Software
Bento
November, 15 2007 01:22 PM
First, let me say that Bento is a Leopard only product because it simply would not be possible without the new features of Leopard. With Bento FileMaker has adopted the very slick interface that has become common with many of today's Apple and third party Mac applications: iTunes, iCal, Delicious Library, NetNewsWire, and many others. This is definitely not FileMaker Pro! This is what I would expect from the iWork team, a database to sit alongside of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. It is a perfect compliment to iWork and given the quality of this preview release I would not hesitate to recommend it.
In my couple of days with Bento I've tweaked the "Project" library (in Bento a database or table is referred to as a Library) and the Time Billing Library so that I can use them in conjunction with iCal tasks to track projects and billing. Because the system is using data from iCal and Address Book there's no duplication. Not only that, but I can modify iCal and Address Book data from within Bento. Even better, I can enhance the usefulness of this data by adding new fields in Bento.
As an example, iCal tasks do not include a field for job hours but when I track a task for a paid project I need to track the hours. I normally add this into the task notes field in iCal. When it comes time to create an invoice I gather up my iCal tasks and the lists of hours within the notes fields and transfer them to line items in my FMP invoice database. It works but it is not ideal. With Bento iCal task and event data, as long as the preference is set, is easily viewable within the provided form layout. I've added a field for job hours and this data resides in Bento but is associated with that particular iCal task data. By doing this I can now display and modify my iCal tasks, along with the duration of the task in my Project and Time Billing Libraries.
To put it simply Bento uses the Apple apps and data as a foundation and allows me to build new functionality around them. This is a preview release and there is plenty of room for improvement. As it is now I cannot add any graphic objects such as my logo to the invoice I have set up. Text formatting is a bit limited and the layout is a bit clunky requiring spacer boxes and only allowing one line of text per text box. I'd much prefer a layout engine like the iWork apps that are much more free form. Still, this is an excellent start.
Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Macintosh, Leopard, FileMaker, Bento
|
Essential Mac Apps - Part 3
September, 15 2006 05:34 PM
The full list is available here.
iLife
I'm adding the iLife suite to this list because I consider it to be essential. I have the latest version and will likely continue updating with each new release because I use these apps all the time and because each yearly upgrade seems to be worth it in terms of new features. I won't go into iTunes because it is free and included on every new Mac. It's great and I use it many hours every day. Enough said.
iPhoto is another essential. I take a lot of photos and I'm always scanning in old photographs from one of the many shoe boxes of family photos. I keyword all photos at the time of import and for that I consider Keyword Assistant essential. It makes keywording even easier than the methods included in iPhoto. Another reason to use iPhoto is the tie-in to other apps: iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, RapidWeaver, Pages, and Keynote to name a few. It seems ever new application, Apple or third party, is taking advantage of the photos stored in iPhoto. Last but not least, I've now made two iPhoto books and will be making more for various gifts.
iMovie and iDVD. I love these apps. I've made numerous movies which were first put to VHS (2001) and for the past couple years, DVD. With a combination of still photos and new or even digitized archive footage I have assemble DVD and iPhoto book combination gift packages for birthdays and anniversaries.
GarageBand has various uses. I have used it for podcasting and for creating soundtracks for video projects. I wouldn't consider this one essential but it has been very useful, easy and fun to use.
Last and probably least is iWeb. I don't use it and don't consider it to be as useful as RapidWeaver. It has great potential and I'm certain that future versions will greatly improve it. My main reason for not using it is that I do not use .Mac. Yes, I know I can ftp iWeb sites but from my brief experimentation it seemed to be far more of a hassle than it should. For those with a subscription to .Mac I would certainly recommend giving iWeb a shot.
Maintenance
Want to save some hard drive space? Monolingual is your friend! I've saved at least 1 gig on each drive that I've used Monolingual on. It removes the various localizations from the applications on your Mac. On a small 40 gig PowerBook drive 1 gig is nothing to sneeze at! The most recent versions of Monolingual also have the option of removing the parts of Universal Binaries that are not needed. I'm on a G4 and a G5 so for me this would be the Intel code that is removed. I've not tested it on Intel machines to verify that it does the opposite for them and removes the PPC code.
