Software I Use

I try to keep an updated list of software I run. This is because I often get the question what software I use, and it’s easier to just point at a web page than trying to remember everything. I have used Mac computers daily since 2002, so I have stumbled across quite many different software packages. Here’s my list of stuff I install on every computer I use.

Large Software Packages

  • Adobe CS3 Design Premium (Mac). I use Adobe software for too many things to mention. Indesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Flash for (Mobile) Web Content. PhotoShop for screenshots and image manipulation. Acrobat for hands-on PDF editing before distribution. Pricy software but something I use almost every day.
  • Luxology Modo (Mac + PC). I plan to use this software instead of Lightwave for my 3D work. I just used it to render the 3D banners on gapidraw.com and it turned out very nicely I think.
  • Microsoft Office 2007 (PC) and Office 2008 (Mac). When Microsoft launched Office 2008 in February 2008 they made some very nice improvements to Word and Powerpoint, and some less improvements to Entourage and Excel. Entourage 2008 still cannot synchronize tasks with the server, and still does not support contact grouping that syncs to Exchange. With Excel 2008 they dropped Macro compatibility completely. So Office 2007 running under VMWare Fusion is still a need for me.
  • Newtek Lightwave 9 (Mac + PC). I use it for some subtle 3D effect on some web pages. Easy to work with and fun to use. I use it with plugins such as F-Prime and Sasquatch. It’s beginning to feel old though so I have recently gotten Luxology Modo that I plan to use instead.
  • Visual Studio 2008 Standard (PC). I use it for further development of GapiDraw. I have a stationary PC filled with the old versions including VS.NET 2002, 2003, 2005 and the Embedded Visual C++ tools. On my laptop however it’s enough with the 2008 version.
  • VMWare Fusion (Mac). So I can run Office 2007 and Visio 2007. I still need to run Excel macros and edit Visio documents from time to time.
  • Windows Vista (PC / BootCamp). In many cases I like XP better than Vista. XP is faster and works better when run inside VMWare Fusion. Vista however is needed for .NET development so I’m kind of stuck with it. I usually just boot it up under VMWare Fusion though.

