14 years ago

DevonThink: I put everything in it. Great for my MSc research into concurrency.

OSX apps that keep you hooked to your Mac?

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