Daniel Pietzsch

Essential Mac third-party software

I recently got a new MacBook Air at work.
Thanks to the increasing number of tools like iCloud, Dropbox and GitHub I can store and backup more and more of my digital stuff online. This makes setting up a new Mac from scratch pretty effortless. And so I did.

I thought it would be interesting to write down what third-party apps are essential for me to get work done. Here’s the list:

• Dropbox
  Apart from music, photos and code, I store all my documents here. This also includes my bash profile and gitconfig dotfiles to set up the respective tools.

• TextMate
  Still my editor of choice.

• Git
  For source control management. I definitely need to access my work and personal code repositories.

• Things
  Despite missing cloud-sync, it’s still the only to-do app I want to use.

• Skype
  For chat and calls.

• Alfred
  Quick access to anything on your Mac and the web.

• Jumpcut
  To be able to access my clipboard history.

• Divvy
  The best window management software.

• Rdio
  On-demand music to listen to throughout the day. It’s absolutely fantastic.

• 1Password
  My password manager of choice. Great for storing other sensitive data, too.

• Skitch
  For taking and annotating screenshots.

• MenuMeters
  Drives me crazy when I can’t monitor how my Mac is performing.

• Homebrew
  The easiest way to install UNIX tools.

• rbenv and ruby-build
  For installing and running different versions of Ruby.

• Rubygems
  Essential when programming with Ruby and Rails.

• Chrome
  Mostly to access Flash content without having to install Flash Player for Safari.

I will install more software as time goes on, but since I didn’t need to install them so far, I wouldn’t call them essential.