Jim Willis

Essential Mac Apps – 2019 edition

This week I’ve been building up my new iMac from a base-install of Mojave. I have a text file that lists all of the apps that I had installed on my dead MacBook Pro (and, good backups, thankfully), but instead of just reinstalling all of the apps I had, in the spirit of Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism, I’m just installing the apps that are essential to my intentional use. We will see how this goes!

Here’s what I’ve got so far as apps that are absolutely essential for me:

  • Things – best todo list manager ever. Installed on and syncs with all of my iOS devices.
  • DayOne – best journal application ever. Installed on and syncs with all of my iOS devices.
  • Reeder – my RSS Reader of choice. Linked to a Feedly account (but only because that was the free/easy migration path from Google’s RSS days)
  • Byword – my Markdown/editor for the past year or so. I use this on the desktop and iA Writer on my iOS devices. Both editors read from the same iCloud folders.
  • Spark – returning to this email client because I can never get the default Mail.app to mirror what is going on in my Google Inbox in any relevant, useful way. My fault probably, but I’m tried of futzing with it and Spark, generally, just works.
  • MarsEdit – where I write/edit weblog stuff. Though, notably, my first drafts usually go in Byword or iA Writer depending on what device I’m working on.
  • Pixlemator – been using this forever. you never know when you need some layer-based image manipulation.
  • TextMate – No idea why/how this ended up as my programming tool of choice but I can not remember ever not using it. Always been very happy with its syntax highlighting regardless of what language I’m in.

When I’m remotely working for Princeton University Press:

  • MS Office 365 (Mac versions, including Outlook for mail)
  • Teams, thankfully, runs on my iOS devices, so I don’t really ever have to spend too much time in Windows, but when I do there’s . . .
  • Parallels with . . .
  • SQL Server Management Studio because I need a SQL client.

Sort-of essential/system utilities stuff that I’ve installed in addition to my “essential” apps:

  • Spotify
  • Backblaze (offsite backup for all the Macs in my house)
  • iStat Menus (nerdy, probably unnecessary)
  • Mosaic (nerdy, necessary)
  • SuperDuper (for my local backups. Easiest most-bulletproof backups ever)
  • Alfred (new to me but needed text expansion and a better Spotify interface, so. . . ) and the Alfred Spotify Mini Player
  • Linen background from Initial Charge

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