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These are a few of my favorite things - 2013 Edition
As 2013 comes to an end, here are a list of my favorite Mac apps that I used over the past year. Now there are a few important things to remember: you'll notice that many of these are not "new" apps because, well, I don't care when the apps were made nearly as much as I care if they're good and I find them useful. Instead, this is a list of the apps that I used or enjoyed the most in 2013, and expect to keep using in the future. All prices listed are in US Dollars, rounded off to the nearest whole dollar (because we all know that 99¢ is just a marketing way of saying $1, right?). If there is no price listed, then the app/utility is free, although most gratefully accept donations. Favorite New App of 2013 Bartender ($15) is the app I never knew I wanted until it existed, and now I never want to use a Mac without it installed. Bartender lets you hide apps on your menu bar, as well as organize the ones you want to remain visible. You can even use it to hide built-in OS X menu bar icons such as Notification Center and Spotlight. I even use Bartender on my Dell UltraSharp 29" Ultrawide monitor which is essentially one monitor as wide as two monitors. Favorite App of 2013 Keyboard Maestro ($36) is my favorite "non-new" app of 2013. Version 6 came out in 2013 and the app is continually improved. The more I learn about Keyboard Maestro, the more I'm impressed with it. I have written about it a lot and posted several macros on Github. I've even done some one-on-one consulting and training. Even after all that, I'm still learning new tricks that it can do. (Peter Lewis, Keyboard Maestro's developer, commented that he's still impressed to see what users come up with to do with his own app!) Keyboard Maestro's cost may seem high in a world where software is often reduced to "fart-app pricing" but it does the work of several apps. It can launch applications, move and click the mouse, execute scripts, insert (static or dynamic/variable) text, manipulate windows, control menus, create/move/copy/rename/delete/trash files, control iTunes, capture images, control iTunes, send notifications, and more. Keyboard Maestro comes with a 30-day trial which is enough time to overcome the initial learning curve and start making it work for you. The developer is very responsive to questions and support requests, and there many others using Keyboard Maestro too, so you're likely to find more tips in the year ahead if you read their sites too. More Automation on the Mac Keyboard Maestro is only the tip of the automation iceberg. TextExpander ($35) and Hazel ($28) both continued to be essential tools in 2013. In case you're not familiar with them: TextExpander inserts text (or images, or runs scripts) on demand when you type a shortcut, and Hazel automatically responds to changes in files and folders. TextExpander is great if you find yourself needing to re-type the same thing over and over. I use it to insert frequently referred-to links, create templates for shell scripts or MultiMarkdown documents, and mail signatures. You can even "nest" snippets within other snippets. A Mac without TextExpander feels broken. Hazel can do so many things I don't know where to start, but here's one set of recipes I use more than any other. All of these are actions taken on files added to my ~/Downloads/ folder: If there is a new archived file (.zip, .tar.gz, etc) then unarchive it and store the original file in ~/Downloads/Archives/ (in case I want to copy it to another Mac). If a new .app file is found, move it to /Applications/ and replace any older version If a new text file is found (.txt, .md, .mmd, etc) is found, move it to ~/Dropbox/txt/ If another kind of document (.pdf, .docx, etc) is found, move it to ~/Dropbox/Documents/ If an image is found, move it to ~/Dropbox/Photos/ (where another Hazel rule then sorts them by date) There are lots of other possibilities, those are just a few to get you started. Hazel is one of those tools that works in the background doing tedious things so you don't have to. It will even keep your Trash from getting taking up space with old files or oversized files. Read more at TUAW All Hazel articles All TextExpander articles Most Taken-For-Granted App I Couldn't Live Without Dropbox. Good lord, I don't even want to think about using a Mac without Dropbox. Unless you have been literally living in a cave, you must have heard about Dropbox by now, right? If so, here's a summary: it's a magic folder which syncs to all of your computers (Mac, Windows, even Linux) which you can access on your iOS devices, and even on their website (unlike iCloud documents). It is supported by tons of iOS devices which use it for document sharing and more. You get 2 GB for free, and up to 500 GB for $500/year. All accounts come with 30 days of versioning so you can go back to previous versions of documents. Other Dropbox articles to check out: Get an extra 1 GB of Dropbox storage by syncing it to Mailbox Keep Dropbox.app up-to-date when the magic fails Finding Dropbox 'conflicted copy' files automatically All Dropbox articles on TUAW This Is Getting Really Long, I'm Going to Have to Summarize a Few of These: Sorry for the bulleted list. These are great apps, but they are either better-known or more easily explained (I hope!). This was the year I switched to Alfred ($0 for most features, $28 for "Powerpack" extensions, or a little over $50 for lifetime updates) from LaunchBar ($35). LaunchBar is still a great app, I just wanted to be able to use some of the workflow features in Alfred. Alfred, LaunchBar, and Keyboard Maestro all have clipboard functionality built-in, but if you want an app just for saving multiple clipboards, get Flycut. Even has Dropbox sync. MailMate ($50) definitely deserves its own review, and I suspect I'll be using it even