Tag: utilities

There’s an app for that… [OSX Edition]

It has been a while since I have written about the applications I am using in my day-to-day workflow. With it being the Easter break, I thought this was an excellent opportunity to rectify that.

Today, I am going to focus on the apps that I am using on my MacBook Air and tomorrow I will share what I am using on my iPhone. I hope that some of you find this useful…

apps

Utilities…

Alfred 2 is an app launcher; clipboard; productivity toolbox, if you will, that helps me to exercise my inner control freak. Hazel helps with that too! Between the two apps I can automate searches, workflows, and keep folders tidy and up-to-date. One of the main ways that I use Alfred 2 is to search both the web and my MacBook via the Alfred interface. You can add very specific custom searches that you can action with keywords. I have custom searches for creative commons photos on Flickr, tags in Tumblr, the Mozilla Developer Network and my Delicious bookmarks as well as a host of others.

TextExpander took a while to get used to but now I think I would be lost without it. TE makes writing a lot less painful by allowing you to write in any app using shorthand which it expands into pre-defined full text. I have snippets for email signatures, file naming conventions and phrases/expressions that I use on a regular basis.

Dropbox – The obligatory file syncing app, which also helps me to back up the important stuff.

CloudApp is where I upload images and screen grabs for sharing… I stopped using all other image/upload services in my efforts to reduce the number of accounts that I use, as well as seeking to retain a greater level of ownership of my data.

Time Machine is how I keep my MacBook Air backed up.

Writing…

nvALT – You know I love this app, right!? I have tried many other writing/note-taking apps (TextEdit, Byword, SublimeText) but in the end I always come back to nvALT; writing everything (blog posts, emails, speaker notes) in Markdown. The app’s interface is clean, the CSS customisable and has a useful set of shortcuts that let you use it efficiently in full screen mode. Notes are stored as plain text and synced via a folder in Dropbox. This set up is both simple and liberating.

Google Docs (Drive) might be my most used app at the moment. I write and publish material for my M.Ed. with it; I work collaboratively with colleagues; I work collaboratively with my students… the list goes on. Anything that is of high importance, I periodically download and add to a folder in Dropbox. I am all about redundancies.

Coding…

Brackets is an open source HTML/CSS editor. It does exactly what it says on the tin and has auto pairing of HTML/CSS syntax built in, which is winning in my book.

*FileZilla is not strictly an app that I code with but it doesn’t really fit anywhere else. I make manual edits to my home page/blog and also upload/maintain HTML5 presentations, like this one.

Communicating/Connecting…

Mail – Using a couple of hacks to make GMail and Mail integrate more effectively, I have come to find Apple’s built in inbox perfectly usable.

Tweetbot is a bit pricey for some but I love the iOS version; using it on OSX is just a natural fit. Moreover, considering the value that Twitter has added to my career as an educator through the numerous connections I have made, it is worth every penny.

Google+ – My use of G+ is sporadic. Sometimes I remember to share a post but more often than not I tend to be using it for the Hangouts feature, connecting and chatting with fellow educators.

Organising…

Until Any.DO launches their web version, I have returned to using Wunderlist. It is the app that currently meets my needs the most. Any.DO is almost there but without a web/desktop app it falls a short.

Google Calendar – iCal is a terrible app to use both in terms of UI and UX. I’ve tried a few others, including QuickCal but I continually find myself entering items via the Google Calendar web interface. Until something better comes along, I will be sticking with it.

nvALT – Again!? Well of course… alongside writing blog posts and emails, I also keep snippets, lists and reference materials in nvALT. It is my everything bucket.

Evernote has helped me keep my M.Ed. notes, reading and data analysis organised. I use it for this sole purpose.

Browsing/Reading…

Google Chrome with a few tweaks (DuckDuckGo anyone?) has been my browser of choice for some time now. The UI/UX is cleaner/more user friendly than Firefox and it’s way faster than Safari. I try to keep Chrome as lean as possible, as such I only have four extensions installed. These are AdBlock as I don’t want to see advertisements while I’m browsing, Delicious Tools to bookmark content on the fly, Pocket, to save content for later and nvIt which is a neat little extension that allows me to grab text from a web page and open it as new note in nvALT.

Reeder is how I keep on top of RSS. It is not dead people and Reeder is due to be updated on OSX to include support for Feedbin which I have signed up to following the announcement from Google that they’re retiring Google Reader.

Pocket is where I put all that stuff I want to read/watch but simply do not have the time. I will get to it someday…

Listening/Watching/Editing…

iTunes is still my music app of choice. My library is housed in an external hard drive as I currently have 112GB of music!

Quicktime with Perian installed allows me to watch most video formats. However, my main use for Quicktime is screen capture, recording and editing video tutorials and lectures.

*YouTube – Not strictly an app but I use it a lot at the moment, uploading weekly video lectures for the open online course I am running.

Preview – Apart from viewing/reading PDF files, I use Preview to edit images. It is perfect for balancing levels, adjusting hue/saturation, as well as cropping and resizing images. When I need to do more robust editing I turn to Gimp. Running something like Photoshop is not really an option on my MacBook Air. Gimp is lighter and open source… which makes me ‘happy, happy, happy’!

