13 ms·

My wonderful world of macOS

• legulere 9y ago
  To me this amount of tools seems like spending more time configuring and tinkering with tools than actually using them productively
  • coldtea 9y ago
    That would only be the case if those tools did the same thing
  • tejasmanohar 9y ago
    I used to be like this... crazy about dotfiles, backgrounds, shortcuts, apps, etc. Eventually, I learned that I'm better off with the standard setup and little customization. No fancy aliases, no recorded dotfiles, no crazy editor configuration, nothing. If I get a new computer or am using someone else's even, it's easy for me to install what I need as I need it and get going out of the box.
    • adtac 9y ago
      IMO that's a bad trade-off. You're going to be using your personal computer more than the time you spend switching computers. In that case it makes sense to customize your set up to fit you. How often do you get a new computer?
      • jacobush 9y ago
        True for most people, but I have been in situations where I got new Windows machines pretty often. Then I learned to just suppress my itch to customize and just the darn thing. Now I am my Mac since a few years and also transferred the whole thing once from a TimeMachine backup, so I customize. Though that list of the OP... SO MANY APPS?! I get weak knees just from scanning that list. Though several I may pick, like the Focus app and maybe a few others.
        • suprfnk 9y ago
          > Though several I may pick, like the Focus app and maybe a few others. And when you're used to those apps, you might pick up a few more here and there. And a few more. And in a while you'll have a list just like the one linked.
        • hnlmorg 9y ago
          This is the primary reason why I stopped using Windows. The defaults wound me up rotten and after a fresh install it would take me hours (literally) to configure Windows to run the way I liked my workflow. It just got worse and worse with each new version of Windows pushing itself further and further away from my ideal workflow. But with Linux, as much as I have my preferences with desktop environments et al, I found I could more easily work with whatever was put in front of me (after all, if all else fails I can just fallback to Bash). So I gave up fighting Windows and just switched to Linux full time. This was around 15/20 years ago now and I do have a custom Bash profile and custom tmux config. The tmux config never needs to leave my workstation but the bash profile gets copied onto each server the moment I SSH onto it (as I've aliased SSH to do this) so that means I have a familiar environment on remote systems with zero extra maintenance.
          • jwandborg 9y ago
            Copying your bash-profile is good as long as soon as you're _the_ user on that server, or when you have separate users for all users of the server. At my work, we all use the same user for ssh (uid 1000), for all servers, for all projects. It's a good opportunity to exercise mode-switching when switching from (local) fish to (remote) bash and back again, and I'm happy both of fish, bash share the common readline bindings, it also makes it clear what kind of shell you're in if you're jumping back and forth between docs, manpages and shells. I have one itch, fish and bash do word-boundaries differently when deleting with Ctrl-W (delete word). bash even does word-boundaries different from Ctrl-W when using Meta-D (delete word in front).
            • hnlmorg 9y ago
              I don't know your specific set up so I don't want to come across as preachy but it's not generally good practice to have everyone using the same UID. I know for a fact we would fail our regular PCI and gambling commission audits if we did that but even for businesses that don't need that kind of regulation, sharing a UID means you're sharing passwords / private keys which seems a major security breach just waiting to happen (eg what happens when someone leaves the team?)
      • 4ad 9y ago
        No way, in the day of cloud infrastructure I use far more other computers than my computer. And the other computers I use change all the time.
    • kornish 9y ago
      Why not get the best of both worlds? Spend time tinkering to find force multipliers, then throw those dotfiles or Brewfile or installation scripts into a git repo and it's all a `git clone` away. What works for you certainly works for you, of course; it's just worth noting that there exists a very productive middle ground in which one can use tools without spending an unproductive amount of time on hyperconfiguration.
      • bluejekyll 9y ago
        Yeah. I've started doing this. Warning though, make sure to use a private repo. It keeps two my macs and Linux systems all in sync. I knew someone who accidentally uploaded their AWS credentials to a public repo; that was a huge shitshow.
      • bluejekyll 9y ago
        Yeah. I've started doing this. Warning though, make sure to use a private repo. I knew someone who accidentally uploaded their AWS credentials to a public repo; that was a huge shitshow.(btw, don't put cress in repos at all, but at least a private repowill give you a buffer)
    • pjmlp 9y ago
      Same here. Oh the days trying out every WM under the Sun. Nowadays on Windows I do a few customization, like showing file extensions, enabling a separate process for each explorer Window and a few other things and that's about it. On GNU/Linux, I have long settled on whatever is the default WM for the respective distribution.
