most-used OS X apps in my dock

Knowing that at least a few of you readers out there are Mac users, I thought I’d share a few of my most-used Mac apps. I’d be curious to hear your favorites, too, either in the comments, or on your own blogs. (Of course, I forego the obvious applications here, like Safari, iTunes, and the like…)

To start, let’s dig into where I spend most of my time on a computer: on the Internet.

Internet/Mail/Etc.

Twitterific: A great app for updating my Twitter feed. I’m not the most regular twitterer, but I do hit the occasional tweet to let people know what’s up. Fortunately, Twitter has not reached addictive proportions for me, as it tends to for some.

Mailplane: As I discussed previously, I began using Google Apps for my domain, not all that long ago. While I’m pretty happy with Google’s web interface and use that most of the time, I sometimes turn to the added functionality that Mailplane provides. It does drag-n-drop attachments, has a nice plugin for iPhoto, and handles multiple accounts well (for sanity, I have work email shunted to a separate gmail account).

BusySync: Best syncing for iCal and Google Calendar, hands down. This little system pane quietly keeps my iPhone and GoogleCalendar in sync, without any bother or pain. I haven’t even begun to dig into the iCal features for local networks, and this is already well worth the registration price.

Linkinus: My favorite IRC (Internet Relay Chat) client, Linkinus has recently been updated to version 1.3, which includes a new theme that displays most photos and videos inline in the client, improved filtering of IRC notices, and a new user interface that looks far more Mac-like than any other client out there. Being an IRCop on the Serenia network and owner of the channel #vegan, I spend a lot of time in my IRC client, and while I used to be addicted to Irssi in the terminal, I’ve recently moved all of my IRC use to Linkinus.

iChat with Chax: Apple’s built-in iChat client has become better and better with time, but it still is missing a few things. Chax adds a few extra features that are really useful, like Growl notifications, a unified contact window, and a built-in log viewer.

Yummy FTP: I was a long-time Transmit user, but a few years ago, I switched to Yummy FTP for my FTP and SFTP needs. I was able to get faster transfers with Yummy, and I just like the interface better than Transmit’s. I find myself using it less, however, since Expandrive came out…

ExpanDrive: This app adds SFTP to the finder with a little red drive icon. I’m able to mount my server for web and other file work in the Finder like any other file system, and overall, it is quite responsive. I also use this to get “back to my mac” without relying on Apple’s .Mac solution. Using the dynamic dns service that comes with DNS Made Easy, I have a domain pointing to my home IP address that’s updated every 5 minutes. I then setup my router to forward all traffic on a high-numbered port to the local ssh port on my mac. Using ExanDrive, I can then mount my local mac drive via SFTP from anywhere I can get a connection. This is great for grabbing files from work — say, a Keynote presentation or an OmniOutliner file with my class notes — and it is fairly secure, using SSH-based encryption. For $29 and a few minutes futzing about with your router, you can have excellent and relatively secure access to your home mac without the .Mac fees and potential back to my mac issues.

Meerkat: SSH (secure shell) tunnels are useful when you want your connections to be truly secure. Coupled with a shell account capable of tunneling traffic, Meerkat makes secured network services simple, wrapping an easy-to-use interface around some SSH commands that I always struggle to remember. With Meerkat, I can set up a series of tunnels, and select them from a drop-down menu, or have them auto-triggered when I launch an application. Highly recommended if you need to secure your browsing, chatting, or anything else that requires a network connection.

NetNewsWire: Best RSS reader for Mac, and now free. What else can I say?

Pukka: a terribly useful little front-end to Del.icio.us that allows for very fast posting to del.icio.us. It has built-in tag completion, which is also a bonus since I’m a pretty sloppy tagger.

MarsEdit2: I’m kind of a messy blogger. I write out lots of half-posts and spew my drafty idiocy all over the place. MarsEdit provides a repository for all of this stuff, and organizes all of my blogging into one place. It has nice macros built-in for formatting, and it interfaces well with several different blogging platforms.

Productivity apps

In addition to my online geekery, I’m also a professor and author, and use a variety of tools to improve my productivity, to organize information, and to capture ideas.

Type-It-For-Me: If you tend to type a lot of repetitive stuff, this app can save you a lot of time by defining quick little macros that can be expanded anywhere. For example, I often sign my emails like this, expanded by ‘atb’:

All the best,

Bob

In some of my other emails, I use this as a signature, which is expanded with ‘bts’

–
Bob Torres
author, Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights
co-author, Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-vegan World
http://www.bobtorres.net

I have other macros setup for support emails for our podcast, other signatures, and more. I also have the program setup to auto-correct typos using the TidBITS Auto Correct dictionary. This is great for fixing some common typos.

Omnioutliner Pro: I always tell my students that outlines are the key to learning complex material, and I practice what I preach. More often than not, I show up to class with a few outlined pages on the readings for the day. I’ve used just about every other outliner out there, but settled with OmniOutliner Pro, mostly for the powerful features it provides.

MindManager: Prior to undertaking most big writing projects, I mind-map to help me sort out the big ideas I’m grappling with, and to ground my thinking a bit. Jenna and I used a mind map for Vegan Freak, and a fairly large mind map also drove the production of Making A Killing. MindManager gives me a space to visualize and brainstorm, and it lets you attach notes and files to each node in the mind map.

Textsoap: Need to clean up sloppily formatted text? Strip out weird characters? Remove extra spaces? Textsoap is invaluable for this, and a huge timesaver.

Quicksilver: In perpetual beta, Quicksilver is an application launcher and so much more. If you can think of it, there’s probably a quicksilver plugin to do it. (For example, I use Quicksilver to launch iTunes playlists, to manipulate files, to add things to my RememberTheMilk to-do lists, to search for things, and more.)

Hazel: This little preference pane performs actions on folders. I use it to keep my downloads folder cruft-free, and for a few other automated tasks. This is a powerful little prefpane!

Mac users: what are your most-used apps? Let me know!