If you aren’t using these apps already, then shame on you. These four apps have changed my productivity so considerably over the past couple of years that I can’t recommend them strongly enough to any OSX based designer, developer or general mac-productivity-aficionado.
AlfredApp
Spotlight has been one of the big killer differences between OSX and Windows for me. Frankly I’ve no idea if Vista or Win7 include better (faster) file indexing and nor do I really care, but certainly back in the WinXP days it was a big separator between the two platforms and I found myself using it constantly. Today, I don’t really touch it anymore. Why? Because Alfred does everything Spotlight can, but a hundred times faster and better. Launch programs, search for files, etc all directly from convenient keypress combinations. Genius.
Download Alfred over at: http://www.alfredapp.com – it’s free, but buy the Powerpack if you want extra features and support the developer!
Dropbox
Forget carrying files around on big “portable” hard drives, or on USB sticks. Dropbox integrates so beautifully with OSX that it feels native – just drag files to the Dropbox folder and save them externally. Log in somewhere else and download what you need. So easy.
Get a Dropbox account at https://www.dropbox.com – free for up to 2Gb of storage! Cheap prices for more.
Instapaper
I’ve been quite a latecomer to Instapaper. I’d heard it mentioned a lot but never really bothered with it until recently. Now it’s part of my day-to-day. Use it to save a stripped-out version of a web page (normally an article) to read at a later time. Download the iPhone / iPad version to read offline at your leisure. Makes for lovely bedtime reading of those blog posts you should probably catch up on but never get the time.
Free account at http://www.instapaper.com – or the iPhone app at £2.99 (as I remember).
Transmit
I could say a lot of good stuff about all of Panic’s awesome product range. But it’s Transmit that really sold them to me. FTP clients used to be clunky, ugly pieces of junk. Transmit simplifies everything FTP, and makes the whole thing nice ‘n’ pretty. Thanks guys!
$34 to download from http://www.panic.com/transmit
Enjoy, etc!