    • keithpeter 9y ago
      The Rob Pike approach https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/ https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/ I'm coming round to it (at a considerably less exalted level).
      • antaviana 9y ago
        What I do is the VDI approach. I have one AWS Windows instance with and I RDP to it from any of my computers at home, the office or any of my second homes, which happen to be iMacs but could be anything.
        • swah 9y ago
          I'd love to do something like this but I'm 150ms away from cheap VPSes.. Do you even watch Youtube (say) inside the instance??
          • antaviana 9y ago
            If I do not have fiber or my ISP is having a bad day, using my phone G4 as a personal Hotspot I get some 80 ms. I use USB instead of wifi to save 5ms. To save some money, I shutdown the AWS instance when I do not need it because it starts up in seconds. For web browsing I often use the local browser because with Macs swiching the current desktop is just a key stroke away (which is not the case for W10 if one of those desktops is the RDP client.
        • ajsalminen 9y ago
          How's the latency for text editing? I tried doing something like this with *nix tools but found it unbearable even when connecting to localhost.
          • antaviana 9y ago
            In my case it is indistinguisable from local text editing. I remember however that I chose to turn off SublimeText scrolling animations because it was a way worse than locally. My fiber latency to my AWS instance is about 60ms and with phone 4G about 80ms.
    • inDigiNeous 9y ago
      Yeah this guy is pretty crazy with the automation and keyboard shortcut apps, I mean 3 different apps for automating keyboard shortcuts or other automation ? I mean it's a good idea, but I prefer simplifying my own workflow so I can perform it without any external apps. I used like the idea of automating setting up a workspace, but now I like just to open up and close whatever I need at that moment, it really goes into your muscle memory after a while. Only thing I really customize is my programming environment, my vim setup is highly customized, also shell functions. But each to his own :)
    • arthurfm 9y ago
      > If I get a new computer or am using someone else's even, it's easy for me to install what I need as I need it and get going out of the box. Mackup [1] might also be worth considering. It symlinks all of your config files to a supported storage location (Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, Git etc.) which enables you to either backup the settings or sync them between one or more other Macs. To restore your settings on a brand new Mac simply run "mackup restore". [1] https://github.com/lra/mackup https://github.com/lra/mackup
    • inopinatus 9y ago
      I used to be a tinkerer, happily maintaining my own fork of, say, Rails. Or Postfix. Or the Linux kernel. It was tremendous fun and a great way to learn internals, but also a colossal time sink. I don't fight the platform anymore, I just use whatever's vanilla out of the box. And I'm actually a lot more productive as a result. I think it's more than okay to go through the tinkerer phase, it's one path to growing as a developer.
      • organsnyder 9y ago
        My Linux distro progression was Linux From Scratch -> Gentoo -> Ubuntu -> Kubuntu -> Ubuntu -> Kubuntu... My personal laptop has been on Kubuntu LTS since I bought it seven years ago, and it works fine. My employer-provided laptop is a Mac, so I use MacOS there (with some tweaks, especially to get keyboard shortcuts for window management). My home desktop runs Windows 10 for gaming, but I find it fine for occasional dev work. Basically, I use whatever is in front of me, now. I seem to have gotten more flexible as I've gotten older.
    • conradev 9y ago
      I had that philosophy for a long time, but I’ve since written a few bash scripts and put them in a git repo to automate the things I do frequently. I, too, try to stay close to the defaults, but I will change them if I feel strongly enough.
    • SingAlong 9y ago
      I have an install.sh in my dot-files repo - https://github.com/HashNuke/dot-files/blob/master/install.sh https://github.com/HashNuke/dot-files/blob/master/install.sh (no secrets in this repo). Works for both my macbook and online workstation. Recently heard someone else's smarter idea. Put the dotfiles into a Dropbox dir and use symlinks. So updates auto-sync across computers. [EDIT: I think it was Kenneth Reitz that tweeted about his Dropbox setup]
  • parmesan 9y ago
    Well, you collect more and more tools to simplify your life and solve repetitive tasks during years of usage. Sooner or later it's going to be a looong list of utilities.
