Must-have OS X apps for developers and designers | Hacker News Reader

Must-have OS X apps for developers and designers

thetechblock.com

42 pointsabdophoto56 comments

> Brightness Slider for reducing screen brightness.

I was going to write a little rant about how this should be possible without 3rd party software. Researching a bit, I found that Apple has restored the ⌥+⇧ modifier for volume as well as for brightness (if that was even there before).

So no need to install this; adjust brightness with ⌥+⇧+☼ instead!

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/19146/is-fine-volum...

Edit: Trying it out, it seems the actual brightness level has the same minimum as before, even when the setting is at 1/4 of a square. It only works for values higher than one square. :(

I think this is actually a restriction of their current backlight controller. As far as I know the apps that reduce brightness below one square actually do it by placing a black element over the entire screen and adjusting its transparency.

The lowest brightness you can achieve by the standard Mac controls is equal to the halfway mark of this brightness app. So this app adds a huge level of control between that lowest setting and pure black.

I'm often unsatisfied with the lowest brightness setting when in a dark room, and this solves that perfectly. I just downlaoded it right now and tried it out and it works perfectly. I'd recommend you do the same as it's free before making judgment on it.

Edit: I just saw your edit, and I think you have it incorrect. Try clicking the brightness app menu bar icon, and then use your keyboard brightness keys to adjust, and you'll see at the lowest setting, it goes to the halfway mark.

You're missing Alfred, an awesome application launcher that works on top of Spotlight: http://www.alfredapp.com/ Definitely worth giving it a chance.

Mandatory plugs for Alfred's cousins, LaunchBar and QuickSilver. Each has strengths and weaknesses; the only poor choice is to not use any of the three. :)

http://obdev.at/products/launchbar

http://qsapp.com/

How does it compare to Quicksilver?

> Tower for pushing code to GitHub. Makes Git simple. Say goodbye to the command line.

http://wheningit.tumblr.com/post/32917749004/when-someone-sa...

Not sure why you'd spend $60 or whatever Tower is when SourceTree is free anyway. I'm not sure that Tower does a single thing that SourceTree doesn't.

I love SourceTree. I've tried several other guis, only one I keep using.

I have both Tower & SourceTree but I use the command line most of the time. The only time I use one of those tools is when I have to do something complex like cherry-pick or resolving conflicts.

Sometimes is not only about "what" but also about "how".

zsh + oh-my-zsh. Better than any GUI.

But thus guy lost me when he said he "wasn't any good at the Terminal". And using Spotlight over Alfred? Launchpad? who uses Launchpad?

Crazy.

Allow me to point you to prezto https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto, which is a lightweight version of oh-my-zsh. I couldn't stand waiting 10+ seconds to open a new prompt...

Bless you, though this does mean I'm going to have to learn a whole new set of shortcuts.

Excellent, now I don't suppose you know of a stripped down Janus?

http://github.com/astrails/dotvim

Emacs.

Alfred is using Spotlight under the hood. The searching is basically no better. I prefer Quicksilver which has a much richer search capability.

Alfred 2 has some nice workflow features though, I've been experimenting with it.

Or use Gitx

I don't know about "hipster", but I genuinely feel sorry for "developers" that can't take a few hours to learn the basics of the terminal. I can't imagine having to use a GUI to do my development. (IDE, or SCM, or otherwise, even my documentation is all commandline via godoc)

And I feel sorry for "developers" who think that real "developers" only use the terminal.

I can use git from the terminal. And hate it with a passion. I personally can't imagine doing real development without the efficiency of a GUI to assist.

But I totally understand that other people have the opposite opinion, and respect that. Everyone's mind works in different ways. But just because you like the command line, doesn't mean other people can't find it more efficient to use a GUI.

When you're picking out specific lines to commit, or selecting certain files out of a batch, or reading through a long diff, or doing any number of things that requires random access, GUI beats CLI by a long shot. Of course, GUI doesn't work so well when you need to do some of the more fiddly stuff. Which is why it's good to use both. :)

That's what

    $ gitk

is for.

Perhaps, but it's also one of the ugliest applications known to man! Personally, I tend to use GitX when I'm working on small projects, but Tower really is a great tool.

