Daniel Lemire's blog

, 1 min read

My favorite MacOS software so far

I generate such as list on a regular basis, but I think it is still useful to rehash it. Here is the the software I use on MacOS currently.

  • Fink, mostly for gnuplot, subversion and tetext.
  • Python. My favorite language.
  • Firefox. Firefox is good enough, but not great. Some applets do not work on Firefox, so I still need to use Safari.
  • TextWrangler. The best free MacOS text editor. I tried the commercial upgrade, BBEdit, but it does not seem worth my time. It does not fix the annoyances I experienced with TextWrangler, so it is no good to me. Maybe if I were a Web designer, but I am not…
  • PDFView. Great replacement for Preview. Unlike Preview, it automatically detects when the PDF file has changed on disk.
  • Eclipse. Great Java IDE.
  • iTunes. Decent podcast management tool.
  • NeoOffice. When you really need to open this RTF file someone sent you. I tend to increasingly use Google Docs and spresent though.
  • Skype. When you need to videoconference.
  • Apple’s terminal. I am looking for a better alternative, but iTerm is not it (iTerm breaks the arrow keys!).

I still prefer Linux as a server machine, but for desktop use, I am now convinced that Apple has the best solution currently.