  • icebraining 9y ago
    So what? Some of us enjoy configuring and tinkering during our breaks.
  • oblio 9y ago
    He seems to be a student, so he's still in the tinkering phase :)
    • pantulis 9y ago
      And that's a good thing, btw :)
  • carlosrg 9y ago
    Agreed. I prefer being more minimalistic. For example, he uses VS Code, a separate markdown editor, a separate markdown previewer, and a LaTeX editor - but VS Code has a markdown mode built-in and can show markdown previews, and I'm pretty sure there are LaTeX plugins for it too.
  • johnfn 9y ago
    Why the negativity when OP is just sharing things he likes? :(
  • thewhitetulip 9y ago
    I used to configure everything five years ago, I installed Linux from scratch and customized EVERYTHING. But then I got tired of it and now I hardly customize anything. I use a note keeping webapp that I created for platform interoperability. No more desktop apps if I can avoid.
  • Angostura 9y ago
    Mmmmm, my main thought reading the list was mainly 'thats a huge amount of cruft to overcomplicate my life'. I mean, there are a few things in there that are useful.
  • jwr 9y ago
    It's a Mac. Installing an application doesn't necessarily mean "configuring and tinkering" like on Linux. You drag it and it's installed. Apps have predictable GUIs, so they are often easy to use right from the start. I don't spend time "configuring and tinkering", and yet after several years on a Mac I use a good number of apps.
• wbrocklebank 9y ago
  Great list. I hear you re subscriptions but people who are new to (I.e. don’t own) many of the apps you mention... Paw, iStat Menus, Ulysses, Gemini, 2Do and quite a few more Can get fully working copies on Setapp for a really low monthly price. Setapp is a heavily curated subscription app bundle from the MacPaw folks. People cd save a bunch of money and also have access to a large number of useful apps that once in a while are ideal to do a job but that you wouldn’t purchase for one-off use. Http://setapp.com
  • coldtea 9y ago
    >Can get fully working copies on Setapp for a really low monthly price. Yes, but will Ulysses remain on Setapp now that they're doing their own subscription thing?
• wlesieutre 9y ago
  Weird that Sketch gets the "I'm not a fan of subscription pricing" warning when it's not a subscription. Buying it only gives you a year of updates instead of until the next major feature/version bump, sure, but you're free to stop paying and keep using the version you have. The actual forced subscriptions like Ulysses and You Need A Budget somehow get a free pass though?
  • suhastech 9y ago
    How comfortable are people with subscription pricing for a Mac App? I've been seeing a lot of them are going that way. To give a developers perspective, I have been contemplating to implement subscription based model into my app to make it more sustainable. Putting in time for development and as well as marketing (to always get more users) is frustrating.
    • losteric 9y ago
      I will begrudgingly subscribe if the app is good enough, but vastly prefer purchasing software and paying for new versions/pro features. "Good" is a high bar... If an app costs $5/m, it has to convince me I'll see $300 in value over 5 years.
      • suhastech 9y ago
        That makes sense. My app[1] is currently priced at $20. The way it's used, it can't be right to limit users with pro features. I can either increase the price or go the subscription way. If I do increase the price, I'm afraid, it might put people off. Maybe I can try a hybrid approach. $60 for lifetime or $20 a year. [1] https://thehorcrux.com/ https://thehorcrux.com/
        • wlesieutre 9y ago
          If you have some pro features that include an ongoing hosted service, that's the most justifiable way to do it IMO.
• thomble 9y ago
  Note that Textual is free. Codeux sells signed binaries. https://github.com/Codeux-Software/Textual https://github.com/Codeux-Software/Textual
  • yborg 9y ago
    Colloquy is free, too. http://colloquy.info/ http://colloquy.info/ Pretty much abandonware now, but still completely functional.
  • Etheryte 9y ago
    Huh, that's neat, I always thought they were closed source.
    • softinio 9y ago
      Textual is basically limechat with a theme.
• coldtea 9y ago
  >moved to it from Textexpander as I am not fond of subscription models for software (...) 1Password my password manager of choice I have bad news for you... (Switching over to something else myself)
  • baronseng 9y ago
    what have you switch to?