OnyX is a great application for those that like to sleep their Macs at night to save energy. The various unix maintenance scripts that remove caches and logs run at night and will not do so if the computer is asleep. OnyX allows me to run them manually or set new times for them. I've set them to run during the day when I know my machines are on. It can also be used to repair permissions and set a variety of other options which cannot be set in the standard system prefs.
SuperDuper! I've tried numerous back-up utilities but ultimately chose SuperDuper! Easy to use and in my opinion the best option until Leopard's Time Machine. You do back-up.... don't you?
Preference Panes
Ah yes, preference panes. These are must haves. All of the Unsanity haxies are great though I currently only use Shapeshifter. As much as I love Mac OS X sometimes I like to mix it up and Shapeshifter seems the best way to do it. I've never had any problems with it. It eats up a bit of memory and may add just a fraction of start-up time for each application but I don't notice it. Lots of beautiful themes to choose from. The other Unsanity apps are also good though I don't always use them due to limited memory: FruitMenu and Xounds. I'm fairly certain than when I finally upgrade to a MacBook with 2 gigs of ram I'll use them all.
MenuMeters is essential. I want to see my current processor and network activity at a glance. Though I'm not using them MenuMeters also offers disk usage and memory usage. That's a total of 4 monitors that can reside in my menu, each one customizable in various ways.
Textpander was free is now shareware called TextExpander. It's a great way to create shortcuts that will expand out into all kinds of text. I use it to expand out into html tags, phone numbers, signatures, email addresses, urls, addresses, names, etc. A great timesaver and absolutely essential once you've gotten used to it.
iScroll2 enables the scrolling trackpad on older iBooks and PowerBooks. Also adds 2 finger control click. Sweet and essential for me. I rarely bother with the control click anymore.
Growl is a method of system notification that applications can use. As of now I use several of these such as Mail, iTunes, Safari and Vienna. As an example, when Vienna finds updated feeds it uses Growl to pop up a notification of the updates regardless of what application I'm using. I can customize various aspects of the display such as style, length of time that it is on my screen, as well as it's location on the screen.
ICeCoffee, listed simply as "Services" once installed in the user preferences, allows me to define a subset of the currently available application services to display in a contextual menu. No need to go to the Application>Services menu, with Services I can just control click/right click and the short list of services I have predefined is right there. A great way to really use a technology that most users never remember to use. Apple should have been doing this from the beginning.
FinderPop is one of several preference panes (the above mentioned FruitMenu also does this) that I can use to add new options to the standard contextual menu. With FinderPop I can add folders, currently running applications and more.
Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Mac Apps
iLife
I'm adding the iLife suite to this list because I consider it to be essential. I have the latest version and will likely continue updating with each new release because I use these apps all the time and because each yearly upgrade seems to be worth it in terms of new features. I won't go into iTunes because it is free and included on every new Mac. It's great and I use it many hours every day. Enough said.
iPhoto is another essential. I take a lot of photos and I'm always scanning in old photographs from one of the many shoe boxes of family photos. I keyword all photos at the time of import and for that I consider Keyword Assistant essential. It makes keywording even easier than the methods included in iPhoto. Another reason to use iPhoto is the tie-in to other apps: iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, RapidWeaver, Pages, and Keynote to name a few. It seems ever new application, Apple or third party, is taking advantage of the photos stored in iPhoto. Last but not least, I've now made two iPhoto books and will be making more for various gifts.
iMovie and iDVD. I love these apps. I've made numerous movies which were first put to VHS (2001) and for the past couple years, DVD. With a combination of still photos and new or even digitized archive footage I have assemble DVD and iPhoto book combination gift packages for birthdays and anniversaries.
GarageBand has various uses. I have used it for podcasting and for creating soundtracks for video projects. I wouldn't consider this one essential but it has been very useful, easy and fun to use.
Last and probably least is iWeb. I don't use it and don't consider it to be as useful as RapidWeaver. It has great potential and I'm certain that future versions will greatly improve it. My main reason for not using it is that I do not use .Mac. Yes, I know I can ftp iWeb sites but from my brief experimentation it seemed to be far more of a hassle than it should. For those with a subscription to .Mac I would certainly recommend giving iWeb a shot.
