Mac OSX Applications I couldn't live without | Hacker News Reader

Mac OSX Applications I couldn't live without

thurn.ca

29 pointsthurn44 comments

Ok, I'll bite. What do people actually use dropbox for? All of my employer's code is in SVN, and personal code on Github. All of my email and my calendar is on Gmail. All my photos are on Facebook. All of my documents are in Google Apps. My writing is on my blog. My TODO list is in Workflowy.

If my computer dies (which it has recently) all of my stuff is covered. Is there some area of content creation that I am just missing altogether? I guess I don't back up my photoshop or audio work I do occasionally on dropbox, but that's probably not it.

I use it for my documents. Not everything can be google docs. I just finished up my taxes online, and printed the forms/reports as pdfs, which I saved into my ~/Documents folder, which is symlinked to dropbox.

Many of us just want a folder that syncs.

Remember, not everyone is a hacker. For my non geek friends, Dropbox is magic. It just works.

I could imagine the world 1000000 times better if everyone can fire up a shell and do something with that. Sadly it's not the case.

Yeah my point here wasn't that I don't understand how Dropbox is useful in general, it's just that this article is by a hacker and he says Dropbox is the "best piece of software written in the last 5 years" and I seem to survive without using it whatsoever.

Being able to send files to people makes sense, but 9 times out of 10 e-mail does the job there just fine. I'm still not getting it, I guess :) Maybe my life is just too boring.

OK, I'll give you a great use of Dropbox for hackers: Let's say you use Mercurial instead of Subversion. If you have your Mercurial project in Dropbox, you have at your disposal the full source control functionality provided by Mercurial and automatic backups of your mercurial repository. Get it now?

I work inside dropbox. Means I can leave my desk and pick my air and go and work somewhere else without thinking about it and without relying on a network connection. As a special bonus there is an extra level of backup (on top of the mercurial repositories, the jungle disk and my time machine - I'm kind of paranoid about backups. However when I had a hard disk failure a few months ago on my main disk on my main machine I barely even noticed)

I can just pass things over to my colleagues by shoving them in a folder. For project documentation where ever I am I have the latest copies.

Access via my phone means I can usually pick up things I have forgotten easily as well.

I do have almost all the rest of my data in the cloud - but for stuff that is local Dropbox is the next best thing

Sharing files, and generally collaborating, with non-programmers.

I also use it as a secondary backup for particularly important files (in addition to my physical backups)- it's replaced the "email myself a copy of the important presentation" process.

i use it to sync catpics to my phone for mms'ing to girls. that's it. i'm serious.

some people use it to sync their 1password database.

Dozens of things:

If I stick PDFs on it, I can view it on all my computers and devices. This holds for both contracts and ebooks.

If I stick pictures in the public directory, I can quickly show them to people

If I stick zip files in the public directory, it's faster than uploading to an SSH site

If do photoshop/fireworks/balsamiq mockups work out of dropbox, it's on all the computers, and can be pulled up on an iPad in a customer location.

If I stick the scanner on one computer with the output directory in dropbox, I can connect the scanner to one of the desktops, then have it automagically copy over to my mac laptop when done.

I much prefer Divvy (http://mizage.com/divvy/) over SizeUp for window management.

Just curious - why? SizeUp isn't as customizable as Divvy, but it does significantly cut down on the number of key strokes required to resize windows.

Divvy lets you create custom sizes. Once you map those sizes to a single key, it's very fast.

My alternatives:

  Chrome + Vimium instead of Firefox + Pentadactyl
  MacVim instead of Aquamacs
  LaunchBar (or Alfred which is free) instead of Quicksilver
  Divvy instead of SizeUp

I recently discovered Hyperdock (http://hyperdock.bahoom.de/). It basically turns OSX into Windows7. Very awesome!

this has to be a first. a windows UI feature worthy of ripping off (for OSX). maybe I'm being too hard on windows.

There's an application called Cinch that gives Mac the Win7 window snap behavior--dragging to left or right edge expands window to fill that half of screen, and to top makes it full screen: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cinch/id412529613?mt=12

What is interesting is that it is a paid app, $6.99, and is currently at #15 on the top grossing apps (it was at #11 last week).

Apparently, there is a market for taking the good ideas from Win7 and adding them to the Mac.

I can't rave enough about Hyperdock; this is something that every OS should support out of the box. Kudos to Win7 on besting Mac on something like this

Great to see KeyRemap4MacBook. When I first switched to Mac from Windows, little things such as "Home" and "End" not working the same way were quite annoying. KeyRemap4MacBook allows you to reconfigure everything.

One very nice feature is the ability to configure different keyboard profiles depending on your setup. I maintain separate desktop and laptop configs). Thus, when I dock my MBP to an external monitor and keyboard (Microsoft Ergo Keyboard), I switch to the desktop setup that remaps the Left-Alt key to Cmd and the Windows key to Option among others. When switching to laptop mode, I also remap the right-option key to function as a forward delete (which normally requires two keys on the MBP).