    • coldtea 9y ago
      I'm not sure yet -- still using the non-subscription/non-Cloud 1password. I probably have it easier than most, as I don't like the browser plugins and 1password-mini, and I just use 1password as a store for passwords -- I open it, search, and paste when I need to. So I can just go to using an encrypted DMG + plain text if push comes to shove. I used Wallet by Acrylic before 1password, so I might return to that.
      • yberreby 9y ago
        Look into KeePass, it's better than an encrypted DMG :). There's a Mac implementation called MacPass which is really well-designed and easy to use.
        • snowwrestler 9y ago
          I've been using KeePass on Mac with an app called KeePassX for nearly a decade. The user experience is not as slick as an app like iPassword, but it is free and secure.
      • ryukafalz 9y ago
        I personally use pass[0], which keeps passwords in GPG-encrypted text files. Copying a password to my clipboard looks like this, for example: pass -c web/bank ...or if you also use Alfred, there's a workflow for it. [0] https://www.passwordstore.org/ https://www.passwordstore.org/
    • 9y ago
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• mamp 9y ago
  Great collection. My favourite editor for notes/code is Quiver. It does Markdown, WYSIWIG, code (via ACE editor), MathJax and even markup for diagrams. It has a cell based approach so you can mix and match different sections if you don't want everything as one big Markdown block. The only downside is that there is no iOS editor, only viewer. http://happenapps.com http://happenapps.com
  • kossmoboleat 9y ago
    I like Quiver but I wish it would store regular Markdown files instead of JSON. Equally important an Android app that can add notes or alternatively Simplenote syncing would make me consider switching from nvAlt.
• kgabis 9y ago
  I've found these apps to be fantastic if you care about security on a mac: https://objective-see.com https://objective-see.com
  • beautifulfreak 9y ago
    Although BlockBlock is in "beta," it works well, preventing installation of persistent items unless given a user okay but running silently in the background. It's fun to see what causes the warning window to pop up, like whenever Adobe Flash gets auto-updated. It's saved me from at least one very sketchy install.
    • kgabis 9y ago
      I'm still surprised all these tools are free, he could easily sell them for real money. I've started supporting him on patreon because it felt weird to not pay anything for it...
• wishinghand 9y ago
  On the repo owner's Pixelmator line: > probably the best image editor out there on Mac, is packed with very powerful features and is very simple in its UI I feel like that's quickly being overtaken by Affinity Photo[0]. One time fee, though you have to pay twice if you want a license on Windows and MacOS, but it's a closer approximation of Photoshop so you won't have to change too much muscle memory. It has better non-destructive layer editing as well. I found it crazy hard to do a layer style like desaturating a layer without "baking" it in. [0] - https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/
  • archagon 9y ago
    Also, Affinity Designer is a great Illustrator stand-in, even though it doesn't nearly have feature parity.
  • inDigiNeous 9y ago
    Been using Photoshop and Pixelmator, Affinity Photo definitely is the in my books the best image editor currently. Love that most of the things in Affinity a real time, so you see changes immediately for all the effects etc. It's still under work of course, and hasn't reached the kind of UI maturity that Photoshop has, but it's getting there, and you can't beat their price either.
• archagon 9y ago
  On the topic of macOS power usage: I made a free open source app that lets you use the side buttons on your third-party mice for system-wide navigation[1], just like in Windows. Other apps can do this too, but practically all of them bind the buttons to annoying keyboard shortcuts and frequently exhibit unexpected behavior. Mine is (sort of) event based and works a lot better, including in Xcode! Not to toot my own horn (I mean the app is pretty simple) but it's a splinter that's been bothering me about macOS for years and years. [1]: http://sensible-side-buttons.archagon.net http://sensible-side-buttons.archagon.net
  • michaelwu 9y ago
    Starting to go off topic but have you checked out BetterTouchTool[1]? It's not _just_ another window tiling app for the Mac. It also lets you conveniently remap trackpad gestures and taps, 3rd party mice (yes you can remap your side buttons if you want), keyboard shortcuts, etc. The coolest thing is that if you really want, you can also restrict your remaps to work only in certain applications. I've been using it for years and just wanted to share. [1]: https://www.boastr.net https://www.boastr.net
    • archagon 9y ago
      For the specific purpose of remapping side mouse buttons, BTT only allows you to bind them to keyboard shortcuts. As far as I can tell, no tool except for the one I made lets you bind them to virtual swipe events (which generally work better).