- iTunes
- iPhoto
- iMovie
- iDVD
- GarageBand
- iWeb
Maintenance
Want to save some hard drive space? Monolingual is your friend! I've saved at least 1 gig on each drive that I've used Monolingual on. It removes the various localizations from the applications on your Mac. On a small 40 gig PowerBook drive 1 gig is nothing to sneeze at! The most recent versions of Monolingual also have the option of removing the parts of Universal Binaries that are not needed. I'm on a G4 and a G5 so for me this would be the Intel code that is removed. I've not tested it on Intel machines to verify that it does the opposite for them and removes the PPC code.
OnyX is a great application for those that like to sleep their Macs at night to save energy. The various unix maintenance scripts that remove caches and logs run at night and will not do so if the computer is asleep. OnyX allows me to run them manually or set new times for them. I've set them to run during the day when I know my machines are on. It can also be used to repair permissions and set a variety of other options which cannot be set in the standard system prefs.
SuperDuper! I've tried numerous back-up utilities but ultimately chose SuperDuper! Easy to use and in my opinion the best option until Leopard's Time Machine. You do back-up.... don't you?
Preference Panes
Ah yes, preference panes. These are must haves. All of the Unsanity haxies are great though I currently only use Shapeshifter. As much as I love Mac OS X sometimes I like to mix it up and Shapeshifter seems the best way to do it. I've never had any problems with it. It eats up a bit of memory and may add just a fraction of start-up time for each application but I don't notice it. Lots of beautiful themes to choose from. The other Unsanity apps are also good though I don't always use them due to limited memory: FruitMenu and Xounds. I'm fairly certain than when I finally upgrade to a MacBook with 2 gigs of ram I'll use them all.
MenuMeters is essential. I want to see my current processor and network activity at a glance. Though I'm not using them MenuMeters also offers disk usage and memory usage. That's a total of 4 monitors that can reside in my menu, each one customizable in various ways.
Textpander was free is now shareware called TextExpander. It's a great way to create shortcuts that will expand out into all kinds of text. I use it to expand out into html tags, phone numbers, signatures, email addresses, urls, addresses, names, etc. A great timesaver and absolutely essential once you've gotten used to it.
iScroll2 enables the scrolling trackpad on older iBooks and PowerBooks. Also adds 2 finger control click. Sweet and essential for me. I rarely bother with the control click anymore.
Growl is a method of system notification that applications can use. As of now I use several of these such as Mail, iTunes, Safari and Vienna. As an example, when Vienna finds updated feeds it uses Growl to pop up a notification of the updates regardless of what application I'm using. I can customize various aspects of the display such as style, length of time that it is on my screen, as well as it's location on the screen.
ICeCoffee, listed simply as "Services" once installed in the user preferences, allows me to define a subset of the currently available application services to display in a contextual menu. No need to go to the Application>Services menu, with Services I can just control click/right click and the short list of services I have predefined is right there. A great way to really use a technology that most users never remember to use. Apple should have been doing this from the beginning.
FinderPop is one of several preference panes (the above mentioned FruitMenu also does this) that I can use to add new options to the standard contextual menu. With FinderPop I can add folders, currently running applications and more.
Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Mac Apps
Essential Mac Apps - Part 2
September, 11 2006 12:54 PM
The full list is available here.
Office
Many of this group are "office apps" but as I said in Part 1, thinking about categories of apps is tricky because so many apps can be used in so many ways. For example, as much as I love using Pages for layout for print I also have used it for creating web graphics and logos. Export to pdf and open in Photoshop or Illustrator if you need to. Very handy! For print or web, Pages has become my publishing workhorse.
Page layout and word processing
As stated above, I use Pages for all sorts of tasks, page layout and word processing among them. I'll use word if I must but I'd rather use Pages or even the Apple freebie TextEditor which will save in the .doc format. Pages also saves into the .doc format and is fully featured. There are others out there as well, some of them ported to Mac compatibility, others on the way: NeoOffice, OpenOffice.
Presentation
Keynote is one of my favorite applications. I've not had much call to use it recently but should I need a presentation application this would be my first choice. Like Pages, it's younger sibling in the iWork suite, Keynote has enough export power to be useful beyond just presentations.
