Switching continues - OS X software

One of the joys of switching is that it’s given me the perfect excuse to go out and start ratching through the internet for new software. When I bought the Powerbook, I decided that I was going to spend as little as possible on replacing software - partly for budgetary reasons, and partly because there seemed to be so much insanely cool free/shareware for OS X that paying commercial rates for bug-ridden bloatware was pointless. To be honest, I hadn’t expected that to be too successful, mainly because I’ve become used to packages like Dreamweaver and Photoshop and Office and the like. In fact, so far I’ve been proved wrong.

So here’s a few pointers for OS X resources for the newly-switched (i.e. me). Firstly a couple of meta-directories. Mac Update is a massive list of Mac software with an RSS feed of updates - and there’s at least two dozen a day. You can search by keyword and title and so on, and it lists freeware, shareware and commercial packages with links to downloads and vendor sites. OS X Apps is similar but not quite as funky - but it also lists scripts and java apps and so on.

Then specific software. This post comes courtesy of Ecto, which is the best offline blog client I’ve seen so far. They’re not exactly uncommon, but Ecto has a few extras which make all the difference - for example, the posting preview window pulls down the CSS from your Moveable Type blog so that it’s about as WYSIWYG as I’ve ever seen a posting preview window. You can configure it to force you to set a summary and category, which is something I’m forever forgetting to do, and there’s an excellent upload option, which allows you to drag and drop images, create thumbnails and convert images on the fly. Worth buying at £12.27.

I decided not to bother with AppleWorks or MS Office (at least initially) so I went for OpenOffice. It’s a bit intimidating at first - the main site is seemingly designed to frighten off all but the hardened Unix geeks, but once you browse behind the scary stuff it’s a straight-forward download and install. It runs under the X11 windowing system, so it’s not overly fast to start up, but once it’s up and running it’s fine. Unfortunately the interface hasn’t been updated for Aqua which means it looks a bit strange next to everything else, but it’s considerably faster and more stable than the MS Office equivalent. It’s a shame that it’s got such a consumer-unfriendly site, because once you’ve got it installed it gives MS Office real competition. I haven’t come across much functionality that it hasn’t got, leaving aside the bloatware bits that get tacked onto Office in the name of upgrades.

Chronosync is shaping up as a rather good backup utility - the demo version is a bit crippled, as it only allows 500 files to be synched at a time; it would have made more sense to me to have an unlimited but timebombed version as a demo. But it’s got what seems to be a pretty powerful set of rules-based options that you can apply, so it might be the answer to my backup paranoia.

CocoaMySQL is the best SQL client I’ve found so far - similar to SQLYog for PC, but in a nice Aqua-style interface (naturally And Transmit is a pretty functional FTP client, although I’m not entirely sure about software from a website with a URL like www.panic.com…

Still to find - a Dreamweaver equivalent, and comprehensible instructions for the GIMP (which holds the current title of Best Software Package Name as far as I’m concerned.) Other bits I could do with replacing are an Endnote-equivalent - BibDesk looks promising, especially the RSS bits. Other than that, a printer that works, a USB trackball and tablet to save my wrists from the ravages of RSI, and at this rate, an iPod.

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