It's no secret that I prefer using a Mac as my primary computing platform. I first switched to the Mac from a Windows PC in 2001 with the release of Mac OS X.
One of the smartest things Apple did with Mac OS X was to offer software development tools for free to anyone with a Mac. Apple therefore made it easy for anyone to create useful and innovative Mac applications. Until recently, Microsoft charged several hundred dollars to acquire a similar set of tools.
Here are some of my favorite applications:
SpamSieve: OS X's email client comes with spam filtering, but I have found C-Command's SpamSieve to be much more reliable.
SpamSieve learns what you consider spam as you mark messages. Since I started using SpamSieve a few years ago, I have gone from dealing with dozens of spam messages a day to two or three at most. SpamSieve also works with third-party e-mail clients such as Microsoft's Entourage and Mozilla's Thunderbird.
Things: I usually have several personal and professional projects going on at one time. Cultured Code's Things keeps track of these projects. Things allows me to create a project and then associate a variety of tasks that need to be completed in order to accomplish the project's goal. When I was plotting this column, I created a project in Things with tasks for researching, writing, editing and submitting the column.
Acorn: I used to be a fan of Photoshop for resizing images and other rudimentary alterations, but it always seemed too heavy for such a small amount of image editing. Flying Meat's Acorn image editor is 1/13 the price of Photoshop and accomplishes most of its basic editing options.
Delicious Library: I own a lot of books, DVDs and video games and have always wanted to keep them organized and searchable on my Mac. Until a few years ago, it seemed a chore. When Delicious Monster released Delicious Library, cataloging went from being a tedious process to enjoyable. The main part of the interface shows the covers of DVDs, books and games on a wooden shelf that can then be organized and filtered.
My favorite feature of Delicious Library is the ability to scan new titles in by holding the bar code up to my Mac's Webcam.
If you are looking to find other new Mac software, the best place is Apple's downloads section at www.apple.com/downloads.
Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.
Originally published in The Evansville Courier & Press
