carpeaqua

A little over a year ago I wrote up a post outlining my must have tools and utilities as a Mac and iOS developer. A lot can change in twelve months. We’ve gotten iOS 4, the iPhone 4, the iPad and now a sneak peek at Mac OS X Lion. As noted Windows developer Scott Hanselman does every year, I’ll try to make an update to my tools list a yearly occurrence. I’ll outline new products to the list as I go by marking them in bold.

Hardware

I am still using the same 15” unibody MacBook Pro as I was last year as my primary machine. I’ve maxed out the machine at 4GB of RAM¹ and have a 240 GB OWC SSD inside. My laptop was feeling sluggish until I put the SSD in. Now the only reason I feel the need to upgrade is to get more RAM or longer battery life.

I like having a single machine since it eliminates the need to sync data between two or more machines, but I can’t help but be jealous of those with an 8-core Mac Pro when it comes time for me to do large compiles, heavy audio production work or encoding video.

In terms of accessories and upgrades to the machine:

• When I’m at home I have my laptop connected to a 24” Apple LED display. I keep the laptop running closed lid with a Bookarc stand.

• I use a wired Apple Keyboard. I loathe loud keyboards and find the tiny laptop-style keys to be pleasing and allowing me to type much quicker.

• I use a Logitech Performance Mouse MX, which is the latest version of the company’s high end mouse. I like giant Logitech mice because I can bind the extra buttons to Expose and Dashboard actions. It is my favorite mouse and a great upgrade over the MX Revolution I had prior. The only caveat is the battery life feels like it’s been cut in half.

• I have a 48GB Wintec SSD in my ExpressCard slot. I keep a copy of Mac OS X Leopard on it, though I am planning to update it to Lion betas when they become available.

• Time Machine backups are handled by a 1TB Western Digital MyBook connected via Firewire 800. It’s fairly quiet is one of the few external drives I’ve found that doesn’t have a horrific design.

• I am a completely paperless office thanks to my Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M. I usually scan all my receipts, bills and invoices once a month and then run them through OCR so I have a searchable archive on my Mac.

Software

I am really hard on software. This is for a variety of reasons, but I think it is because I build it myself. I have always envisioned that directors and actors can sometimes lose focus during a movie as they judge the decisions others made in their productions. I feel like I do the same thing with software.

I loathe poor and/or non-native user interfaces and cherish simple tools. These are applications I constantly rely on.

The Essential Power User 5

• Acorn - Acorn is everything Photoshop used to be before Adobe lost its focus and started building bloated software. I still have a copy of Photoshop CS5, but it’s used sparingly since Acorn can handle almost everything I want.

• BBEdit - I use BBEdit for everything from editing scripts to writing my weekly newspaper column. It is an indispensable tool that can be adapted for so many use cases.

• SpamSieve - I am not sure if Apple has improved its junk filtering in Mail.app in subsequent releases because SpamSieve has been a staple on my Mac since either Jaguar or Panther. I don’t anticipate that changing anytime soon.

• TextExpander - If you do any sort of customer support, TextExpander is a must have. I have snippets created for each of my products’s most frequently asked questions as well as common troubleshooting steps. What sets TextExpander apart, however, is the AppleScript support, which I use for a variety of different text-related tasks as well as expanding unique product tags to my email signature.

• The Unarchiver - A file extraction utility is somewhat of an unsung hero, but when you need it, it’s good to have a utility that is robust and can fit almost any bill. The Unarchiver does that and does it well.

Developer Tools

• Xcode Suite - Rather than listing Xcode, Interface Builder, Instruments, etc as individual items, I’ll just state that Apple builds an excellent set of developer tools. I am looking forward to switching to Xcode 4 full time next year.

• Accessorizer - Select ivars, press a few keys. @properties declared. The amount of typing it saves makes it worth every penny.

• Appfigures - Manually fetching iTunes sales reports is tedious. Appfigures is a low cost Web services that will import your reports and send you a daily sales email. You can also do a lot of other analysis on you sales to find trends, but I generally use it for the daily email.

• Base - Elements has a SQLite database behind it. I’m constantly inspecting the database contents using this application. It’s lightweight and easy to use.

• Changes - I was never a fan of FileMerge, but have found Changes to be vital to my workflow when running diffs on my Git commits.

• Coda - I manage the Second Gear site using Panic’s excellent Web development IDE.

• CodePilot - Xcode 3’s project navigation leaves much to be desired. CodePilot improves it. Check out the video on their site to get a feel for its power.

• Cornerstone - For those few times a year I need to work with Subversion, Cornerstone is the best desktop client I’ve found for it.

• Feeder - I use Feeder to update the IRQ Conflict podcast as well as several different Sparkle AppCast feeds. It’s one of the best user experiences I’ve found on the Mac.

• HTTP Client - If you’re working with Web services and want to test out REST queries, this is a must have.