more in 2014, but 2013 saw me start to move away from Gmail, especially Gmail.com which was redesigned but did not get better. If you use email, you owe it to yourself to checkout MailMate. OmniDiskSweeper ($0) remains my go-to app for finding out what is using all of my hard drive space. I'm still using version 1 of Skitch ($0) whenever I need to quickly take a screenshot then annotate and/or share it. Skitch version 2 has gotten better since its initial atrocious release but "saving" a Skitch in version 2 goes to Evernote instead of just staying locally, and I have no desire, need, or interest in saving Skitch to Evernote. Soulver ($12) is the first 'calculator' that I have really enjoyed using. I've never been great at math, I can't do a lot of calculations in my head. Using a regular calculator always left me frustrated, and half the time I wasn't sure that I had done the calculations properly. With Soulver, I understand regular real-life math a lot better than I ever have. That isn't to say that it doesn't have a lot of powerful options which are useful to people who are good at math. It does. But if you've never struggled with math, you can't understand what it means to have something like this. The word "empowering" has been overused to the extreme, but here it fits, at least for me. I bought the separate iPad and iPhone versions without hesitation or complaint, but I am glad to see that Soulver for iOS is now a universal app (currently on sale for $2). Need to turn a bunch of CDs or audio files into an audiobook? Audiobook Builder ($5). It will not only 'chapterize' it for you, it will also let you easily add cover art using any image file. Want to make sure your Mac doesn't turn itself off for a certain amount of time? Try Caffeine. GIF Brewery ($5) easily takes a video clip and turns it into a GIF. Use your Mac's keyboard for any iOS device (or any other Bluetooth capable device, including another Mac) using Type2Phone ($5). Growl ($4) still does a few tricks that OS X's notifications don't. Use PCKeyboardHack and KeyRemap4MacBook to make a hyper key. If you want to edit, create, or learn about launchd, get LaunchControl ($10, free unlimited demo). Hugely useful. Need to cut up an audio file, maybe to make an iPhone ringtone, or maybe just to trim it for some other reason? Fission - Fast & Lossless Audio Editing. I still haven't learned git but thanks to GitHub for Mac I've been able to fake my way along. If you use a calendar, get Fantastical ($10) for quick "natural language" entry menu bar access, and get BusyCal ($50, 30-day trial) for a better Mac calendar. Print from iOS to your Mac with Printopia ($20). You can save the file as a PDFs (or JPG or PNG if that's what the file was originally), or send them to any printer connected to your Mac. Default Folder X ($35, 30-day trial) lets you quickly jump to favorite folders, or assign specific folders as the 'default' for certain apps. This is another one of those tools that: a) feels like it should be built-in to OS X, b) when I use a Mac without this installed, it feels broken. Trying to monitor your Mac's bandwidth usage and prevent apps from covertly connecting to the Internet? Little Snitch ($35) is the tattletale little brother than those apps wish had never been born. SlimBatteryMonitor is a better battery monitor that OS X's own; MagiCal lets you easily create a menu bar clock that shows the time and/or date exactly as you want it; FreeSpace Tab shows available hard drive space in the menu bar; and I've stopped using all three in favor of iStat Menus ($16, 14-day trial) which also knocked OS X's Activity Monitor off my Dock. Of course I use VLC for most of my video-watching, including Blu-Ray discs thanks to MakeMKV ($0 for some features, $50 for Blu-Ray features, although they are free during beta see here for more info which is also what I use for ripping Blu-Ray and DVDs, almost exclusively via Batch Rip Actions for Automator which are capital-A Awesome if you are ripping lots of DVD/Blu-Ray discs. When I'm done I clean everything up using Name Mangler to get the filenames right and then I can watch my collection in the Plex Media Server. Last but not least I use Mountain ($2) to mount and unmount drives from the menu bar, Flashmount (see previous coverage) to quickly mount DMGs. and DiskWarrior ($100) to check and repair my disks. (By the way, DiskWarrior might be the most expensive piece of software on this list, but it's worth every penny. Get it to help fix little problems before they become big problems.) Looking Ahead Wow. That's a lot of great software. Here are a few apps that I'm keeping an eye on because I suspect they will be on next year's list: Shortcat (currently $16 during beta, planned $24 after): "Keep your hands on the keyboard and boost your productivity! Shortcat is a keyboard tool for Mac OS X that lets you "click" buttons and control your apps with a few keystrokes. Think of it as Spotlight for the user interface." let.ter ($4): "The tiny Markdown powered app just for writing emails." I've been using a send-only email app for 2.5 years now, but I like what I see so far in Letter. Recently released and still lacking some essential features such as multiple account support (which is planned for the nearish future), but I bet this eventually replaces what I've been using. Vellum is the new app that I'm most excited about. Anyone who has tried to make ebooks knows that it's a pain because each device has its own... "quirks." Serenity Caldwell likens making ebooks today to making websites in the late '90s when web standards didn't really exist or weren't implemented by the companies that made web browsers. Vellum bills itself as the tool to help you overcome the madness by letting you import a .docx file and export properly formatted books for iBooks, Kindle, and Nook. This is the next app on my "to test" list and I can't wait.