And that, as they say, is that. If you would like to know more about how I use a specific app, either add a comment below or get in touch via Twitter. I’ll be back tomorrow to share the apps that I am using on my iPhone.

Enough

It is almost three months since I took delivery of a Refurbished 11″ MacBook Air and I can confidently state that it is the best laptop I have ever used – lightweight but robust, elegantly minimal, powerful and fast.

Taking inspiration from my favourite podcast, I’m going to discuss why the Air is more than enough Mac for me, focusing on how I’ve set it up; the apps I’ve installed; modifications I’ve made; and what it’s like using and writing on Apple’s smallest laptop.

Setting up

To begin with I took a leaf out of Patrick Rhone’s book and completed a fresh install, excluding the additional languages and the majority of iLife applications (only keeping iTunes to manage music and podcasts). This saved me almost 8GB’s of space on the SSD. My intention from the outset was to use the Air for a minimal set of purposes: writing, reading, browsing and communicating. As such, I have no need for a photo management application and certainly don’t need audio and video editing tools.

Third party apps and utilities

Listed below are the only applications that I have installed. The first eight were tools that I use regularly on my MacBook Pro and I knew that I would want them on the Air. The last five apps I’ve installed as I needed them or learned about them.

  • Skype – For those face-to-face conversations
  • Kindle – I have this on both my MacBooks and my Android phone, keeps my reading in sync
  • Pages – For typing up and formatting MA papers
  • DoublePane – A Menu Bar utility that allows you to split the screen between two apps
  • Reeder – Synced with Google Reader, I’ve only recently added this but I’m loving the minimal UI and range of built in services.

A little tweaking

As I’ve done with every Mac that I have owned, I made some modifications to some of the built in features.

  • Caps Lock – I turn caps lock off on my Macs, I never use it, and it’s more than a little annoying if you catch it by accident.
  • Expose and Spaces – Both turned off as I never use them, I’m a one app at a time guy.
  • Dashboard – Turned off, it’s a huge drain on CPU/RAM and again I never use it, here’s how I did it:
    • In terminal type the following command and hit return: defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
    • Then type the following and return: killall Dock
    • This will have turned off dashboard entirely, if you try to hit F12 to start the dashboard nothing will happen.
  • Dock – Hiding is turned on, positioned on the left and pinned to the bottom, here’s how:
    • First position the dock on the left. Then open terminal and type the following command and hit return: defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string end
    • Then type the following and return: killall Dock
    • The dock will now be pinned to the bottom left of the screen.
  • I also restyle the dock removing the 3D glass effect. I prefer the classic 2D version, here’s how I did it:
    • In terminal type the following command and hit return: defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
    • Then type the following and return: killall Dock
    • You should now see a classic 2D dock.

Desktop and Dock

  • Menu Bar – I remove any icons that I feel are not necessary, here’s what my Menu Bar looks like:

Menu Bar

  • Trash – Set to delete without confirmation.

What is it like living with 2GB RAM, 128GB HardDrive and an 11″ Screen?

A breeze! The Air cold boots in 12 seconds flat and apps open so quickly, if you blink you’ll miss them loading altogether. While I don’t do it very often, having multiple apps open has little impact on performance and switching between apps is instant. Because of my one app at a time approach the battery last as long as it says on the tin, regularly giving me four to five hours. What’s more the instant on/off feature ensures that…

In terms of storage, the one additional purchase I made when I got the MBA was a G-Drive Mini (500GB) external hard drive, this is where my iTunes Music folder is hosted as well as storage for Time Machine back-ups. As such the 128GB hard drive has barely been hit, as of writing this I still have 108.35GB available. I’m starting to think, based on my setup, that the 64GB model would have been enough.

The one feature that seems to have caused issues for some Mac users is the small screen size. However, I find the 11″ screen to be more than ample for my needs. As I use several apps (including nvALT) in full screen mode, the 11″ screen has little impact on the what I’m doing. It’s barely a compromise when considering the speed and portability that the Air offers.

And what about the writing?

The primary reason for purchasing the MacBook Air was to have a dedicated writing/blogging machine. I have been more than pleased with the way that the Air has served this purpose. Since taking delivery of it, I’ve written every blog post and my last MA paper on it. With a full size keyboard included I haven’t seen a single difference between typing on the Air and the MBP. The keys sit slightly lower but they make the same wonderful ‘clickity clack’ that I’ve come to love. Other MacBooks that I’ve owned have simply not been comfortable to use when rested on my lap but the Air is so light I can literally sit anywhere (sans-desk) and write comfortably. Combine that, the portability, and the focus that nvALT (in full screen mode) offers and it’s no surprise that I’m getting the writing done with far less friction.

The final word

The MacBook Air is light, minimal, perfect for writing, browsing, and communicating. It’s definitely more than enough!

Here’s a little eye candy… the bag is a Knomo MacBook Air Envelope.

Mac 1

Mac 2

Mac 3

Mac 4