Spreadsheet
While I do have Microsoft Office on my iMac which has more hard drive space I've taken to the alternatives for my PowerBook. The perfect alternative to Excel is a new spreadsheet app, still in beta, called Tables. Not as full featured as Excel but for my minimal spreadsheet needs it's perfect. I'm still hoping Apple will introduce a spreadsheet application into the iWork suite, until then Tables will do.
Database
There is only one database application that really interests me and that is Filemaker Pro. There are others and a few years back I took a brief look at them just to see what was available. If you need a database I suggest FileMaker Pro as your first stop. It comes with a great set of templates to start with and, as I've said before, the folks at FileMaker have done a fantastic application that invites you in to explore, use, and develop.
Text Editor
My primary interest with text editing revolves around web development though I often use simple notes, along with iCal and Mail, to track project tasks. I've been hand coding websites since 1997 and I've tried many of these along the way. SubEthaEdit has been one of my favorites but these days I usually work solo so the sharing feature that I love so much is not of much use and as of this writing the application still lacks tabs for multiple documents. I must have tabs in my text editor. In fact, tabs are at the very top of the list. I've tried TextMate and like it but really it's a bit more than I need and I'm not too fond of the text. When I spend alot of time looking at text I want to choose a pleasing font and TextMate doesn't cut it. Smultron is my top choice and is running on my Mac everyday. Tabs, split view, templates, snippets, web page preview using the OS X WebKit, and excellent find/replace. Why pay for BBEdit or even the much less expensive TextMate?
Graphics
As I stated above, Pages is my workhorse. I've been using it to create a whole slew of graphics for small print projects and websites and it is a joy to use. For graphics that need to be optimized i can jump into Photoshop. I've even used Pages to create line art such as logos that can be exported into pdf and opened in Illustrator for further export to whatever format is needed.
Web Creation and Blogging
If the goal is easy and quick web development I'd go with RapidWeaver. I've also tried iWeb and Sandvox which both off to a good start but as version 1 apps they have plenty of problems and oddities. RapidWeavers been out for a while now and is at version 3.5. The maturity shows in the power and flexibility of the app. Beginners will find it easy to point and click their way to a new website using one of the built-in themes. Developers can customize the themes or build their own from the ground up. The MacProductive website you are viewing was built using RapidWeaver and a custom theme.
For blogging I wouldn't hesitate to suggest Ecto or MarsEdit. Both are great apps.
Video Players
Flip4Mac is a fantastic improvement for the playing of Windows Media right in Quicktime. No more need for Microsoft's cheesy player. VLC is great to have on hand as an alternative to Apple's Quicktime player. It will play almost anything you throw at it.
More coming soon in Part 3...
Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Mac Apps
Office
Many of this group are "office apps" but as I said in Part 1, thinking about categories of apps is tricky because so many apps can be used in so many ways. For example, as much as I love using Pages for layout for print I also have used it for creating web graphics and logos. Export to pdf and open in Photoshop or Illustrator if you need to. Very handy! For print or web, Pages has become my publishing workhorse.
Page layout and word processing
As stated above, I use Pages for all sorts of tasks, page layout and word processing among them. I'll use word if I must but I'd rather use Pages or even the Apple freebie TextEditor which will save in the .doc format. Pages also saves into the .doc format and is fully featured. There are others out there as well, some of them ported to Mac compatibility, others on the way: NeoOffice, OpenOffice.
- Pages
- Word
Presentation
Keynote is one of my favorite applications. I've not had much call to use it recently but should I need a presentation application this would be my first choice. Like Pages, it's younger sibling in the iWork suite, Keynote has enough export power to be useful beyond just presentations.
- Keynote
- Power Point
Spreadsheet
While I do have Microsoft Office on my iMac which has more hard drive space I've taken to the alternatives for my PowerBook. The perfect alternative to Excel is a new spreadsheet app, still in beta, called Tables. Not as full featured as Excel but for my minimal spreadsheet needs it's perfect. I'm still hoping Apple will introduce a spreadsheet application into the iWork suite, until then Tables will do.
- Tables
- Excel
Database
There is only one database application that really interests me and that is Filemaker Pro. There are others and a few years back I took a brief look at them just to see what was available. If you need a database I suggest FileMaker Pro as your first stop. It comes with a great set of templates to start with and, as I've said before, the folks at FileMaker have done a fantastic application that invites you in to explore, use, and develop.