      • fifafu 9y ago
        BetterTouchTool has always had the "mimicking standard gestures" predefined actions which really send gesture events and don't just send shortcuts. However it currently only supports three finger swipe left and right (which are the most useful to go back and forward). I probably should look into how to synthesize other gestures as well (there is no official API for synthesizing gestures but afaik people have reverse engineered how to do it, e.g. https://github.com/calftrail/Touch/tree/master/TouchSynthesis https://github.com/calftrail/Touch/tree/master/TouchSynthesi...) For three finger swipes I'm using a trick to synthesize them without private API, but for other swipe types I'd need to synthesize them using the private API... However there haven't been too many requests for other event types thus it's not very high up on my TODO list. (I'm the author of BTT) Also BTT allows you to bind them to many many predefined actions in addition to keyboard shortcuts, e.g. "Trigger Menubar Menu Item" which can be very powerful.
• aggress 9y ago
  I like leaving some RAM for my browser to chew through.
  • dawnerd 9y ago
    And they complained about chrome being slow...
• ikurei 9y ago
  He's recommending Clean My Mac. I am a bit out of my medium on Mac, even though I use it 8hrs a day, but I was under the impression Clean My Mac is little more than bullshit, albeit with very effective and somewhat shady marketing practices. Do the more expert Mac users in HN recommend it?
  • yoz-y 9y ago
    For uninstalling applications it is quite useful. By default macOS applications still do not have a good way of defining which files belong to which application and when you simply remove the .app file a lot of crap stays on your computer. It has also handy tools to remove developer cruft one accumulates. MacPaw is actually quite respected as a developer. Enough so other developers trust them to steward the "Netflix for apps" Setapp.
    • leemailll 9y ago
      For uninstall, I use AppCleaner. Small footprint, only 5.1MB, and I can use Alfred workflow to delete apps with a few keystrokes
      • jeffhuys 9y ago
        AppZapper clocks in at 3.2MB, and even has a nice sound/screen effect when zapping an app :)
        • rusinov 9y ago
          I like AppZapper too, but developer stopped updating the app recently (I got this information via email exchange with a developer.)
      • smnscu 9y ago
        FWIW I am another very happy long time user of AppCleaner. More stuff I install with brew-cask on my macs: https://github.com/andreis/cfg/blob/master/brew-cask.txt https://github.com/andreis/cfg/blob/master/brew-cask.txt
• barbs 9y ago
  Am curious to know why they prefer Telegram to Whatsapp.
  • CrazyGentleMan 9y ago
    Pros: - Secret Chat - Share different file types up to 1.5 GB - Multi-device access - Supergroups and public channels - Telegram Bots - Lock chats and Ability to hide last seen for particular contact - Edit Messages and Mention People Cons I can thin of: - No calls support or ability to backup chats - lacks user base
    • ngrilly 9y ago
      How can secret chat be a pro for Telegram when it's the default in WhatsApp?
    • izacus 9y ago
      Telegram actually does have audio call support :)
  • ngrilly 9y ago
    Telegram is a better tool for groups. WhatsApp is more secure because everything is end-to-end encrypted.
    • iamnothere 9y ago
      Telegram can use end-to-end encryption, it just isn't enabled by default.
      • ngrilly 9y ago
        I know, and I use and like Telegram. But the result of optional end-to-end encryption is that most people don't use it. The whole idea of WhatsApp and Signal is to encrypt everything end-to-end to defeat mass surveillance.
        • 9y ago
• Brajeshwar 9y ago
  Nobody mentioned Stow[1]. Simple and straight forward. "GNU Stow is a symlink farm manager which takes distinct packages of software and/or data located in separate directories on the filesystem, and makes them appear to be installed in the same place." 1. https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/ https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/
• fauigerzigerk 9y ago
  Useful as many of these utilities may be, I'm worried about the fact that I have to fully trust each and every one of them. There are 63 entries on that list. How am I ever going to be sure that _all_ of them are safe? This concern is starting to really affect my use of software more generally. I have found many useful browser extensions but I rarely install any of them because of what they have access to. Open source or not doesn't make a whole lot of difference either, because I'm never going to be able to review and compile all of it myself after every single update. The somewhat surprising consequence is that the built-in features of operating systems and browsers have become much more important to me than they have ever been. Essentially, the software I use is (a) Built into the OS or browser (b) Coming from one of a handful of organisations I trust (c) Purely Web based This is on the desktop. And on mobile the "solution" is to severely restrict what software can do and give disproportionate power to some gatekeeper who will then predictably abuse that position by extracting a 30% cut from everybody and impose content restrictions way beyond what can be justified by computer security.