It's not that bad, just took a screenshot of bootstrap repo:

http://imgur.com/zpFpiFL

I mean we're talking about git here, does it need to have iPhoto like polish? I like SourceTree if I really need to spend time in a GUI, but gitk is great for just quick visual overview. I tried a demo of Tower a while back but it just felt like it was getting in the way.

> does it need to have iPhoto like polish?

i actually prefer my apps to look good - its a psychological thing. Using a good looking app makes you happier, and thus more productive.

Just to add to other comment, I had a look at GitX, looks like a pretty neat application, thanks for mentioning it.

Just FYI, there are a few branches that are better featured, but I don't remember their names right now. I recommend you seek them out instead of the plain GitX.

You do not let me zoom your page on my iPad and you limit the font-size to really small. You limit page width to the same tight column when I change to landscape.

Why anger your readership?

I will not read your stinking blog.

xScope (http://iconfactory.com/software/xscope) is a very useful tool for designing layouts.

ClipMenu is a nice free clipboard manager.

http://www.clipmenu.com/

Using your DSLR as a Webcam is a great way to destroy the sensor.

I'm interested in knowing why this is the case. Can you point me to any resources with the technical reason why this happens?

I second this. Doing this has ruined my friends DSLR. Not sure the technical reasons behind this, but it does indeed have consequencing effects.

I've read about this a bit for mods on DSLRs for taking older Canon's and allowing them to record video. If the DSLR isn't designed for recording video the sensor isn't designed for continuous light exposure which will heat up an ruin the sensor. I don't know the differences but I'd imagine using one of the newer DSLRs that have video recording capability as a webcam would be fine.

I wrote a similar post a while ago, recommended for developers: http://damir.me/posts/essential-tools-and-apps-for-mac

I'm not familiar with AppTrap, but I use Hazel for that and a lot more. In addition to moving associated files to the trash when you move an app to the trash, it also lets you create your own rules for things like sorting & color coding downloads, removing backups older than a particular age, and automatically deleting trashed files over a certain size or that were sitting in the trash for a certain time.

I know it's a list of desktop apps, but I just recently launched a quick reference (iPhone) app for iOS devs: http://www.idev101.com/app/

The color picker is my personal favorite. It'll convert between hex colors, RGB and HSB. Plus it shows the UIColor code for whatever color you're previewing.

Another really useful app is Spectacle, for keyboard shortcuts to dock an application the left or right half of the screen (like winkey+left and winkey+right on windows 7/8).

http://spectacleapp.com/

Slate is my preferred way of managing windows on OSX.

https://github.com/jigish/slate

Chiming in to plug SizeUp for this, wouldn't be able to live without it:

http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/

Also this: http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/

I really like http://sizewellplugin.com/ for this same thing

I am using BetterTouchTool for that.

My vote goes to Soulver (http://www.acqualia.com/soulver/), which is basically the best calculator app ever. Useful for so many things, from figuring out algorithms to doing taxes.

Thanks for the link, they got me at "The trial is smart, and will only end after 10 days on which you have actually used Soulver."

Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

No emacs or vim? Ouch...

He did mention Sublime Text 2, which does have this: http://www.sublimetext.com/docs/2/vintage.html

As for all the other additional things that emacs / vim does, they're not necessary to his workflow - he was just sharing what works for him.

As a side note, he also seemed to only be recommending bundle-style Mac OS X native .app applications. True, there's MacVim ( https://code.google.com/p/macvim/ ), but the learning curve is still very steep in comparison to Sublime Text 2.

Vintage mode is useless without: https://github.com/SublimeText/VintageEx

I like CodeRunner for testing snippets of code http://krillapps.com

Edit with Sublime, then refresh page? I think that's "Web developer & designer".

I'm not sure what you're implying with this comment. Are you saying non-designers don't refresh pages?

No, I'm not.

totalfinder

Or Path Finder.

I guess his dislike for Terminal means no mention of iTerm2, and as a knock-on that there's no mention of homebrew.

I would be sad on any OS w/o some kind of multiple clipboards, on OSX I am pretty happy with ClipMenu, though it doesn't seem to be getting developed much these days.

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