[geeks] Apple software: the stuff you "gotta have"

[Micah R Ledbetter]

On Oct 9, 2007, at 17:24, Shannon Hendrix wrote:

> 	- Basket: a KDE notebook/organizer program, notebook on steroids
> 	- a program to index my documents (text files, PDFs, word processor
> files,
> 	  etc) and possibly also organize them into neat directory trees

There are a lot of Mac programs that do both of these things. Most  
people either love them or hate them, so they're not for everyone.  
Yojimbo, Curio, and DEVONThink are the ones that I can recall. (!Free)

There are some other ones... my dad really likes VoodooPad, which is  
a desktop "wiki". I just use OmniOutlier or a text editor for these  
things. VoodooPad has a free and for-pay version, and I think there  
are other apps out there like it.

> 	- a good Usenet program

The only one I know of is Unison, which is not too bad. However, I  
don't know how it stacks up to experienced Usenetters' expectations.  
($25)

> 	- a good backup program that can use CD and DVD media
> 	- ditto but one that can use remote systems and/or CIFS servers, can
> 	  be the same program if it does media and server backup both

I don't have any experience with this, except that I know that  
CarbonCopyCloner makes nifty bootable disk images. That's a full  
backup each time, though, unless someone knows something I don't. (Free)

> Things I've found that I like, at least for now:
>
> 	- Adium: for chatting with almost all of the chat systems

Yep, I use it. I like it. Uses the Gaim^wPidgin libraries.

> 	- Colloquoy: for IRC

I prefer MacIrssi or IrssiX, which are two pretty much functionally  
equivalent programs that use irssi with a shinier Mac GUI. In fact,  
normally I'd just run irssi under Terminal, but it has screen-refresh  
bugs under OS X, blah. (Free)

> 	- OmniOutliner: as a possible replacement for Basket

OmniOutliner is pretty much amazing. I loved it from the moment I saw  
it.

If you use OPML files instead of the default .oo3 files, they are  
written to disk in a much clearer way if you ever have to view the  
document from a text editor rather than OmniOutliner. Both formats  
are XML (.oo3 is gzip'd first, though), but OPML is written with  
(gasp) newlines.


Other apps:

Quicksilver is an absolute necessity. It's amazing. It's a simple  
application launcher that I can't live without now... what, go hunt  
for /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app? (Free)

Camino is the Gecko-based but XUL-lacking web browser for the Mac. It  
sucks a /lot/ less than Firefox, though you can't use Firefox  
extensions, so that's a dealbreaker for some. I know this is a touchy  
topic, though :). (Free)

Xee is a faster image viewer application than Apple's Preview.app.  
They just released a new version, but I haven't played around with  
it, yet. (Free)

I use Emacs for text editing (the regular CVS tree has a Cocoa  
interface, or Aquamacs has some Mac-specific extensions), but if you  
want a Mac-ish option, a lot of people choose TextMate, which they  
claim has no equal. Though more expensive than I'd want to pay for,  
it's a hell of a lot better than BBEdit's $199. (!Free)

TunnelBlick and SSHKeyChain are menu items that do OpenVPN and SSH  
key management, respectively.  (Free)


  - Micah