fox@fury
What is your essential mac software?
Wednesday, Apr 06, 2005
Every now and then I get a new mac and I have to load it up with a standard repertoire of software before I can use it the same way as I use my other computers.

Usually I add the pieces here and there over several weeks, but I'm trying to standardize it now, possibly burning all the software onto a single DVD for easy installing. Here are my absolutely essential isn't-my-mac-without-it list of programs:

  • Standard 10.most-recent suite of OS X apps
  • Stuff on the OS X Dev Tools DVD
  • Photoshop (used to be 7, now CS, soon to be CS2)
  • BBEdit 8
  • Transmit 3 (ftp)
  • Firefox
  • mySQL (php is already in the OS X installation)
  • CocoaMySQL (I wish they'd update it, but it's free!)
  • Omnigraffle Pro (diagramming and flowcharting)
  • Either Microsoft Office or iWork
  • Snapz Pro (Screenshot-taker)
  • Quicksilver (quick-access launcher)
  • Subversion (version control software)

That's it. That's literally all I need to get along swimmingly on any mac and do all the things I want to do. There's nothing else anyone would need in order to create world-class web applications, or if there is I haven't found it. If I were locked in a room for a year with a machine loaded thusly and access to ports 22 (ssh) and 80 (web), I'd be wildly productive. Okay, maybe more productive without port 80 (damn you port 80...)

What's your essentials list? (Okay, okay. Windows folks too...)

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