Mac Software

Jun 4th, 2008 by Ben

Haven’t done this for a while, and people say they appreciate the Mac stuff I post, which is nice, so here are some recommendations.

Design, Coding & Web Dev

GIMP - free, powerful image editor.
ImageWell - excellent lightweight image editor with FTP features. I use this every day.
FontExplorer X - this is how to manage your fonts in OS X.
PixelStick - measure pixel dimensions on screen in any app.
TextMate - pick of the coding text editors for Mac. ($)
Transmit - FTP client. ($)
CSSEdit - useful CSS editor for finding out what works and looks good.

Office/College Stuff

OmniFocus - premier organising app based on GTD. ($)
OmniOutliner Pro - premier outlining app for Mac. ($)
PDFLab - reorder, rotate and combine PDFs.

Web

NetNewsWire - great, free news reader.
Firefox - a bit clumsy in v2, but v3 comes out June 2008 and runs very well. Not as slick as Safari, but much more extensible.

System Stuff

Quicksilver - a religious experience.
Pic2Icon - turn any picture into an OS X icon.
DropCopy - move files around a network with ease.
1Password - manage your passwords and logins with ease. ($)
Covenant Eyes - great accountability software (which college kindly provides for students for free. ($)

Language & Bible Tools

Accordance - the Bible software for Mac. ($)
Provoc - language vocab (and anything) trainer.
Paradigmatic - Hebrew paradigm trainer, coded by a mate from Moore.

College Workflow

OmniGraffle Pro - mind-mapping and layout design app. ($)
Scrivener - writing app. Invaluable. ($, free version available)
Skim - PDF reader and annotator.
DEVONThink Pro Office - database storage and AI for organising data. ($, free for non-profits - email them)

Response to Ben’s post.

Some theoretically related posts:

Mac Some software we use on our Macs. Office/College Stuff OmniFocus - premier organising app based...
College This page is periodically updated. College is fantastic. I’ve had the best years of my...
My Essay Workflow It’s going to be a perfect weekend for getting the New Testament essay done -...
Accordance Training This post is just for a subset of our readers: those who use Accordance...
Accordance Maps Accordance is driving me crazy. The text stuff is fine. It has its annoying quirks,...

Posted in mac stuff

4 Responses to “Mac Software”

on 04 Jun 2008 at 2:04pm1Ben Beilharz

Groovy. Thanks Ben!
GrApple makes Firefox look like Safari if that’s the kind of slickness you’re after.
on 04 Jun 2008 at 2:16pm2Ben

Thanks, mate, but it’s not the look I’m concerned about.

As an Apple user, of course you know that Mac software isn’t better because it looks better, but because it’s designed better. Steve Jobs is famous for saying, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Which reminds me of something John Gruber said recently,

“From a ComputerWorld story titled “iPhones Trickle Into the Enterprise”:

“I have nothing against iPhone. It’s great,” says Manjit Singh, CIO at Chiquita Brands International Inc. “But we’re a BlackBerry shop, and I don’t think iPhone brings anything new to the table. It has a great user experience, but that’s all.”

Best corporate IT quote ever.”
on 05 Jun 2008 at 12:21am3Luke Gilkerson

Thanks for the mention about Covenant Eyes. I work for Covenant Eyes and we’ve been talking with the administrators at Moore about their use of the software, but I’d love to hear your thoughts about it from a student perspective. How are students reacting to it? Are there any who don’t like having it on their computer? Do you think its becoming a useful tool to help students who are tempted or addicted to online pornography? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Luke Gilkerson
Internet Community Manager
Covenant Eyes
on 06 Jun 2008 at 1:03pm4Ben

Hi Luke,

Thanks for your comment.

As you may know, the college provides Covenant Eyes to us free of charge, which is great. The rollout of the software was voluntary, but the principal is aiming to create a culture in which every uses CE. That way, using it does not create a stigma, but it just becomes part of ‘what we do here’.

I can’t speak for others, although I’m on the computer committee and though I get lots of complaints/issues about a variety of computer problems, no one has ever complained about CE. Personally, I was very pleased that the Mac version runs in the Menu Bar and that I don’t have to have an icon in the Dock. This is a very good feature, and a pleasant surprise, since most apps that begin life on a PC and then get ported in some way to Mac don’t includes these kinds of features.

For me, this means that CE is invisible and I never notice it. That’s exactly what I want.

The only gripe I have is that sometimes it quits and if I don’t notice that the icon is not in the Menu Bar anymore, I spend some time trying to work out why my network connection is playing up. A quick boot of CE obviously fixes that issue. Perhaps a message could pop up if CE quits, so I’m informed of that.

All in all, it’s a great application - because I don’t notice it’s there, but it does its job.

Thanks, Luke.