AlternateIdea: Finally on a Mac

May 6th, 2005

Finally on a Mac

8 comments on 239 words

Well, I finally broke down and bought me a Mac. I got a new 17” Powerbook running Tiger. I’m really loving it! The dashboard and spotlight features are just awesome.

I’m also enjoying how the interface of most Mac applications isn’t cluttered like alot of applications for Windows.

I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to get the tools I need on it. I’ve gotten rails up and running and I’ve installed a few other applications including:

“Textmate”:http://www.macromates.com
“YourSQL”:http://www.mludi.net/YourSQL/
“XChat Aqua”:http://xchataqua.sourceforge.net/twiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome
“Firefox”:http://www.getfirefox.com
“Numerous Dashboard Widgets”:http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/dashboard/
“Subversion”:http://subversion.tigris.org/project_packages.html

So, what are some of your favorite OS X applications that you can’t live without?

Discussion

blanco said on May 8th

you might want to take a look at this thread over at the textdrive forums.

http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?id=1281

good luck with your new mac
Frank Manno said on May 10th

Justin,

Congrats on the new acquisition! You’ve entered some fine territory… :) I’ve had my Mac for a year now, and am loving it more and more each day. I still feel like I just got the thing. OS X is beautiful, and Tiger is fantastic!

Some of the apps I’ve got in my arsenal include:

xPad (fantastic note/scratch pad)
Font Sampler (Nice font manager—and it’s free!)
AdiumX (MSN/Yahoo/AIM chat client—think of it as Trillian for Macs)

I’ve got a couple of others I can recommend… not on my Mac at the moment, but when I get in, I’ll post some others.

Congrats again!
Justin Palmer said on May 10th

Thanks for the info guys, I’ll definitely check those apps out!
Dominique PERETTI said on May 10th

svnX !
Justin Palmer said on May 11th

I actually downloaded svnX right before your post. It’s looking very nice! Great work :-)
Lon Baker said on May 13th

Here is my short list.

CSSEdit for CSS development.

Desktop Manager for more efficient use of multiple desktops. There is a better one called Virtue but is has not been updated for Tiger yet.

Opera Web Browser for mobile phone css development. The small screen view alone is worth the price of admission.
nickel said on May 21st

i agree.
ceejayoz said on May 21st

I strongly second Lau Taarnskov’s recommendation of Quicksilver – one of the nicest apps I use.

A quick Ctrl+Space and a few keystrokes and I can launch any app or file I like. Wonderful!

Sorry, comments are closed for this article.

Justin develops iPhone and Mac software over at Labrat Revenge by night and by day he is the Design Director for entp, the company behind Lighthouse, Warehouse, and Mephisto. You can check out his dated portfolio for a peek of what he's done.

Beautifully simple issue tracking and project management. With a beautiful Mac-like interface, email and subversion integration, Lighthouse is the perfect project management tool. We took the suck out of issue tracking.

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```
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```
Stash this away in your Z Shell (~/.zshenv) or Bash environment (~/.bashrc) and set your preferred ANSI code.
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DoubleClick and Define using Apple Dictionary


var selection;
if(window.getSelection)
  selection = window.getSelection();
else if(document.selection)
  selection = document.selection.createRange();

document.observe("dblclick", function() {
  if(navigator.userAgent.include("Macintosh")) {
      location.href = "dict://" + selection;
    }
});

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A strftime for Prototype


Object.extend(Date.prototype, {
  strftime: function(format) {
    var day = this.getUTCDay(), month = this.getUTCMonth();
    var hours = this.getUTCHours(), minutes = this.getUTCMinutes();
    function pad(num) { return num.toPaddedString(2); };

    return format.gsub(/\%([aAbBcdDHiImMpSwyY])/, function(part) {
      switch(part[1]) {
        case 'a': return $w("Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat")[day]; break;
        case 'A': return $w("Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday")[day]; break;
        case 'b': return $w("Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec")[month]; break;
        case 'B': return $w("January February March April May June July August September October November December")[month]; break;
        case 'c': return this.toString(); break;
        case 'd': return this.getUTCDate(); break;
        case 'D': return pad(this.getUTCDate()); break;
        case 'H': return pad(hours); break;
        case 'i': return (hours === 12 || hours === 0) ? 12 : (hours + 12) % 12; break;
        case 'I': return pad((hours === 12 || hours === 0) ? 12 : (hours + 12) % 12); break;
        case 'm': return pad(month + 1); break;
        case 'M': return pad(minutes); break;
        case 'p': return hours > 11 ? 'PM' : 'AM'; break;
        case 'S': return pad(this.getUTCSeconds()); break;
        case 'w': return day; break;
        case 'y': return pad(this.getUTCFullYear() % 100); break;
        case 'Y': return this.getUTCFullYear().toString(); break;
      }
    }.bind(this));
  }
});

UPDATE: Bugs fixed. Thanks Andrew and Stephen

Also, some of my old and new code has been posted on GitHub. You might find something useful.

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—I’m Justin Palmer and I approve this message.
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