Text Editor
My primary interest with text editing revolves around web development though I often use simple notes, along with iCal and Mail, to track project tasks. I've been hand coding websites since 1997 and I've tried many of these along the way. SubEthaEdit has been one of my favorites but these days I usually work solo so the sharing feature that I love so much is not of much use and as of this writing the application still lacks tabs for multiple documents. I must have tabs in my text editor. In fact, tabs are at the very top of the list. I've tried TextMate and like it but really it's a bit more than I need and I'm not too fond of the text. When I spend alot of time looking at text I want to choose a pleasing font and TextMate doesn't cut it. Smultron is my top choice and is running on my Mac everyday. Tabs, split view, templates, snippets, web page preview using the OS X WebKit, and excellent find/replace. Why pay for BBEdit or even the much less expensive TextMate?
- Smultron
- TextEdit
- TextMate
- SubEthaEdit
- BBEdit
Graphics
As I stated above, Pages is my workhorse. I've been using it to create a whole slew of graphics for small print projects and websites and it is a joy to use. For graphics that need to be optimized i can jump into Photoshop. I've even used Pages to create line art such as logos that can be exported into pdf and opened in Illustrator for further export to whatever format is needed.
Web Creation and Blogging
If the goal is easy and quick web development I'd go with RapidWeaver. I've also tried iWeb and Sandvox which both off to a good start but as version 1 apps they have plenty of problems and oddities. RapidWeavers been out for a while now and is at version 3.5. The maturity shows in the power and flexibility of the app. Beginners will find it easy to point and click their way to a new website using one of the built-in themes. Developers can customize the themes or build their own from the ground up. The MacProductive website you are viewing was built using RapidWeaver and a custom theme.
For blogging I wouldn't hesitate to suggest Ecto or MarsEdit. Both are great apps.
Video Players
Flip4Mac is a fantastic improvement for the playing of Windows Media right in Quicktime. No more need for Microsoft's cheesy player. VLC is great to have on hand as an alternative to Apple's Quicktime player. It will play almost anything you throw at it.
More coming soon in Part 3...
Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Mac Apps
Essential Mac Apps - Part 1
September, 08 2006 04:05 PM
This is my list of essential Mac apps and as
such it is shaped by the kind of work I do! In
most cases I've tried each app listed but am
only or mostly using the first one in a
particular category. Others I've likely tried
but only use as back-up if necessary or not at
all though I consider them to be useful and
others may prefer them. Something else about a
list such as this, while I have apps categorized
by usage it is worth noting that this is a very
loose kind of categorization given all the
potential for crossover in the usage of any
particular app.
Launchers
Essential. While Spotlight search makes things a bit easier when I'm using someone else's Mac it's not really a substitute for a real Launcher. Quicksilver is my favorite by far because it is free and with it's plugin architecture it does more than Launchbar. Another benefit is the great community of folks that can offer help in getting the most out of using Quicksilver.
Virtual Desktops
Leopard will bring default, pre-installed virtual desktops to the Mac via Spaces. Until then I'll continue using Desktop Manager. I've been using this for a couple years and cannot imagine a Mac without it. If you are using a new Intel Mac you can use Virtue which is very similar and under active development though a bit buggy from what I've read.
Edit: 9/15/06 I decided to go ahead and try out Virtue again thinking the bugs would force me right back to Desktop Manager. One week later and I've made Virtue my default. Not a single crash! What I like better about Virtue: I can save desktop space by not showing the little pager all the time. Instead I have it set to pop up via a short cut. Even better, If I just click an app in the dock or choose it via the OS X Command-Tab applications switcher it will automatically switch me to the appropriate desktop for that app. Very cool.
Browsers
In terms of speed and rendering I consider these four to be close enough that they are all excellent choices. I prefer Safari for two reasons. First, with Saft I can save my tabs at a crash or quit and I can block flash advertising. Second, I love the OS X Tiger Dictionary application which can be accessed via contextual menu in Safari but not Camino or Opera. OmniWeb is a great browser but not great enough to pay for.
