iUse on OS X (Updated)

After now already several people asked me, what different kind of software/applications I use on my Macs, I’d like to sum up a list with the most essential software in my everyday work.

CandyBar makes OS X appear even more lickable than it already is. It allows to simply change each application’s icon and provides a cool management of all the available icon-sets. Besides, also the Dock appearance can be tweaked and managed. It would be really nice, if CandyBar would provide a way to sync the collection from one Mac to another, since now, I need to keep my collections on my iMac and my MacBook manually in sync, what’s pretty meh. However,  although it’s pretty pricy, it’s worth to have it.

Colloquy is the most advanced, free IRC client I’ve found yet. Its feature-list is pretty good and there’s a similar iPhone client available, too. I used this client already in 2006, when I still had my PowerBook and have to say, that it’s pretty bloated and slow on older hardware. But on the current generation of MacBooks, iMacs and MacPros it should be running like a charm.

Width Dropbox you can easily keep your files in sync over two or more different devices, regardless if it’s a PC, a Mac, a Linux or even an iPhone – all your data is always up-to-date. Besides, you can share files with friends and receive shared folder invitations yourself. 2GB of space is being provided for free, more is affordable for some cash. Though, I’d never put sensitive data “into the cloud”.

Echofon is probably the best Twitter-suite available on the Mac and the iPhone. Thanks to their Sync- and Push-Notification-Service it’s a pleasure to use Twitter, even with multiple accounts and on multiple devices. Thanks to the intelligent Sync-Service, Echofon notices when you’re not on your desktop anymore, and starts pushing notifications to your iPhone client when you get mentioned by someone else – very cool! Yet, the notifications will be pushed only every 15 minutes, but from what I’ve heard, the Echofon guys are already working on shrinking this interval. If you haven’t tried out yet – be sure to do soon!

Is there much to say about iPhoto? I think you can call it the image-management application on OS X. Since ‘09 it also supports Faces & Places, what makes everything even more sexy. In combination with the photos shot on a GPS-able camera (like the iPhone) it even detects automatically, what place you’ve taken the photo. Although, yet the face-recognition doesn’t work as I would expect it to. You need high quality pictures with much contrast to get iPhoto recognize the people.

I used to be registered on Last.fm since I was using Linux with its Media-Players with Audioscrobbler plugin, so I’ve just continued using this pretty cool service. It let’s me tag the music I listen and discover new tracks I might like. I never tried out Pandora or similar services, so I can’t say whether Last.fm is better or not – I’m just used to it. :-)

After discovering and trying out LaunchBar there was no way around it anymore – not even by using QuickSilver, what I did quite some time. LaunchBar is extremely fast, supports a ton of different Applications and even provides an easy way to write and include your own plugins. I wouldn’t want to miss it again in my daily work.

LittleSnapper in combination with its web-service (former QuickSnapper, now Ember) is a very nice enhancement to the OS X desktop, since it provides a very quick and easy way to share screenshots with others, without having to use “Grab” and manually upload the images to some service like ImageShack. In addition to the Desktop client, I also use the iPhone app to share camera-snapshots with others.

With Money managing finances became as easy as a finger-snip. I bought my license on a MacUpdate Promo for 20% less and have to say that it’s worth every penny, especially when there’s such a friendly and helpful company like Jumsoft behind. Money supports backing up the whole database to MobileMe and by that even synchronization of two Macs with each other. The iPhone client yet only supports sync over WiFi from what I’ve seen, but hopefully there will be MobileMe support in future, too.

Let me just call it “Poor man’s Photoshop” – in an excellent way! Pixelmator is, what GIMP is to the GNOME Desktop. It let’s me create/edit images in an easy and smooth way, without much knowledge of the actual application itself. Pixelmator provides me a light and intuitive application with a feature-list that fits my needs perfectly without being over-bloated.

As the name already says, Quiet Read provides you a way to temporary bookmark for example web-pages and read it later, when there’s more time for it. It’s actually the similar concept Instapaper follows, although it doesn’t really extract your site’s content for any mobile platform, nor does it have any web-service in the background to which you can sync multiple installations. MobileMe support would be a great feature, maybe Bamboo Apps will implement it some day. :-)

Shovebox is a great companion for Things and Quiet Read which also provides a pretty cool iPhone client that’s for free. I got the App itself from within a MacHeist Bundle, where I didn’t need to pay anything for it – and maybe that’s the reason I’m actually using it. Yet, I would not really pay money on this App, since its yet pretty “small” (regarding its features) and I have most things already managed by Things and Quiet Read/Instapaper (free).

Yes, it’s Telephone! And yes! It’s OpenSource! This application allows you to use your VoIP account provided by your ISP directly on your Mac. At the moment, several ISP are supported and the list gets longer and longer. Telephone makes it easy to dial and receive calls on a VoIP account without much hassle.

TextMate – THE Editor. I think, there’s nothing better for writing any kind of code under OS X. This editor is light, fast and provides hell of a feature-set you’ll probably never finish to explore. MacroMates did an excellent job with this application and I know of many tries (especially on Linux) to re-create something similar, but yet no other (GUI-)editor reached TextMate.

Things is probably one of the most amazing task management applications for OS X available today. It provides all you need for successfully managing all your ToDos and even syncs them up to your iPhone client. Two big cons of Things are the yet still not available MobileMe sync (today, it does sync only over WiFi, without even using an encrypted connection) and the pricing on both, the desktop and the iPhone app. Still, the App is just lo-ve-ly and a must of everyone who’s really into task management.

A very nice newsfeed reader with excellent graphical user interface. Times provides you all basic-features you would expect form an RSS-reader plus the possibility to read the whole articles within the application itself. Very nice idea, and pretty cool implementation, though I’d wish it to be faster and not that bloated.

Versions – and you’ll never need to look up svn –help again. Since the last version of Version (ough, what a sentence) it even supports the latest SVN 1.6.x and provides you to work with several different SVN repositories at a time without much practice. Although, with $39 it this application is very pricy.

Viscosity is yet the best user interface for OpenVPN available on OS X, in my opinion. It lets you import your OpenVPN config-files and edit them within a very nice preference-window. Also, it shows you statistics about your running connections and makes OpenVPN easier than it already is – and with $9 it’s quite a fair deal.

Storing passwords, credit-card information and other sensitive data. Wallet allows me to manage all my logins and other passwords in a very nice and fast way, it provides me an add-on for Safari and Firefox and it allows me to sync my Wallet-database via MobileMe and even browse it on my iPhone with its iPhone app – although it took years until the iPhone pendant was available here in germany.

I think, that’s it so far. Besides those application, of course I use the regular tools like Mail.app, iCal, the Address Book, iTunes, the Terminal and all the other not-worth-mentioning programs that come with OS X. :-)