Power Tools

Since I switched to a Mac there are a handful of applications, designed with the power-user in mind, that I've come to depend on. Without them I truly believe I'd be a grumpy OS X user; just as I'd be a grumpy Windows user without some of the power-user applications I depend on there.

Quicksilver

Quicksilver is, at first glance, an application launcher. It essentially has a catalog (an index, similar to Spotlight) of your system and allows you to do most things in any application with a few keystrokes. The alternative is to rely on shortcuts in the dock or desktop, but that only goes as far as loading each application. Quicksilver is best explained by example and a couple pictures:

• I've just downloaded a file and, since I like it so much, decide to email it as an attachment to my buddy. Instead of doing this the traditional way (load mail app, compose new message, attach file, send) I hit ctrl-spacebar, type in the first few letters of the filename, hit tab, arrow down to "Email to (compose)...", type in the email address (or name from my address book), and hit enter. Done, in about 10 seconds.
  
  
  
• Or... I want to listen to some Radiohead song that's in my iTunes library, but I can't exactly remember what it's called. Instead of searching through Finder or my iTunes library, I hit a hotkey I set up to search my iTunes library via Quicksilver (ctrl-command-J, for jump-to-file), type the first few letters of Radiohead, and navigate to the song.
  
  
• Quicksilver allows me to set hotkeys to most anything available in OS X, as well as iTunes functionality (i.e. global hotkeys to play/search/stop/skip/notify/etc. songs). This is what I currently have set for my hotkeys (sorry mouse, but clicking some icon never beats a global hotkey):
  
  
  

I've only scratched the surface here. Quicksilver is freeware and has a ton of plug-ins for it (such as the itunes one I used above). It is so useful I would hate to use OS X without it. When I'm using my wife's Windows machine I long for something like it; it's unlike anything I've ever used in any OS. A co-worker likened it to "OS X on steroids"; this is absolutely true.

Virtue (VirtueDesktops)

When I work in Windows I prefer to have many desktops instead of just one. I like to have four of them, each containing a conceptual grouping of applications. For example, the first might contain stuff for work (my IDE, Firefox), the second my mail application, the third a bunch of cygwin or command prompt windows, and so on. Otherwise all of these apps would be crowding up my one desktop that, by default, comes with Windows and OS X.

In Windows, I use a free application called VirtuaWin, and I highly recommend it. In OS X, Virtue (now VirtueDesktops) is the equivalent (and also free), but it's better in every way, mostly due to the different way applications (windows) are managed between OS X and Windows. I won't go into the details here, but here's the way it looks when Virtue switches between desktops (that's some some serious eye candy):

Growl

Growl is a stand-alone application that can work in conjunction with Quicksilver to provide notifications. Notifications are a way for supported applications to provide you with new information, without you having to switch from the application you're already in.

For example, when I receive an email a temporary notification "bubble" can be displayed with the first few lines of the email and who it's from. Or when a song changes in iTunes, a notification briefly displays the artist, album, and title. It can be used for all kinds of applications via additional Growl or Quicksilver plugins. Growl is freeware.

iClip

iClip isn't nearly as exciting as Quicksilver or VirtueDesktops, but I use it all the time.
It's a clipboard buffer, so whenever you copy something (text, an image, a file, whatever) to the clipboard it stores it in its own database and is available when you need it (instead of getting overridden the next time you copy something to the clipboard, which is default Windows/OS X behavior). Quicksilver has a similar plug-in, but it's nearly not as nice, in my opinion; mainly because I want to assign shift-command-v to pop-up my buffered clipboard and I can't do this in Quicksilver due to the way its clipboard works (I have to bring up Quicksilver first with ctrl-spacebar; screw that).

The equivalent to iClip in the Windows world is an application called Ditto, which I like a lot. Unlike iClip, Ditto is freeware (iClip costs $20, and it's still not a Universal build, grr...).

DarwinPorts

I have mentioned DarwinPorts in previous posts. It is described well in it's own documentation:

DarwinPorts is probably best described by comparison: It's sort of like the FreeBSD ports collection or Fink in that it automates the process of building third party software for Mac OS X and other operating systems. DarwinPorts also tracks all dependency information for a given piece of software. In other words, it knows what it needs to build and install and in what order for the piece of software you want to work properly. DarwinPorts knows how to make, build and install the software to a specific location, meaning that software installed via DarwinPorts doesn't simply scatter itself all over the system or require user knowledge of dependencies in what order.

In other words, if I want to install some open source application like Apache Tomcat 5, I simply load a Terminal window and type: sudo port install tomcat5. Then it installs it and any dependencies for me. Later, I can update anything using sudo port upgrade tomcat5 (or sudo port upgrade all to upgrade all things I've installed with DarwinPorts). It makes life in Unix-land much simpler.

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Using these various applications has made life in OS X a joy to work in; one big ol' productive panacea. Combining these apps with the nice out-of-the-box functionality that OS X provides, I'd say I'm happier and more productive than when working in a Windows environment (did I actually just say that?). Granted without these applications I would find OS X less than ideal for everyday work, but I could say the same about Windows XP too.