RSS
Vienna delivers many of the features of NetNewsWire with a very similar look. It also has the great benefit of being open source freeware/donationware. As an RSS reader it offers an integrated tabbed web interface via the OS X WebKit. It's also got a whole slew of filtering/viewing possibilities. It really is an excellent reader with a great feature set and interface. Regarding Safari, I've come to appreciate Safari's built in RSS and used it before Vienna. If you are a heavy user of RSS I'd suggest trying a Safari-Vienna combination. If you read just a handful of RSS feeds Safari's RSS would likely be enough for you.
Torrent
I don't really have a strong opinion on this.
Sharing
There are other Gnutella/Limewire clients but this one is freeware/donationware and has worked great for me.
FTP
My first website built in 1997 was ftp'd with Fetch... ah what fond memories! I've not used it in a while but the last time I did it was rock solid. For the past couple years Transmit has been my favorite by far.
Email Client and Plugins
Over the years I've tried them all or most of them. From the days of the Classic Mac Os through X, I've used: Mulberry, PowerMail, Mozilla, Mailsmith, Eudora, Entourage, and Apple's Mail. I think I'm forgetting one. In any case, I've tried the last two versions of Entourage but never left Mail and don't plan on it. It has been, for the most part, everything I need in an email client. With add-ons such as those listed here, I could not be happier. Actually, I will be with Leopard Mail because having those to-dos and notes built in will be oh so sweet.
Chat
Tried them both and love them both. I've settled on iChat for quite sometime because Adium does not handle file transfers well. In fact, it has almost always crashed for me with any kind of file transfer. Given that everyone I want to chat with has an AIM or .Mac account I don't really need Adium's ability to handle other services. With the new features coming in Leopard iChat there is no way I'll be taking it off my dock.
More coming soon in Part 2...
Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Mac Apps
Launchers
Essential. While Spotlight search makes things a bit easier when I'm using someone else's Mac it's not really a substitute for a real Launcher. Quicksilver is my favorite by far because it is free and with it's plugin architecture it does more than Launchbar. Another benefit is the great community of folks that can offer help in getting the most out of using Quicksilver.
Virtual Desktops
Leopard will bring default, pre-installed virtual desktops to the Mac via Spaces. Until then I'll continue using Desktop Manager. I've been using this for a couple years and cannot imagine a Mac without it. If you are using a new Intel Mac you can use Virtue which is very similar and under active development though a bit buggy from what I've read.
Edit: 9/15/06 I decided to go ahead and try out Virtue again thinking the bugs would force me right back to Desktop Manager. One week later and I've made Virtue my default. Not a single crash! What I like better about Virtue: I can save desktop space by not showing the little pager all the time. Instead I have it set to pop up via a short cut. Even better, If I just click an app in the dock or choose it via the OS X Command-Tab applications switcher it will automatically switch me to the appropriate desktop for that app. Very cool.
Browsers
In terms of speed and rendering I consider these four to be close enough that they are all excellent choices. I prefer Safari for two reasons. First, with Saft I can save my tabs at a crash or quit and I can block flash advertising. Second, I love the OS X Tiger Dictionary application which can be accessed via contextual menu in Safari but not Camino or Opera. OmniWeb is a great browser but not great enough to pay for.
RSS
Vienna delivers many of the features of NetNewsWire with a very similar look. It also has the great benefit of being open source freeware/donationware. As an RSS reader it offers an integrated tabbed web interface via the OS X WebKit. It's also got a whole slew of filtering/viewing possibilities. It really is an excellent reader with a great feature set and interface. Regarding Safari, I've come to appreciate Safari's built in RSS and used it before Vienna. If you are a heavy user of RSS I'd suggest trying a Safari-Vienna combination. If you read just a handful of RSS feeds Safari's RSS would likely be enough for you.
- Vienna
- Safari
- NetNewsWire
Torrent
I don't really have a strong opinion on this.
Sharing
There are other Gnutella/Limewire clients but this one is freeware/donationware and has worked great for me.
FTP
My first website built in 1997 was ftp'd with Fetch... ah what fond memories! I've not used it in a while but the last time I did it was rock solid. For the past couple years Transmit has been my favorite by far.