• iPhone Backup Extractor - When doing iPhone support, it is sometimes beneficial to get a copy of the user’s data and preferences. Using this application, it’s fairly easy for the user to handle on their end.

• LangSwitch - If your Mac application supports multiple languages, LangSwitch makes it ridiculously easy to relaunch the app in a specific language rather than having to adjust your language preferences in System Preferences.

• Mercurial - All of the Second Gear code is stored on Kiln, the Mercurial hosting service provided by Fog Creek. I like Mercurial because the user interface is simple and sane. I like Kiln because it integrates with my FogBugz installation.

• MindNode Pro - I’m a recent convert to mind mapping and use it to sketch out software releases, blog posts and presentations rather than OmniOutliner these days. This is the best app I’ve found on the Mac.

• Querious - If you need to connect to local or remote MySQL databases, this is a great application to do so.

• Sdef Editor - If you are wanting to add AppleScript support to your Mac product, I’ve found Sdef Editor to be the easiest way to generate the scripting definition file.

• Tickets - As I mentioned above, I use FogBugz for bug tracking. Tickets is a great desktop client for FogBugz that covers about 80% of my use cases for FogBugz. The other 20% are currently limited by their API. Either way, it’s quality software.

• xScope - I use xScope to detect colors on various UI elements, check alignment of controls and to measure the distance between objects. If you are meticulous about your UI, it’s a great utility.

User Tools

• 1Password - One of the first tools I install. It’s new Dropbox over-the-air syncing makes using it on my iPhone, iPad and Windows even easier.

• Backblaze - While I primarily rely on Time Machine for my backups, I also subscribe to Backblaze to offload the contents of my hard drive to the Internet.

• Cloud - Whenever I want to share a screenshot over iChat, I don’t paste them into the chat window because despite being in the future, file transfers over AIM are still unreliable. Instead, I send them to Cloud and then paste the URL into the chat window.

• Dropbox - What does a 1 computer guy need with a syncing application like Dropbox? Maybe you’ve heard of Elements and the many other great iPhone apps that sync data using Dropbox?

• FastScripts - The default scripting menu in OS X is good enough for basic scripters, but I’ve found FastScript’s enhancements most beneficial: mainly the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts to scripts in certain instances.

• GlimmerBlocker - Most ad blocking software works as a browser plugin. Glimmer Blocker is a background service on your Mac that proxies your traffic. The benefit is it works in all browsers and doesn’t compromise Safari’s stability.

• Hibari - I don’t use a desktop client for my personal account, but I need to keep track of the @secondgear account through the day. I like how the app integrates search queries right into the Timeline so I can see how people are responding to my products.

• Launchbar - I use Launchbar primarily as an app launcher, but I also am a big fan of version 5’s clipboard history feature.

• LittleSnapper - LittleSnapper is an application I didn’t know I needed until I had it. I am constantly using it to take screenshots of Mac and Web user interfaces for future inspiration.

• MarsEdit - I write all of my blog posts in MarsEdit. There are no serious alternatives.

• RCDefaultApp - RCDefaultApp is one of those applications that has been on my Mac for so long, I take it for granted. For those times when you want to force a file extension to open in a specific application, it’s great.

• OmniFocus - I used to be a Things user, but their lack of over-the-air syncing and lackluster customer support experience made me shift back to OmniFocus.

• PDFpenPro - Preview is a fine PDF viewer, but if you need to sign contracts, make edits to PDFs or create new forms, PDFpenPro is top notch. Bonus: it’s a lot cheaper than Adobe Acrobat.

Audio Production

Outside of doing software development, I talk about software development and technology in general with my Windows development buddy, Mikel Berger on IRQ Conflict. These are the tools used to produce the show:

• Blue Blubird - I upgraded my microphone to an XLR a few weeks ago. Choosing a microphone is a personal thing, but this one had the right amount of audio quality and style for me.

• Icicle - I’m still not ready to commit to putting a mixing board on my desk, so I am using this XLR to USB adapter also from Blue to connect to my Mac. I’ve noticed no real downsides to it other than it sometimes loses connection with the USB hub I have it plugged into. Just make sure it shows up as an input source before recording and your’e good to go.

• Adobe Audition 3 (Windows) - I actually prefer to use Adobe Audition in Windows 7 when I have to do any sort of recording or editing because the workflow is far superior to anything that is on the Mac. A Mac version is in the works and I’ll be their first customer.

• Skype - Mikel and I use Skype to record IRQ Conflict.

• Call Recorder - Call Recorder is the least hassle for recording the audio of a Skype conversation.

• AudialHub - Like VisualHub, you’ll have to pry AudialHub from my me. It’s the best for converting between a variety of different audio formats.

• Wiretap Studio - WireTap is indispensable for extracting audio from Safari or any other Mac application.