Mac Utilities – Updated June 17, 2008

  • Adium. I usually swap between Adium and Microsoft Messenger as my main messenger client. Adium has a better UI, better OSX integration and Growl support, which Messenger does not support. Messenger on the other hand can show the Messenger custom status strings, which Adium cannot. I use Adium with the Overture 1928 contact list skin and the Renkoo messaging skin. Other nice skins to check out include the HUD and Notebook contact list skins. *FREE*
  • AppZapper. Great for “uninstalling” programs that also removes any user-stored preferences. *SHAREWARE*
  • BBEdit. For 100% Windows-compatible text files. I have it set to UTF8 with BOM documents and CRLF endings. If unsure it guesses documents are in Windows Latin formats. Very handy since I write tons of text documents such as meeting notes every day. *SHAREWARE*
  • BetterZip. Zip file management in OSX. If you need anything more than “double click to unzip archive” this is probably the best application for OSX there is. Zip file management, automatically removes Mac specific stuff from archives, WinZip compatible 256-bit encryption, and much more. *SHAREWARE*
  • BlueHarvest. Have you ever been in the situation where you have borrowed an USB memory stick to copy a document to it, and when your friend receives it and plugs it into his PC he finds it full of strange files. Files like .DS_STORE, ._MyDocument.docx, .fseventsd, .Spotlight-V100, .TemporaryItems, .Trashes and .VolumeIcon.icns? Meet BlueHarvest. It’s very customizable, and it prevents your Mac to create these Mac-specific files on USB memory sticks, removable drives and network folders. Well worth a look if you work in a mixed PC/Mac environment. *SHAREWARE*
  • Bookdog. Bookdog is a tool to sort, manage, migrate, synchronize and verify bookmarks. It supports virtually any web browser on the Mac platform, and I use it regularly to verify and automatically update my bookmark links if a web page or web site has been moved. Very handy if you like me have a couple of thousand bookmarks in your bookmark menu. *SHAREWARE*
  • CandyBar. Icon management. CandyBar features an easy way to set up an icon repository, and simplifies changing icons and dock layouts. *SHAREWARE*
  • CoverSutra. Gives you very nice looking album cover art on your desktop, and much more. *SHAREWARE*
  • Default Folder X. Once you have tried it you cannot live without it! Default Folder X gives you a list of “recent folders” in the file selection dialog. If you like me work with Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator and a text editor in parallel, this application is a huge time saver! Default Folder X also does lots of other things such as keeping a list of favorites, adding previews etc to the file folder dialogs. It’s so good it’s my #1 tool I install first of all on my Mac, I just can’t recommend it enough. *SHAREWARE*
  • DockDrop. Adds an icon to your dock which lets you drag items to it that will be uploaded to a web server of your choice. Supports FTP, WebDAV, SCP and Flickr. Once the file has been uploaded you will receive the complete web URL on the clipboard. If you have ever tried to send a file or image that is too large to fit in an email you really should try this program out. *FREE*
  • DragThing. *NEW* If you look at my list of software I use it’s clear that all these programs do not fit on the standard OS X dock. My solution is to use the OS X dock for drop targets (like BetterZip, Photoshop, Picturesque, etc) and use DragThing as a way to start my other applications. DragThing lets you create Docks anywhere on your display with tabs and layers – very flexible. *SHAREWARE*
  • Firefox 3. Firefox 3 has better color management and better font rendering than Safari. It also has (in my opinion) vastly superior bookmark management, better tab management and free bookmark sync solutions using addons. But the uglyness of the aqua-like UI components still bothers me too much to use it as my daily browser. *FREE*
  • Flip4Mac. Windows Media File (WMV) playback in Quicktime and in Safari. I also use it to convert WMV files into Quicktime and iPhone format. *FREE*
  • Geektool. I use it to display CAL, TOP and UPTIME on my desktop that refreshes every 10 seconds. Here are some tips to customize it so it looks very nice, and here are some more. Also, here’s a tip to get a calendar that starts on Monday. *FREE*
    My settings (copy without the beginning and ending quotes):
    Process list sorted by CPU usage: “top -ocpu -FR -l2 -n20 | grep ‘^….[1234567890] ‘ | grep -v ‘ 0.0% ..:’ | cut -c 1-24,33-42,64-77″
    Uptime and RAM/CPU usage: “uptime | awk ‘{print “UPTIME : ” $3 ” ” $4 ” ” $5 ” ” }’; top -l 1 | awk ‘/PhysMem/ {print “RAM : ” $8 ” “}’ ; top -l 2 | awk ‘/CPU usage/ && NR > 5 {print $6, $7=”:”, $8, $9=”user “, $10, $11=”sys “, $12, $13}’”
    European Calendar: “cal | awk ‘{ print ” “$0; getline; print ” Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su”; getline; if (substr($0,1,2) == ” 1″) print ” 1 “; do { prevline=$0; if (getline == 0) exit; print ” ” substr(prevline,4,17) ” ” substr($0,1,2) ” “; } while (1) }’ | sed “s/^/ /;s/$/ /;s/ $(date +%e) / $(date +%e | sed ’s/./#/g’) /”"