• app4soft 9y ago
  There are few[1,2,3] much better lists created according "AWESOME" initiative[0] [0] https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome/blob/master/awesome.md https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome/blob/master/awesome.... [1] https://github.com/phmullins/awesome-macos https://github.com/phmullins/awesome-macos [2] https://github.com/phmullins/awesome-macos-commandline https://github.com/phmullins/awesome-macos-commandline [3] https://github.com/jaywcjlove/awesome-mac https://github.com/jaywcjlove/awesome-mac
• therealmarv 9y ago
  Stay away fom SnippetsLab. It looses data very often... better approach: Use a decent editor like VS Code and use Dropbox/Google Drive with a directory structure of your own.
• khana 9y ago
  Holy smokes. Talk about wired. It's all there though. Thanks for sharing.
• csomar 9y ago
  These days, I no longer have a long list of apps. In fact, I don't even have any language or compiler installed on my Mac. My apps for development are: NeoVim, Docker, Source Control and Paw. For Communication and other: Skype, Chrome, Dropbox, Banktivity, Tor, Google Earth and VLC. In fact, I'm upset that I have more apps than I should. Why should I have Skype when Messenger can make video calls from the browser. Banktivity could have an online version. Tor should be builtin in Chrome. Or why use Chrome instead of Safari? Apple should release a functioning browser. And Google Earth should run on the browser sometime in the future as JavaScript improves. And why have VLC? QuickTime should be able to run the videos I watch. That means my list becomes: Dropbox. Maybe I don't even need that! Make Dropbox like an external HardDrive or something. Some integration in macOS. And my list is 0. The last thing I want is more cluttering. A dashboard? What the hell do you use that for? A photobooth? I'm not 15 years old. Having lots of apps remind me of how I was 5 years ago. You just want more apps to "feel" good and productive. Sometimes it makes you feel important, busy and technical. It's all B.S. folks and it's bad for you.
  • swah 9y ago
    I really miss a Skype app in Linux, and keep closing the web.skype.com tab all the time. I like apps. I don't like web technology being the one and only way to interact with a computer.
    • csomar 9y ago
      I was not aware of the Online version. Seems smooth to me but I tried to make a video call and then it asked me to "install a plugin". Well, I don't want to install the plugin for the same reason I don't want to install apps. So I guess I'm stuck with the Desktop version for now.
    • rangibaby 9y ago
      I have Skype for Ubuntu and it works for video calls (2013 MBP Retina)
      • swah 9y ago
• jamesw72 9y ago
  For productivity in development, I prefer simplicity over elegance.
• msl09 9y ago
  I'm curious about one thing. I recently discovered the wonderful world of a physical notebook for keeping track of everything with my life. One of the things that I love the most about it is that I can leave the computer, zoom out from the technical nature of my problems and solve them in a more conceptual manner (while taking a break from screens). What kind of improvements do mindmaps give?
  • nikivi 9y ago
    Author of the post here, For me personally one big advantage that mind maps have is that they are digital. So I can access any single mind map in few keystrokes by searching for the file in Alfred. I am also pretty fast with my keyboard so prototyping ideas and new concepts is really fast for me. I still use notebooks for sketching things but digital mind maps have too many advantages to dismiss. I also recently made an Alfred workflow that allows me to essentially query any of the digital mind maps I made and present all of the contents of these maps in Alfred. Here is the workflow : https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/alfred-my-mind https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/alfred-my-mind The cool thing with that is that it lets anyone use my 'setup' of bookmarks, links and notes in the most transparent way possible.
• amai 9y ago
  Telegram, really? From the guy who stored your passwords in cleartext: https://thehackernews.com/2016/06/vk-com-data-breach.html https://thehackernews.com/2016/06/vk-com-data-breach.html . Better have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software) . It is Edward Snowden approved.
