My Computer Setup

I was just reading Jake Billo’s post These are a few of my favourite apps, and I realized that I haven’t ever discussed the different applications that I work with on my Mac. Jake breaks it into the different applications he uses on both Windows and Mac, but I’m only going to be focusing on the Mac applications I use. Additionally, I’m not going to make the title of this post a play on The Sound of Music.

Productivity and Writing

• Email - Google Mail - I was using Mail.app for the longest time, but I grew tired of the terrible search features it has. Gmail has always had superior search compared to any email client.
• Calendar - Google Calendar - I like the fact that I can access it anywhere, and that it is easy to view and share calendars with friends.
• Web Browser - Firefox - I’ve used Firefox for many years now. It crashes sometimes, but it is a very secure browser, and I love all of the extensions available.
• News Reader - NewsFire - I got this program when I purchased the MacHeist bundle. It is very light-weight and I like the ability to make smart feeds.
• Writing - Journler - I use this application for all of my writing and blog posts. It allows me to have a nice clean interface whether I’m online or offline.
• Quicksilver - A great application launche. It also makes tasks a lot easier with triggers. I can create tons of keyboard shortcuts so that I can minimize my mouse usage.

Uploading / Downloading

• BitTorrent - Transmission - I don’t use BitTorrent much at all, but when I do I use Transmission. It is very light-weight.
• Newsgroups - Unison - I don’t use newsgroups much on my main workstation. Most of this is done directly on to my file server. A great application for grabbing files quickly is Unison. It also has NZB support, which is a must.
• FTP - Cyberduck - Not the best FTP client I’ve ever used, but I still continue to use it. It’s certainly better than Fetch, which is a really old client for Mac.

Communications

• Instant Messaging - Adium - I use Adium because it’s a very light-weight client that supports almost every instant messaging protocol. This is important for me because I use almost every protocol there is on a regular basis.
• Voice Conferencing - Skype - Still the best voice conferencing program I’ve ever used. It’s great because it’s cross platform. It now has video conferencing built in.
• IRC - Colloquy - One of the best looking IRC clients on the Mac. It has every piece of eye candy you could ever want in an IRC client. It also has great integration with Growl.
• Additionally, I use Facebook and Jaiku to keep my friends updated on what I’m doing.

Programming and Development

• Eclipse - I use Eclipse to develop Java and Python applications.
• TextMate - Some people use PHP Eclipse to develop in PHP, but I prefer to just use TextMate. It is a very powerful text editor, and has some very useful bundles. It now integrates well with PHPDoc.

DVD/CD Burning / Video / Music

• DVD Ripping - MacTheRipper - This application is great because you can easily get rid of the blocks that they put on DVD that prevent you from skipping FBI warnings.
• DVD Shrinking/Burning - DVD2OneX2 - I like this application because it both shrinks and burns the DVD. No need for two separate applications.
• Music - iTunes - The best music management application I’ve ever used. It has the typical extremely user-friendly Apple interface. iTunes doesn’t necessarily run very well on Windows, but it runs impeccably on the Mac. I also purchase a good amount of music from the iTunes music store.
• Video - QuickTime Pro - I try to use QuickTime as often as I can because of the integration with Apple’s FrontRow. When I can’t run something in QuickTime, I use VLC.

Photos / Graphics Editing

• Digital Camera - iPhoto - I use iPhoto to pull all of the photos from my digital camera and make simple adjustments such as brightness, contrast and red-eye. This application makes it very easy to distribue photos.
• To upload photos to my Flickr account I use Flickr Uploader. It is a very simple tool. It also will resize your images for you in order to save bandwidth.
• Graphic Editing - Photoshop CS2 - I use Photoshop at work because it’s the most advanced photo editing tool on the market. It also has great integration with Adobe GoLive CS2, which I also use at work for the website.

That just about covers all of the applications I currently use on my Mac. For a more indepth look you can go check out my Wakoopa feed. Wakoopa is a Web 2.0 website that tracks all of the applications you run on your computer.

What is your setup? Do you have any suggestions to my setup that would help make my life easier? I would also like to invite any readers to try Wakoopa out and post their feeds here. It’s very interesting to see how other utilize technology. It has certainly made me a more productive person.