MacTelnet is an alternative terminal to iTerm 2 that supports the features you like (256 colors and full screen), and has a lot of other useful things. But I also developed MacTelnet, so I'm biased. :)

Alfred makes QuickSilver run for its hype. It may not be as customizable as QuickSilver but it does the job very well and a lot nicer than QuickSilver.

JiTouch is also a vastly under-appreciated mouse gesture enabler. http://www.jitouch.com

Try LaunchBar instead of Quicksilver. It's not free, but is worth every penny. It's like Quicksilver, except it's actually quick.

I used to use Quicksilver 3 years ago when Spotlight was unbearably slow on Mac OS. So what is the reason people use things like Quicksilver today? I personally find Spotlight to be everything I need. I can quickly open any application or system preference within seconds, all from the keyboard with Spotlight.

Some examples:

- Open file with, select one or a bunch of files and specify the app to open it with

- Move multiple files to another location

- Clipboard history

- Keyboard triggers for custom actions (open all the apps and files I need for a certain project)

- Custom web searches (I have one setup to search "site:news.ycombinator.com + search term")

Spotlight still takes a few seconds, rather often, to open up and receive keyboard input. I HATE waiting a few seconds for something that's a part of my thought process. When I think "Open chrome" and I move my fingers into the magic incantation needed to make that happen, it should be opening, now, RIGHT THIS FUCKING MOMENT. Not three seconds later.

I don't care if it's fast enough most of the time. It needs to be fast enough every single time.

Launchbar is always there within 200ms, no matter what my computer is chugging on at the moment. That's well worth the 20 bucks.

I've found spotlight to be reliably instant since moving to SSD. That might explain the difference in experiences here.

(I also don't index docs -- just apps and prefs.)

Even on a SSD spotlight can be slow if you have not turned off doc indexing. I tend to use LaunchBar and Spotlight as a combination team for specific purposes: LaunchBar to get apps fired up quickly and Spotlight to do search within documents and as a general indexer.

I replaced Quicksilver with Alfred[1]. I think its on the mac store, too.

[1]: http://www.alfredapp.com/

I've switched to using Alfred, and I'll never go back. Bought the powerpack as well for those handy extra features. It's fast as heck, and has a lot of little niceties, but while I never liked LaunchBar, Alfred is just fantastic.

It's also available from the Mac app store, or you can grab it from the website (http://www.alfredapp.com/). Highly recommended.

I was also a big fan of remapping capslock to control. Fortunately, in OSX 10.5+, it became a configurable option in the keyboard prefpane. Thanks for posting your list! I'm looking forward to giving Lyx a try.

Skitch (http://skitch.com/) is my favorite Mac app in terms of usability. Of course, I need simple screen capture software (not everybody does).

I prefer CloudApp (http://getcloudapp.com). There's almost no UI it at all: it just captures OS X screenshots and uploads them.

I gave Skitch three minutes and gave up. Its UI is far too complicated for what it does.

I use an app called Screenshots on the appstore: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/screenshots/id402728913?mt=12

Less simple than Shift-Command-3/4?

I use Terminal.app + Visor, but I'll give iTerm2 a try after reading this.

I recently switched to iTerm2 from Terminal.app. The main reason for switching for me was that iTerm2 has great full-screen support. Just hit Cmd-Enter and you're immediately greeted with a full-screen terminal.

>SizeUp is not free, but it's only $13 and worth every cent. It adds keyboard shortcuts to OSX to move windows around.

Only? Compiz has a plugin for this and it's baked into Windows. I couldn't imagine paying $13 for that feature. Also, not sure why Chrome got called out when it has similar extensions to Pentadactyl. (Probably the same misconceptions that have people thinking that ABP can't block downloads in Chrome. [It can and has been able to for nearly 7 months])

Given the amount of work it would take to write yourself, I can't imaging 13$ being a bad deal.

If you could write it in less than 13$ worth of time, you're either an incredibly brilliant hacker, or seriously undervaluing your time's worth.

ShiftIt (https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt) is a capable, open-source alternative to SizeUp and Divvy.

Love ShiftIt. Nice, simple, and if you disable the menubar icon, completely out of the way.

(Use it at least 10x a day just for putting any two windows side-by-side. Seriously, changed my Mac OS X life).

ShiftIt is awesome, it just needs support for multiple monitors.

I agree that Dropbox is ...hmm... "MARVELOUS". Please tip them a goldspot at Spottiness.com. It's a site where the real perception of things emerges through anonymous messages and opinions.

Articles like these confuse me. Who is the audience, tiny children?

You use Firefox. Everyone does. You use Dropbox. Everyone does. You don't like Terminal or want some features that other people have.

Perhaps we need to elevate our discourse. Move on at some point?

At the same time, I just posted about my favorite iPhone apps, so it's confusing.

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