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Mac OSX Applications I couldn't live without
- makecheck 16y agoMacTelnet is an alternative terminal to iTerm 2 that supports the features you like (256 colors and full screen), and has a lot of other useful things. But I also developed MacTelnet, so I'm biased. :)
- swombat 16y agoTry LaunchBar instead of Quicksilver. It's not free, but is worth every penny. It's like Quicksilver, except it's actually quick.
- geuis 16y agoI used to use Quicksilver 3 years ago when Spotlight was unbearably slow on Mac OS. So what is the reason people use things like Quicksilver today? I personally find Spotlight to be everything I need. I can quickly open any application or system preference within seconds, all from the keyboard with Spotlight.
- tortilla 16y agoSome examples: - Open file with, select one or a bunch of files and specify the app to open it with - Move multiple files to another location - Clipboard history - Keyboard triggers for custom actions (open all the apps and files I need for a certain project) - Custom web searches (I have one setup to search "site:news.ycombinator.com + search term")
- swombat 16y agoSpotlight still takes a few seconds, rather often, to open up and receive keyboard input. I HATE waiting a few seconds for something that's a part of my thought process. When I think "Open chrome" and I move my fingers into the magic incantation needed to make that happen, it should be opening, now, RIGHT THIS FUCKING MOMENT. Not three seconds later. I don't care if it's fast enough most of the time. It needs to be fast enough every single time. Launchbar is always there within 200ms, no matter what my computer is chugging on at the moment. That's well worth the 20 bucks.
- dilap 16y agoI've found spotlight to be reliably instant since moving to SSD. That might explain the difference in experiences here. (I also don't index docs -- just apps and prefs.)
- evgen 16y agoEven on a SSD spotlight can be slow if you have not turned off doc indexing. I tend to use LaunchBar and Spotlight as a combination team for specific purposes: LaunchBar to get apps fired up quickly and Spotlight to do search within documents and as a general indexer.
- psadauskas 16y agoI replaced Quicksilver with Alfred[1]. I think its on the mac store, too. [1]: http://www.alfredapp.com/ http://www.alfredapp.com/
- danudey 16y agoI've switched to using Alfred, and I'll never go back. Bought the powerpack as well for those handy extra features. It's fast as heck, and has a lot of little niceties, but while I never liked LaunchBar, Alfred is just fantastic. It's also available from the Mac app store, or you can grab it from the website (http://www.alfredapp.com/ http://www.alfredapp.com/). Highly recommended.
- iPadDeveloper 16y agoArticles like these confuse me. Who is the audience, tiny children? You use Firefox. Everyone does. You use Dropbox. Everyone does. You don't like Terminal or want some features that other people have. Perhaps we need to elevate our discourse. Move on at some point? At the same time, I just posted about my favorite iPhone apps, so it's confusing.
- yjhall 16y agoI agree that Dropbox is ...hmm... "MARVELOUS". Please tip them a goldspot at Spottiness.com. It's a site where the real perception of things emerges through anonymous messages and opinions.
- koudelka 16y agoJiTouch is also a vastly under-appreciated mouse gesture enabler. http://www.jitouch.com http://www.jitouch.com
- luigi 16y agoMy alternatives: Chrome + Vimium instead of Firefox + Pentadactyl MacVim instead of Aquamacs LaunchBar (or Alfred which is free) instead of Quicksilver Divvy instead of SizeUp
- xyzzyb 16y agoI much prefer Divvy (http://mizage.com/divvy/ http://mizage.com/divvy/) over SizeUp for window management.
- PatrickTulskie 16y agoJust curious - why? SizeUp isn't as customizable as Divvy, but it does significantly cut down on the number of key strokes required to resize windows.
- luigi 16y agoDivvy lets you create custom sizes. Once you map those sizes to a single key, it's very fast.
- zyb09 16y agoI recently discovered Hyperdock (http://hyperdock.bahoom.de/ http://hyperdock.bahoom.de/). It basically turns OSX into Windows7. Very awesome!
- antidaily 16y agothis has to be a first. a windows UI feature worthy of ripping off (for OSX). maybe I'm being too hard on windows.
- tzs 16y agoThere's an application called Cinch that gives Mac the Win7 window snap behavior--dragging to left or right edge expands window to fill that half of screen, and to top makes it full screen: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cinch/id412529613?mt=12 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cinch/id412529613?mt=12 What is interesting is that it is a paid app, $6.99, and is currently at #15 on the top grossing apps (it was at #11 last week). Apparently, there is a market for taking the good ideas from Win7 and adding them to the Mac.