  • kitsunesoba 9y ago
    I believe Telegram owes its popularity to its rich feature set and first class treatment of its desktop clients (Qt5 + Cocoa). It doesn't help that not everybody uses Chrome as their primary browser (I don't), making it somewhat silly to keep open for a single thing. Spinning Signal Desktop out into an Electron wrapper would be preferable but is still far beyond ideal...
  • newscracker 9y ago
    There are a few points I repeat while they're still true. I like Signal for its reputation and standing on security, but it's highly deficient when compared to Telegram. Telegram provides a much richer UI/UX than Signal or even Wire. [1] It has multi-device sync and multi-OS support. Signal lacks multi-device sync. Signal does not even have a proper desktop app. Signal explicitly prohibits backing up the data and restoring it if you move to a new phone/device (at least on iOS). The backup cannot be done to iCloud or even a local iTunes backup. So don't buy a new device ever if you like your chat logs. Or take screenshots of the chats for reference whenever you do. To me, this doesn't make any sense whatsoever. People want usability a lot more, and if a "super secure" app is not really being very useful, it won't get very popular. I'm still waiting for Signal to get ahead so I can switch to it, but every time I think of it, Telegram looks a few years ahead of Signal. [1]: https://wire.com https://wire.com
  • fwdslash 9y ago
    The best line: > The same hacker who previously sold data dumps from MySpace, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Fling.com, is now selling more than 100 Million VK.com records for just 1 Bitcoin (approx. US$580). Ah, those were the days, when bitcoin was worth <$1,000.
• foobarhonest 9y ago
  Learned about some new great tools - thanks.
• gamekathu 9y ago
  Is there a Vim equivalent of Snippets lab? I recently switched to using vim-wiki which I think could be used in this way to store snippets, but I do not know yet how to configure quick search.
• mr-ron 9y ago
  No clipboard manager?
  • andai 9y ago
    I think (based on the graph linked under "[Alfred] has saved me a lot of time") that OP is using Alfred for that http://i.imgur.com/eavekiX.png http://i.imgur.com/eavekiX.png
• ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
  apps-wise - Chrome, Atom, IntelliJ and I'm pretty much set :)
• seasonalgrit 9y ago
  I really miss iCal, which Apple killed off several years ago.
  • andrethegiant 9y ago
    What did iCal have that Calendar doesn't?
    • seasonalgrit 9y ago
      It's interesting you ask. iCal had the option of 2-, 3-, or 4-day view, which I liked a lot. Also, I think iCal did much better job visually distinguishing the current day. But I'm also talking about the task management aspects that had been integrated into iCal. Sure, there's Reminders, but besides being a separate app, it is buggy (crashes a lot) and the ui/ux is nowhere close to what iCal offered.
• petraeus 9y ago
  Missing Stock+ Pro and CloudTV, also white noise is a good app to drown out office noise
• rmrfrmrf 9y ago
  You could cut this list in half if you just used the free stuff already included in macOS. I still don't get the appeal of iTerm or Alfred.
  • smnscu 9y ago
    Aside from the awesome feature that lets you point to any folder for the config file (I keep it symlinked to my dotfiles), iTerm2 can go borderless, which I absolutely love (iterm2-nightly needed)! http://i.imgur.com/GENVtUJ.png http://i.imgur.com/GENVtUJ.png
  • altern8tif 9y ago
    The extensibility of Alfred makes it a whole order of magnitude better than Spotlight. Check out the Alfred ecosystem over at packal.org. The Spotify and Github workflows are my most used shortcuts. What Spotlight makes up for by being the out-of-the-box default option, it lacks in versatility due to Apple's walled-garden policy.
  • theposey 9y ago
    two things from iterm I really use a ton are the cmd+tab number to jump to a specific tab instead of cycling, and the copy paste history
  • gervase 9y ago
    For me, a massive advantage of Alfred is the clipboard history. I know there are plenty of other clipboard managers, but I've tried them all, and Alfred's works the best for me. Features I like: * Ability to set upper-bound on individual size * Ability to ignore clipboard CF_ types * Ability to retain variable amounts of data by time * Ignore certain apps' clipboards * Filterable history search * Short and long content previews I also use iTerm, but that's mainly for the performance benefits and customizability - I could live without it vs Terminal.app.
