A year on the MacBook Pro - My favorite software for 2008 7 comments

It’s been about a year since I got my Mac.

As a long time PC users I had to fine tune my experience a bit and find some of the tools make me more productive. I am happy to report that I have found a good balance with most. So since we’re at the end of the year we’re doing a series of post for our best software tools for Mac!

I will start with my list. The rest of the Wishpot gang will follow up with theirs…

Office Package
I am sticking with Microsoft Office for Mac. It’s not as good as the Windows edition, but it’s still my favorite choice. I know…I know… the H-Farm guys (and other Apple supporters) have been giving me c#$p for not using Keynote, etc… for me it’s a matter of interop and simplicity. There is nothing I can do in Keynote that I cannot do in Powerpoint. I know Powerpoint well and everyone can read them! Done deal!

Email and Calendaring
This is has been a bit tougher. Entourage has some clear shortcomings (how’s it possible that in 2009 still does not support composing in rich HTML?). Mail, iCal, and the native Mac apps are a bit “primordial” for me. They lack any serious productivity features (multiclient sync, mobile support, flagging, ease of integration among calendar/email, etc…). So I simply went back to Outlook. You can say a lot of bad things about it, but it’s still the best client out there - hands off. It comes with a BIG plus…it’s supported by any business app plugin out there. Kinda of a must if you need to be productive with CRM, Sales Management, etc…

Browser
Easy one… Firefox 3. I actually tried Flock, but it’s a bit too thin in many of the features that it provides. Safari is a bit more than a toy as it’s Chrome.

Instant Messenger
Strangely I don’t use an aggregator. Most of my contacts use Skype and Live Messenger. Both available for Mac.

Application Development
As some of you might know Wishpot is based partly in ASP.NET and partly in Ruby on Rails. There is not much in terms of ASP.NET for Mac, so I am using Visual Studio 2008 for that side. For quick editing I just use XCode, which comes with the OS. For FTP/etc.. I have been liking ExpandDrive a lot. I may actually pay for it!

Design Tools
I tried a few of the tools out there (Pixelmator, Gimp, etc…) but it was not really cutting it. Unfortunately there is not such thing as Paint.Net for Mac. So I folded and went with the CS package (Photoshop and Illustrator). Thought to beat, they are really good.

Screen Capture
I love Skitch. It does what it’s supposed to do well and it’s free! Great for capturing screenshots of bugs!

Information Capturing (aka notes taking)
I have been using mostly EverNote. Does most of what I need very well. Don’t love the UI too much (a bit too structured), but it’s very good overall.

Newsreader
NewsNetWire is the clear winner! it’s great and it’s free! I also love the integration with the Newsgator service (good for the iPhone app)

Blog Editor
This is not closed yet. I like MarsEdit, but I don’t like the 30$. So I am now using Live Writer. It’s as good and it’s free!

Twitter Client
I have been using TweetDeck and it works great! Sticking with that for now…plus if it’s good for Guy Kawasaki it’s supposed to be good for
me!

Online Wiki
I am a fan of PBWiki. We’re using it for Wishpot and for my cooking book! It’s clean, great feature set and very good price point (mostly free)

Virtual PBX
We’ve been using RingCentral for a while now. It works great and the price point is tough to beat (15$/month for 5 of us). They have a client for Mac and Windows.

Music Players
I have always been a subscription fan. So I like to use the Zune software (note that I actually don’t own a Zune) and the Zune Pass. it’s very difficult to beat and the software is WAY better than iTunes.

Virtualization
As you can gather I actually still rely on a lot of Windows based software so I must have a good virtualization software. I actually run a Windows XP SP2 image using WMWare (about 1Gb memory allocated) in Unity mode. Super nice!