Email Client and Plugins
Over the years I've tried them all or most of them. From the days of the Classic Mac Os through X, I've used: Mulberry, PowerMail, Mozilla, Mailsmith, Eudora, Entourage, and Apple's Mail. I think I'm forgetting one. In any case, I've tried the last two versions of Entourage but never left Mail and don't plan on it. It has been, for the most part, everything I need in an email client. With add-ons such as those listed here, I could not be happier. Actually, I will be with Leopard Mail because having those to-dos and notes built in will be oh so sweet.
Chat
Tried them both and love them both. I've settled on iChat for quite sometime because Adium does not handle file transfers well. In fact, it has almost always crashed for me with any kind of file transfer. Given that everyone I want to chat with has an AIM or .Mac account I don't really need Adium's ability to handle other services. With the new features coming in Leopard iChat there is no way I'll be taking it off my dock.
- iChat
- Adium
More coming soon in Part 2...
Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Mac Apps
Leopard Feature today: Dash Clipping for Tiger
August, 09 2006 11:54 PM
Why wait for OS X 10.5 Leopard when you can get those
features now? Well, you can get some of the features.
In particular I want to mention Dash Clipping for Tiger:
I've made two widget clippings and this widget worked as advertised. Very easy and very similar to the feature currently advertised at the Apple Leopard website.
I've not blogged yet about Apple's WWDC announcements... hope to remedy that soon. For now I'll say that I'm very excited about the current state of OS X and the future looks even better!
Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Leopard, Tiger, Dash Clipping, Dashboard, Widget
Dash Clipping is a universal widget tool that allows you to turn any part of any web page into a Dashboard widget with a couple of clicks. Download it here. Feedback to the usual address.
If this sounds familiar it's because it's a shameless rip-off of the new Web Clipping tool that's due in Leopard and that I knocked together over the last 24 hours. If you watch the video on that page (and the keynote) carefully, you'll realise all Apple's doing is loading the whole web page but only showing part of it. There's nothing clever about what they're doing, and there's nothing clever about my version either, though I did have to write part of it in Cocoa to get in working (you can almost do it with just an IFRAME, but not quite).
I've made two widget clippings and this widget worked as advertised. Very easy and very similar to the feature currently advertised at the Apple Leopard website.
I've not blogged yet about Apple's WWDC announcements... hope to remedy that soon. For now I'll say that I'm very excited about the current state of OS X and the future looks even better!
Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Leopard, Tiger, Dash Clipping, Dashboard, Widget
Tables, a new spreadsheet for Mac OS X
August, 03 2006 07:01 AM
Tables is currently in beta and for sale at the end of August, no price listed on the site. For those that don't want to use Excel this may do the trick. At the moment I rarely need a spreadsheet and when I do my needs are usually simple. I'll certainly give this one a try and will see what happens between now and the end of the beta. Good to see a new spreadsheet application for Mac users!
Of course it has been rumored for a while that Apple will be adding a spreadsheet to iWork so if you use Pages and Keynote and plan to update to the new version you might want to save your money for the moment.
Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Tables, Spreadsheet
SubEthaEdit, Collaborative Text Editor for OS X
April, 25 2006 09:17 PM
I've blogged before about SubEthaEdit from CodingMonkeys
which has been one of my favorite text editors
since it's initial release. I could (and
sometimes do) use Apple's free Text Edit which
is included with every Mac and I have. But Text
Edit lacks two features that I'd like to have
for web development. Color coded display of html
and browser preview. SubEthaEdit has both. It's
html preview uses Apple's very own WebKit and so
with a Command-R I get a new window that
displays my page just as Safari would. This
preview page updates live as I make changes to
the html. Nice!! The program also integrates
well with ftp cilents such as Transmit.
Another unique feature is it's collaboratory capabilities. Each SubEthaEdit document can be shared via Apple's Bonjour technology. I can open a document and in a couple of clicks others on my network (or on the internet) can add content to my document in real time. I see what they type as they type it and they see what I'm typing as well. Very cool and useful for creating meeting notes/minutes.
I was inspired to by BLOGZOT 2.0 on MacZOT.com to blog about it again. The folks at MacZOT and TheCodingMonkeys will award $105,000 in Mac software. Apparently they've done this before and it seems like a great way to get the word out about excellent Mac software and at the same time lower it's price.
Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, SubEthaEdit
Another unique feature is it's collaboratory capabilities. Each SubEthaEdit document can be shared via Apple's Bonjour technology. I can open a document and in a couple of clicks others on my network (or on the internet) can add content to my document in real time. I see what they type as they type it and they see what I'm typing as well. Very cool and useful for creating meeting notes/minutes.
I was inspired to by BLOGZOT 2.0 on MacZOT.com to blog about it again. The folks at MacZOT and TheCodingMonkeys will award $105,000 in Mac software. Apparently they've done this before and it seems like a great way to get the word out about excellent Mac software and at the same time lower it's price.
Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, SubEthaEdit
Camino 1.0 Released
February, 14 2006 01:33 PM
It's been a
long time coming but well worth the wait.
Camino 1.0 has been
released. I've been using this
browser since it's early days through many
versions and I'm thrilled to see it reach this
milestone. Next to Safari I'd have to say that
Camino is my favorite browser. Over the years I've
tried them all: iCab, IE, Firefox, Omniweb, Opera,
Shiira... probably a few others that I'm
forgetting. Safari and Camino have been, by far,
my favorites. Considering that Camino has been
developed by such a small staff and volunteers,
I'm greatly impressed that their browser competes
so well.
If you've not tried Camino I urge you to download it and give it a spin.
Technorati Tags: Camino, OS X Browsers, Mac Browsers
If you've not tried Camino I urge you to download it and give it a spin.
Technorati Tags: Camino, OS X Browsers, Mac Browsers
SubEthaEdit and TextMate
December, 15 2005 12:30 AM
Since I seem
to spend so much of my time writing text I thought
I'd mention my current favorite text editors,
SubEthaEdit and TextMate. SubEtha what? Named in
honor of Douglas Adams, this funny sounding software
title, SubEthaEdit, is perhaps one of
the very best text editors for Mac OS X. As a web
developer I've used a whole range of text editors
over the years: BBEdit, TextWrangler, TextEdit,
and most recently TextMate.
I could use Apple's free Text Edit which is included with every Mac and I have. But Text Edit lacks two features that I'd like to have for web development. Color coded display of html and browser preview. SubEthaEdit has both. It's html preview uses Apple's very own WebKit and so with a Command-R I get a new window that displays my page just as Safari would. This preview page updates live as I make changes to the html. Nice!! The program also integrates well with ftp cilents such as Transmit.
Another unique feature is it's collaboratory capabilities. Each SubEthaEdit document can be shared via Apple's Bonjour technology. I can open a document and in a couple of clicks others on my network (or on the internet) can add content to my document in real time. I see what they type as they type it and they see what I'm typing as well. Very cool and useful for creating meeting notes/minutes.
TextMate is my other favorite text editor and is probably my favorite. I don't use many of the features TextMate offers I enjoy the ability to open Projects consisting of a folder of files. Also, the tabs are great! Last, the auto-complete of html tags is a real time saver. Like SubEthaEdit, Transmit also works well with other apps such as Transmit or Ecto.
I could use Apple's free Text Edit which is included with every Mac and I have. But Text Edit lacks two features that I'd like to have for web development. Color coded display of html and browser preview. SubEthaEdit has both. It's html preview uses Apple's very own WebKit and so with a Command-R I get a new window that displays my page just as Safari would. This preview page updates live as I make changes to the html. Nice!! The program also integrates well with ftp cilents such as Transmit.
Another unique feature is it's collaboratory capabilities. Each SubEthaEdit document can be shared via Apple's Bonjour technology. I can open a document and in a couple of clicks others on my network (or on the internet) can add content to my document in real time. I see what they type as they type it and they see what I'm typing as well. Very cool and useful for creating meeting notes/minutes.
TextMate is my other favorite text editor and is probably my favorite. I don't use many of the features TextMate offers I enjoy the ability to open Projects consisting of a folder of files. Also, the tabs are great! Last, the auto-complete of html tags is a real time saver. Like SubEthaEdit, Transmit also works well with other apps such as Transmit or Ecto.
© 2006 MacProductive, Denny Henke | Macintosh
Consulting for St. Louis, MO | Contact |
