Software Inventory

Published 21 December 04 by Justin French, 10 comments

Each time I update this list, I’ll reset the date and post the newest items at the top of the list. I’m steering clear of the obvious ones (like Photoshop), browsers (like Firefox) and anything that was installed by default with Jaguar or Panther. Enjoy!

• LittleSecrets is great little application which allows you to organise little bits and pieces (I’m using it to keep track of the plethora of passwords I need to remember for domains, FTP, hosting, websites, etc) which password protects everything with Blowfish. It costs a whole US$9, and I love it!
• TextMate – this text editor has all but replaced BBEdit in the space of a week. So many features, virtually endless customisation, no bloat, no clutter, and a lovely price tag to boot! (commercial, US$49)
• Extensis Mask Pro – this Photoshop extension pays for itself over and over, making it incredibly easy to mask photos or cut objects out of their backgrounds (commercial, US$199.00)
• OmniOutliner – I just rediscovered this gem in my applications folder… it’s no Basecamp, but then again I don’t need to share.
• MailTemplate – add customisable templates to Mail.app… support emails become pain free instantly
• Mail Enhancer – adds a few goodies to Mail.app Prefs
• BBEdit replaced by TextMate
• Tiger Launch – quick access to a customisable list of installed applications, which means you can keep the dock for the stuff you really need day-to-day (opensource)
• Tinker Tool – worth the download for the “show hidden system files” option alone, but it allows you to tweak the dock, font smoothing and much more (freeware)
• PSynchX – scheduled back-ups of selected folders or entire bootable volumes. Carbon Copy Cloner does a good job too! (opensource)
• CocoaMySQL – beautiful, fast, slick alternative to phpMyAdmin for GUI interaction with a MySQL database… it doesn’t do everything, but it does what it does really well (opensource)
• Transmit – when I moved to TextDrive I needed a decent SFTP/FTP client. Fugu was a little too buggy for me (and didn’t do regular FTP), so I shelled out the $’s for Transmit, and am glad I did (commercial, US$24.95)
• Conversation – a nice IRC client that feels very “OS X” (free)
• Free Ruler – a beautiful, simple, elegant way to measure pixels on screen (free)