  • Growl. Growl is a notification system for OSX. You can customize how notifications from various applications should appear and how they should look, and after that “it just works”. Growl is widely supported by most Mac applications without the “Microsoft” name tag. *FREE*
  • Inquisitor. Like Google Web Complete but built-into the Safari search bar. *FREE*
  • Little Snitch. Excellent firewall that blocks outgoing connection requests. Sets a default rule where no application can connect outside your computer, and you can then assign rules such as hosts, ports, and protocols for each application individually. Great little application that puts you in full control of what happens inside your computer. Also includes an excellent network monitor where you can see exactly what each application is doing on the network. *SHAREWARE*
  • Menu calendar clock for iCal. *NEW* A nice menu bar calendar with full support for week numbers. I use Outlook 2007 under running under VMWare Fusion as my main calendar, and this small utility helps me retrieving day and week numbers easily from the Mac desktop. *FREE/SHAREWARE*
  • MarsEdit. The blog editor I use. I like being able to write my blog posts off site, and it also helps out with image uploads etc. Very handy. *SHAREWARE*
  • Microsoft Messenger. I kind of swap between Adium and Microsoft Messenger. Adium has a better UI, better OSX integration and Growl support, which Messenger does not support. Messenger on the other hand can show the Messenger custom user strings, which Adium cannot. *FREE*
  • NetNewsWire. *NEW* In my opinion the best RSS reader on the Mac. I previously used NewsFire, but after trying NetNewsWire out for a short while I switched immediately. Some of the better features are inline web browsing with tabs showing live thumbnail previews, “Outlook-style” tri-view with sites to the left, topics on top and contents below, and RSS feed synchronization. *FREE*
  • Path Finder. A much better file browser than the built-in OSX finder. Supports:
    * Can create new files “in-place” (much like in Windows)
    * “Windows like” sorting. Folders first, then files
    * <Enter> by default opens files, not renames them
    * Tab support (great when working with projects that have files in multiple folders)
    * Cut and paste and a temporary drop stack
    * Does not fill the hard drive with .DS_Store files
    * Can show hidden files such as .htaccess (good when designing web sites)
    … and much more. *SHAREWARE*
  • Picturesque. Makes pictures look nicer for blogs etc. I use it to add reflections, edges, curved borders, shadows etc to pictures before posting to the blog. Very nice if used subtle. On my blog I use the following settings. Reflections: Length: 20%, Opacity: 50%, Offset: 0px. Curve: TopLeft/TopRight on window screenshots (1% curve), All on images (5% curve). Edges: 1px stroke with gray color (50% white) on Mac window screenshots. *SHAREWARE*
  • Remote Desktop Connection. For administrating PC machines when you are too lazy to go out of the chair. *FREE*
  • Saft. Sometimes I resort to Safari to test web page designs and for demonstrations. I use Saft for full screen display mode, and also adblocking in safari. *SHAREWARE*
  • Skype. The Skype client for Mac is as full featured as the PC client. Which is impressive since they have much less developers working on it. *FREE*
  • Speed Download. File download manager for OSX. Very handy since I’m often connected through unstable HSPA networks. Speed Download integrates well with both Safari and Firefox and supports file queuing, throttling, and automatic download resumes. *SHAREWARE*
  • SpamSieve. Very advanced Bayesian spam filter software for OSX. I use it with both Apple Mail and Entourage (have my work mail in Entourage and other mail in Apple Mail). Works very well and actually surprises my from time to time how good it is. What I like most is that it color codes the spam mail according to probability rate, so when you want to remove spam mail you can just browse through the few uncertain mails and remove the rest immediately. I have however so far not received any mail after training it that it has thought was spam that was not spam. *SHAREWARE*
  • Things. I have dozens of things to do, all the time. Things relating to my daily work (projects, sales, and sales support), seminars I hold, my household and my projects such as GapiDraw. To keep track of everything I use the GTD (Getting Things Done) software Things, which really impressed me by it’s simplicity yet still powerful enough for my needs. *FREE*
  • TinkerTool. Nice tool for changing enabling features in OSX Apple never added a user interface for, such as Web Inspector in Safari, and changing settings such as how and where screenshots are stored. *FREE*
  • Transmission. The best Bittorrent client I have stumbled across. And I have used a few. *FREE*
  • Transmit. The best FTP client I have used so far. *SHAREWARE*
  • UnrarX. Used to decompress RAR packages. For OSX. *FREE*

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