John Gruber of daringfireball posted about his top apps and it’s nice to know that I’m on the right track in my choices.
He matters to me because first, he wrote the Markdown parsing script which I use in this blog. Second is that if you read his articles, it’s evident that he is pure Apple. However, he is one of the Mac-heads who still think straight. This simply translates to him knowing the shit from the diamonds – which is opposite to those who love everything Apple… especially if it’s from Apple itself. And though one may not agree 100% with what he says all the time, at least on knows his opinions are reasonable in any context.
Which is why I turn to him for any late breaking Apple stuff, since he usually has a good handle on the whole thing. So with software, he now has his top applications list, which is listed below.
And for the honorable mentions
I was glad to find that only two mentioned (which function I needed) was not the same as my choices and of course the others I didn’t need at all, so they don’t count.
First was Interarchy for FTPing. Upon reading his post, it seems Interarchy would fit well with my workflow since it seems to have combined FTPeel‘s magic-mirror feature and whatever Transmit claims to do – and a lot more. I prefer FTPeel‘s “on demand” method of using its mirror function than simply “synchronizing” since I usually have other extraneous folders in my webserver which I don’t need mirrored. But of course, I haven’t tried it, so who’s to say you can’t configure that particular function.
So, I downloaded Interarchy and will test it tomorrow to see how it fares against Transmit‘s new version (which was just released). I really want to put my two FTP apps to rest in favor of one, end Interarchy seems to fit the bill at least in paper. I’ll know in a few days.
Next was OmniWeb, which I do not intend to try. Apparently, he’s a heavy surfer – (which I am too) but, unlike Mr. Gruber, I’m not so big on the “features” of browsers as far as usability is concerned. My standard is simple: as long as it can do tabbed browsing, has decent popup/ad blocking, and has a configurable search field (for Google and others), and can render pages correctly closest to web standards, then I’m fine.
Firefox fits the bill here, but as per Joel‘s suggestion, I’m now using a similar browser called Camino. Mr. Gruber mentioned that OmniWeb has it’s share of rendering problems, which automatically meant that I didn’t want it – If ever I’m to use a non-standards compliant browser, then it better be because a whole lot of people use it (e.g. Microsoft Internet Explorer) – and will only be because I have to tailor my websites to those “commonly used browsers.”
Affrus, falls under the “I don’t need it as of the moment” category so naturally, I don’t have it nor feel the need to have it in the near future.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out NetNewsWire was his favorite RSS aggregator, and QuickSilver as his launcher/helper app. BBEdit was sort of a given since it is the best, and frankly I don’t think there’s even competing software [that mattered].
And I was extremely glad to find out that my choice of SpamSieve was the right choice. When I first thought that I needed some serious spam-filtering on my mail, SpamSieve was the first app I tried because it was the first I came across. And because of the results, I never really felt the urge to try others – and now with Mr. Gruber’s information about it, I don’t think I ever will.
What surprised me though is that VideoLAN VLC, SideTrack, and BluePhoneElite weren’t in the list – and of course my personal favorite AdiumX (he probably uses Proteus), but these are subjective so let’s move right along.
All in all, once again, I feel vindicated 🙂