- ericfrenkiel 16y agoI can't rave enough about Hyperdock; this is something that every OS should support out of the box. Kudos to Win7 on besting Mac on something like this
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- gfodor 16y agoOk, I'll bite. What do people actually use dropbox for? All of my employer's code is in SVN, and personal code on Github. All of my email and my calendar is on Gmail. All my photos are on Facebook. All of my documents are in Google Apps. My writing is on my blog. My TODO list is in Workflowy. If my computer dies (which it has recently) all of my stuff is covered. Is there some area of content creation that I am just missing altogether? I guess I don't back up my photoshop or audio work I do occasionally on dropbox, but that's probably not it.
- psadauskas 16y agoI use it for my documents. Not everything can be google docs. I just finished up my taxes online, and printed the forms/reports as pdfs, which I saved into my ~/Documents folder, which is symlinked to dropbox.
- humblepie 16y agoMany of us just want a folder that syncs.
- xuki 16y agoRemember, not everyone is a hacker. For my non geek friends, Dropbox is magic. It just works. I could imagine the world 1000000 times better if everyone can fire up a shell and do something with that. Sadly it's not the case.
- gfodor 16y agoYeah my point here wasn't that I don't understand how Dropbox is useful in general, it's just that this article is by a hacker and he says Dropbox is the "best piece of software written in the last 5 years" and I seem to survive without using it whatsoever. Being able to send files to people makes sense, but 9 times out of 10 e-mail does the job there just fine. I'm still not getting it, I guess :) Maybe my life is just too boring.
- yjhall 16y agoOK, I'll give you a great use of Dropbox for hackers: Let's say you use Mercurial instead of Subversion. If you have your Mercurial project in Dropbox, you have at your disposal the full source control functionality provided by Mercurial and automatic backups of your mercurial repository. Get it now?
- AdamN 16y agoSkitch (http://skitch.com/ http://skitch.com/) is my favorite Mac app in terms of usability. Of course, I need simple screen capture software (not everybody does).
- peng 16y agoI prefer CloudApp (http://getcloudapp.com http://getcloudapp.com). There's almost no UI it at all: it just captures OS X screenshots and uploads them. I gave Skitch three minutes and gave up. Its UI is far too complicated for what it does.
- gte910h 16y agoI use an app called Screenshots on the appstore: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/screenshots/id402728913?mt=12 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/screenshots/id402728913?mt=12
- bonaldi 16y agoLess simple than Shift-Command-3/4?
- drivebyacct2 16y ago>SizeUp is not free, but it's only $13 and worth every cent. It adds keyboard shortcuts to OSX to move windows around. Only? Compiz has a plugin for this and it's baked into Windows. I couldn't imagine paying $13 for that feature. Also, not sure why Chrome got called out when it has similar extensions to Pentadactyl. (Probably the same misconceptions that have people thinking that ABP can't block downloads in Chrome. [It can and has been able to for nearly 7 months])
- jbrennan 16y agoGiven the amount of work it would take to write yourself, I can't imaging 13$ being a bad deal. If you could write it in less than 13$ worth of time, you're either an incredibly brilliant hacker, or seriously undervaluing your time's worth.
- callahad 16y agoShiftIt (https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt) is a capable, open-source alternative to SizeUp and Divvy.
- bingaman 16y agoI use Terminal.app + Visor, but I'll give iTerm2 a try after reading this.
- rdonahue 16y agoI recently switched to iTerm2 from Terminal.app. The main reason for switching for me was that iTerm2 has great full-screen support. Just hit Cmd-Enter and you're immediately greeted with a full-screen terminal.
- jollyjerry 16y agoI was also a big fan of remapping capslock to control. Fortunately, in OSX 10.5+, it became a configurable option in the keyboard prefpane. Thanks for posting your list! I'm looking forward to giving Lyx a try.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- ericfrenkiel 16y agoFor me, Alfred has replaced Quicksilver
- neovive 16y agoGreat to see KeyRemap4MacBook. When I first switched to Mac from Windows, little things such as "Home" and "End" not working the same way were quite annoying. KeyRemap4MacBook allows you to reconfigure everything. One very nice feature is the ability to configure different keyboard profiles depending on your setup. I maintain separate desktop and laptop configs). Thus, when I dock my MBP to an external monitor and keyboard (Microsoft Ergo Keyboard), I switch to the desktop setup that remaps the Left-Alt key to Cmd and the Windows key to Option among others. When switching to laptop mode, I also remap the right-option key to function as a forward delete (which normally requires two keys on the MBP).
- askar 16y agoAlfred makes QuickSilver run for its hype. It may not be as customizable as QuickSilver but it does the job very well and a lot nicer than QuickSilver.