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My Top Five Indie Mac Apps

Prompted by a conversation with a few recent Mac converts at the last Refresh meeting (otherwise known as happy hour), I thought I would run down a few of my favorite indie Mac apps.

1. SpamSieve by C-Command Software I tried for the longest time to fend off the Spam creeps on my own. Email rules, server filters — eventually nothing would help. Thankfully SpamSieve works like a charm keeping probably 95% of all spam I get out of my inbox.

2. Transmit by Panic I should probably be ashamed to admit it, but for the most part I had always just used Dreamweaver's built-in FTP client to move files from local to server. I finally tried Transmit to see what all the fuss was about and was immediately sold on it. Transmit is loaded with great features, but what it came down to for me was one thing — speed. If you have to move lots of files around, there's nothing else I know of that will save you as much time. Coda (also from Panic), while not a replacement for Transmit as I understand, has recently made it's way into our office (Mike is using it), and it looks like it may be a good option for combining text editing features along with FTP. I suspect it will make the list soon.

3. Edgies by One River Software I always liked the idea of Stickies, but in practice they just became another thing cluttering up my screen desktop. Edgies have the same potential to annoy, but because they snap to the edge of your screen as discreet tabs, they become much more practical. More than anything I use them when I have to walk away from a project as a place to store my notes and next steps for when I get back to it. They have also come in handy as a place to store frequently needed reference material.

4. FlySketch by Flying Meat This is a recent addition. I'm finding that an ever increasing part of my job is to provide documentation on the stuff we have created. The more complex things get, the harder it gets (for me at least) to hammer out a coherent email or document without visual aids. FlySketch makes it super easy to grab screen shots, highlight areas of interest, add notes, and easily produce and distribute the results.

5. SmartBackup by Free Ride Coding After learning a hard lesson about the importance of backing up you files, it is now a part of my routine every day. This is a great app that has just the right amount of features to make it useful without making it slow (a problem I have found with other backup utilities).

Any of your favorites that I missed?

Phil Hertzler | 08.05.07 | 7 comment(s) | Viewed 5905 time(s)