Mac power tools: charge up your workflow
I recently bought a new Mac, and I decided not to migrate years of cruft over to a pristine Snow Leopard install. I also decided to shed years of stale workflow and adopt a new way of doing things. Enter the power tools: software that augments the power and performance of OS X to do things faster and smarter. I'll examine some general system enhancements and look at a couple of powerful Mac/iPhone app combos that really work well together. Step one was finding a replacement for my beloved QuickSilver. I had abandoned QS well over a year ago due to performance issues on most of my Macs, but after a nagging pain in my wrist surfaced, I realized I had to find more keyboard shortcuts. Enter LaunchBar, which fills in for 90% of what QuickSilver used to do for me. LaunchBar is one Ctrl-Space (configurable, of course) away from Spotlight searching, Google searching, application launching, math calculations and much, much more. LaunchBar is $25 around $35 per seat, and worth taking 15 minutes to learn the basics. Go ahead, hate me for giving up QS, but try LaunchBar before you hurl the insults. Next I needed a better way to juggle 3 Gmail accounts. But I also needed a way to track the metric ton of inbox items that flow through those email conduits. The solution was the combination of MailPlane and Things. I had really dedicated my heart to Toodledo, but there's one trick I couldn't replicate on any setup (The Hit List included): when I get an email in MailPlane, I can select some text and press Shift-Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-0 and the Things HUD pops up and autofills the notes section with a link to the email itself. It is awesome. Not perfect, mind you, but a huge thing for me. Read on for more power tools and tips.
Default Folder X adds Snow Leopard Support
One of my favorite little utilities has been updated to fully support Mac OS X 10.6.1. Default Folder X makes it easy to navigate when both saving and opening files, and it has saved me constant hours of prowling around for folders where I save and open stuff. It's been particularly valuable when I'm working on a new book, because I have graphics and text strewn all over the place in folders on multiple disks. This new update also adds improved capabilities in Mac OS 10.4 and 10.5. In Snow Leopard I saw some nasty strange screen drawing anomalies, and that is now fixed with this most recent version. The developers also say there are improvements when using Final Cut Pro, QuickTime Player 7, and other applications that export files using QuickTime.You can try the utility for free for 30 days. Otherwise it is US $34.95, or $14.95 for users of versions bought before June 1, 2007.It's nice to see this utility updated, and while I love it dearly, it would have been so nice if more of this functionality had been built in to OS X natively. Until then, Default Folder X is a great solution for opening and saving files in a completely quick and sane manner.
WWDC Live: Jon Gotow of St. Clair Software
I was excited to speak with Jon Gotow of St. Clair Software, creator of Default Folder X, which is an invaluable tool to me. He is also an important voice in the OpenMeta debate and evolution happening right now, which will get its own article in the near future. He attended WWDC with his son, Ben Gotow, and had a lot to say about the state of Apple and looking forward. Continue reading for the video. Update: This video has been moved to YouTube and is now watchable.
Parallels offers "Green Computing Bundle"
Parallels started offering a bundle of applications for sale last night (yes, that Parallels -- the one that makes VM software). The Parallels "Green Computing Bundle" is a collection of 9 applications for $49.99 including: Parallels Desktop for Mac MacScan PasswordWallet Macintosh Explorer Macaroni Drive-in PageSender Default Folder X docXConverter The biggest application (and therefore the biggest deal) is by far the inclusion of the Parallels Desktop. You can purchase the bundle by visiting Parallel's Green Computing Bundle website.
Default Folder X 4.0 refined for Leopard
St. Clair Software has just released version 4.0 of its well-known Default Folder X for both Leopard and Tiger. This utility enhances OS X's Open and Save dialogs in a number of ways, allowing easy access to favorites and Spotlight comments, defining a per-application default folder, integrating with open Finder windows and more. The new version revamps the interface with a more HUD-like Leopard look and offers support for Quick Look as you can see above. Last week Macworld posted a preview video that does a good job of explaining just what makes Default Folder X so handy.Default Folder X is $34.95 and a demo is available. The upgrade is free to registered users of version 3 who purchased after June 1, 2007. The upgrade cost for other OS X registered users is $14.95 (and $19.95 for OS 9 registered users).[via Macminute]
