Drinkable Chicken

Now that I have used Mac OS X professionally (and on a modern machine :-) for over a year, let’s take a look at the applications I use on a daily basis (or almost).

☯ Carbon Emacs: The OS X version of Emacs that gives me the least hassle. (Your mileage may vary; there are those who like Aquamacs, for example… maybe someday I’ll give it another try and see what’s new.)

☯ MacVim: I use this rather than the newer version, mostly because it has a “drawer” which I like better than tabs.

☯ TextMate is useful as well.

(So yeah, I use these three editors and more… no Emacs-vs-Vim wars here. Emacs is my editor of choice for Scheme (and hopefully it supports Clojure as well). OCaml, on the other hand, seems to like Vim more. For Python editing, I tend to use all three, depending on my mood and the type of project. :-)

☯ Adium seems to be the best for instant messaging. I have MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, AIM, Google Talk, and Facebook accounts, and it supports them all, so I don’t have to juggle multiple messenger clients.

☯ Skype: The Mac client is a bit lacking, but it’s the only game in town, as far as I’m aware.

☯ Thunderbird: Not spectacular, but it does the job. (But if you know of a newsreader (Usenet news, not RSS) that supports easy extraction of yEnc files and the like, please drop me a note.)

☯ Firefox: Runs on OS X with few problems nowadays. In some cases, I found that Safari is faster, which is especially noticeable on slower machines. (Like a G3… ^_^’)

☯ Tomato: BitTorrent client. Maybe not the one with the most features, but it works for me.

☯ Corel Painter IX: Great to use with my new Bamboo Fun. ^_^

☯ aMule: eMule/eDonkey client that has a Mac version as well. Doesn’t look great on the Mac, but it serves its purpose.

☯ Chmox: CHM file reader. I have quite a few e-books in this format, and it’s nice to be able to read them on the Mac.

☯ Colloquy: Decent IRC client. Great for lurking in #clojure. ;-)

☯ Google Notifier: No more overlooked emails.

☯ Nocturne: Useful for hacking in the dark. :-)

☯ UnRarX: Extract RAR files. This compression format is not as common on the Mac as it is (was?) in the Windows world, but it *is* used, and also helps to extract old DOS games and such (to run them in DOSBox, perhaps).

☯ ViewIt: Picture viewer, useful if you have truckloads of manga and comics stored on CD.

☯ VLC: Video and MP3 player… still flaky, but often better than iTunes or QuickTime. Supports a fairly large number of formats.

Honorable mention:

☯ Shiira: Interesting new browser concept. At this point, there’s no real reason to use it over e.g. Safari or Firefox, but if you want something different, this may be worth checking out. Personally, I like the “tab” bar that shows little thumbnails of open pages.

Anyway, these are just the apps that see a lot of play at the moment. Feel free to post your recommendations or suggestions in the comments. :-)