Mac Programs You Use the Most?

I thought I would talk about some of my favorite -- maybe less well known -- programs...

They are:

Well I must include Snood, a fun addictive game that combines strategy and arcade shooting skills.

GraphicConverter, I use for converting graphics but also as a kind of Photoshop lite. I rather open GraphicsConverter than Photoshop to crop, resize or other kind of tweaking.

TextEdit, the free program that comes with the OS has a lot of font features and is quick and simple. I use it for html duties.

Fetch, a FTP program, is what I use for FTP. I haven't used any other -- and since I love the 'little doggie' animation -- I am not planning on using any others.

FileMaker Pro, a database, I use for everything. Printing display labels, mailing labels, customers and vendors, purchase orders. I am sure I am only utilizing 15% of the programs abilities, and I am sure if I could up that percentage that my life would be better, global warming would abate, and Paris would be out of jail.

You're STILL playing Snood!? Is it still the same version as they made five years ago or is it some new and improved version? (Not that there's much you could improve on that game.)

I gotta admit, that is one hell of a fun game. If it were on my computer, I might be playing it too.

I'd recommend trying something other than Fetch. There are newer versions of Fetch that just came out. I don't know how good those are, but if we're talking about the classic FetchFTP program, there's not much I like about it aside from the running doggy.

There have been some very very good FTP programs to come out on the Mac recently. The one I use is YummyFTP. I tested about a half dozen Mac FTP programs the past couple of years. Yummy won out.

Yummy has a much better interface than Fetch and it has a terrific file synchronization feature that allows you to compare two directories to synch files between your computer and a remote computer. There are also a few other ones that have file synch built in, but I haven't tried them so I don't know how good they are.

There are too many programs that I can't do without. I'll just stick to the ones that would have common application for the average user.

Snapz Pro X is a must have program for me. It's a screen capture tool that I use to whip up help files and quick tutorials that I can send over email to someone having some tech problems. It works great, resizes images effectively without losing quality, and even adds optional drop shadowing or borders to the captured image. It saves me a lot of time that I would otherwise have to spend in Photoshop.

I know of -- but don't use -- Snapz Pro X.

I do take screen shots from time to time -- with the built in OX utility (plenty good for my simple needs) -- and I thought to tell how as I am not sure where it is documented -- and I know it is fairly unknown.

To take a picture of the entire screen hold down the Command (apple, propeller) AND Shift and then press the #3 key. This will create a file labeled Picture 1 on your desktop.

To take a picture of just the object on the screen that you are interested in -- then do the above but press the #4 key. This will give you a cross-hair pointer, you then use the mouse to select the area and then click the mouse to take the pic.

There is another command, you put the pointer in a video window -- press the key sequence -- and the entire video is captured. I don't remember the command, though...

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QUOTE (stone @ Jun 18 2007, 10:20 AM)

To take a picture of the entire screen hold down the Command (apple, propeller) AND Shift and then press the #3 key. This will create a file labeled Picture 1 on your desktop. To take a picture of just the object on the screen that you are interested in -- then do the above but press the #4 key. This will give you a cross-hair pointer, you then use the mouse to select the area and then click the mouse to take the pic. There is another command, you put the pointer in a video window -- press the key sequence -- and the entire video is captured. I don't remember the command, though...

WOW! I didn't know you could do that without a screen capture tool! Thanks for the tip!

The #4 trick almost eliminates my need for Snapz Pro. Well... it makes it easier for me to get by without it. It'll work fine for occasional screen shots, but I occasionally need a lot of screen shots in a very short period of time.

Hi all, first post here and happy to be involved!

I previously used Fetch and YummyFTP, but after numerous headaches I decided to make a $20 purchase of Transmit by Panic software. They make some of the sweetest Mac apps I've ever used.

For web development they also have a program called Coda, and it's got many of the good features of dreamweaver but I find it easier to use and it has a browser build right in so you can see formatted code appear right in the app. I love it.

I make a lot of multi page PDFs and didn't want to spend hundreds on Adobe software so I found a nice app called CombinePDF that lets you take single and multi-page PDFs and smoosh them together into one package. it's fast and easy to use.

Handbrake is a great app for ripping DVDs, iShrink is a zipping utility that actually makes 100% PC compatible archives, Todos is like the old OS 9 launcher for OSX it's pretty snazzy... my list goes on but I'll spare you!

And yeah, that apple-shift-4 trick is my best friend.

-David

QUOTE (3D Monkey @ Jun 19 2007, 07:24 AM)

I previously used Fetch and YummyFTP, but after numerous headaches I decided to make a $20 purchase of Transmit by Panic software. They make some of the sweetest Mac apps I've ever used. For web development they also have a program called Coda, and it's got many of the good features of dreamweaver but I find it easier to use and it has a browser build right in so you can see formatted code appear right in the app. I love it.

I recently ran into Transmit and it does look pretty sweet. I haven't used it yet and I'm actually pretty happy with Yummy. It fell short of what I was originally looking for when I started using it, but I couldn't find anything better. Since their last release that allows you to preview your synch jobs and modify them like the way Dreamweaver's synch tool works, I've become much happier with it.

I've never even heard of Coda! I'll have to check it out. My main web development tool of choice is Zend given that most of my web development work is PHP intensive. When I'm working on more conventional sites, I like using Dreamweaver to make writing HTML code faster.

I have a love hate relationship with Zend. It's not the fastest program around, it does all sorts of quirky weird ass things, and it sometimes is notoriously unstable. At the same time, it's the best tool that I know of to make software development in PHP faster and less painful. I just wish that it had some better Dreamweaver like functionality because most of my work isn't a pure play programming project nor a pure design project.