    • copperx 9y ago
      Performance benefits of iTerm? Terminal.app has much less latency.
• gervase 9y ago
  I'm surprised this list doesn't cover Spectacle[0]. This free app definitely surpasses Windows 10's adequate window management, and completely supersedes the embarrassingly poor built-in functionality. [0]: https://www.spectacleapp.com/ https://www.spectacleapp.com/
  • kobayashi 9y ago
    BetterTouchTool provides the same functionality and then some
    • sridca 9y ago
      Yes! I love BetterTouchTool's touch bar customization. It works quite well with the multi monitor setup as well. See https://medium.com/productivity-freak/what-if-you-could-really-customize-your-new-touch-bar-ea42ec66f42c https://medium.com/productivity-freak/what-if-you-could-real...
  • parzivalm 9y ago
    I used to use spectacle but I find that I enjoy using amethyst more in terms of my productivity and window space management.
  • fredsir 9y ago
    I love Spectacle but use Moom instead because it supports the same features that I used Spectacle for, but it also supports ignoring the gab (when maximizing windows and so on) that is created on the side of the screen the dock is at when the dock is set to auto-hide. I hate that gap, and Moom allows it to disappear, pretty much.
• kobayashi 9y ago
  I've seen many of these kinds of lists for macOS, but do any comparable lists exist for Windows?
  • diego_moita 9y ago
    Scott Hanselman used to make a very good list, but the last one was in 2014: https://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolListForWindows.aspx https://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDe...
    • roryisok 9y ago
      yeah, not been updated in some time, but it earns him buckets of traffic. some of the stuff on there is outdated. for example flux is now pretty redundant on Windows 10 because of the new "Night Light" feature
• xenihn 9y ago
  I'd like to recommend Snappy. http://snappy-app.com/ http://snappy-app.com/ I can't live without it ever since I first tried it. I really hope Apple either buys them or sherlocks them (preferably the former). Either way, I want the functionality integrated into MacOS.
  • passivepinetree 9y ago
    I can't figure out if it's just poor implementation or just terrible UX design, but every time I scroll on that site a sign-up dialog pops up. I can click out of it, but when I scroll again, it immediately pops up. I'm unable to scroll without this stupid dialog showing. (Chrome 60, MacOS) I closed the tab after about five attempts to remove the dialog. I still don't know what the product does.
    • xenihn 9y ago
      Clicking 'No thanks' stops it from re-appearing for me. Yeah, bad design. The app is still great. It lets you take screenshots that float on top of your desktop (like stickies), and can be resized and annotated.
• limeblack 9y ago
  The list is a little outdated for current Mac users. For example Karabiner Elements is what I use on my Mac although all features aren't supported yet in comparison to Karabiner. As side note although I love my Mac I find it to support backwards compatibility in apps much worse then Windows. Many of my XP apps still run in Windows 10 although I wouldn't necessarily encourage you to use them.
  • otterpro 9y ago
    I miss Karabiner, and regretted upgrading to Sierra as soon as I found out Karabiner wasn't supported. I miss the ability to map both Escape key and control key to capslock key, which is essentially the greatest thing for my Vim productivity.
    • gbear605 9y ago
      You can do that in Karabiner Elements, which does work on Sierra (and High Sierra for that matter) https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• SKYRHO_ 9y ago
  Didn't crunch the numbers, but as I looked up his/her apps all I could see was $$$ signs.
  • eaceaser 9y ago
    Luckily they included an app in the list that will automatically mute Spotify ads so you don't have to pay for it! Good value there. /s
    • SKYRHO_ 9y ago
      Agreed!
• d_han 9y ago
  Thanks for sharing this. I found it very helpful. I haven't used karabiner before and I'm trying to understand how you're using karabiner but I'm having trouble doing so. Do you ever plan on writing something explaining your usage or do you have any resources that you recommend?
• lobster_johnson 9y ago
  Pixave looks great, and is something I've been looking for, but I wonder if it's still alive. There's not been any activity on the developer's (previously very active) Twitter account since March, the demo version is several versions behind, and support@littlehj.com bounces. I mention this as a concern because it seems a bit buggy.