My favorite Mac apps: Giles' picks

Everyone else has had just three choice Mac apps, but I'm going to claim four because two of my choices live in the Menu Bar, and are therefore very small. Only you and I need to keep count, though, eh?

Bean

This marvelous little rich text editor is an excellent tool for writing to word counts, something I have to do very often. Bean packs in a lot of great features, and the developer is responsive to feedback and suggestions.

Either TextMate or BBEdit

When I'm not writing to word counts, I'm usually using Markdown to write for the web. Until last week I'd been using TextMate for this, exclusively, for a couple of years. Now, with the release of BBEdit 9.0, I'm wavering between the two. Both are wonderful, and writing with Markdown just isn't the same without one of them to help me out.

I Love Stars

I'm one of those weirdos who likes to keep the Dock out of sight most of the time. I don't use it for launching or switching apps, and I don't use it to keep minimised windows in either. But there are some functions that I like to have in easy reach from anywhere, and that's why I'm a big fan of Menu Bar applications. That said, there's not a lot of Menu Bar to be had on a little MacBook screen, so I'm very picky about which ones get the honor of a place up there. I Love Stars earns a spot. It does nothing but let me assign ratings to songs, but in my opinion it does it very well and, most importantly, sits in the best place for doing it.

Jumpcut

Another one from the Menu Bar, and this time it's a clipboard history utility that saves my backside 27 times every week. At least. It only saves text, but that's fine for me because that's what matters most in my line of work. With Jumpcut running (and it's always running), I can merrily copy umpteen things from a dozen different places and be sure of pasting them easily, and in the correct places, in the text document I'm writing at the time (see Bean and BBMate raves above).

OK, that was five. Sorry.

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Everyone else has had just three choice Mac apps, but I'm going to claim four because two of my choices live in the Menu Bar, and are...

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Laurence

I love Jumpcut, too. Does anyone know of a similar type app that allows you to paste more than one item at a time?

September 12 2008 at 2:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Shahryar

I twittered this page for my friends and am bookmarking it for future reference. I want to check out Jumpcut, Bean, and TextEdit.

September 03 2008 at 9:06 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

fud

The best clipboard buffer I have found [and has been for several years] is Savvy Clipboard. Why? Because it doesn't steal focus from the document. It allows multiple items to be pasted, using it's floating window, yet doesn't steal focus from the destination. 7 clipboards are free, purchase for more. Numerous other features, and fairly small at 2.1 MB. http://www.blitzclicksoft.com

September 02 2008 at 5:53 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jack

Jumpcut's one of my favourite apps too - only does one thing, but does it _perfectly_. And, though I'm not on a Mac just now to check - blasphemy, I know - Quicksilver's equivalent functionality always struck me as more fiddly to use.

Is BBEdit 9.0 really worth the cash for writing words, as opposed to code, Giles? I've been putting off downloading the demo, just in case it is...

September 02 2008 at 3:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Steve Cook

For what it's worth, Jumpcut is still being updated and in fact had an update pushed out more recently than ClipMenu. The website is out of date, though, so there's no reason for you to know this unless you looked at the SourceForge release notes.

September 02 2008 at 1:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

SimpleLife

Bean is awesome. Super light, super fast. Really the only word processor that has "Safari" like font smoothing. Most OS X word processors have really fuzzy fonts (I think has to do with image manipulation features and transparency issues).

Wordservice 2.7 goes great with Bean to allow easy extra formatting features, as Giles loves so much, from the menu bar.

Free too:
http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/freeware/services.html

September 02 2008 at 1:38 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

moyse

I use Textmate, and constantly miss Kate (KDE). BBEdit looks pretty powerful, but it's just ridiculously expensive for an editor.

September 02 2008 at 12:33 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jon Kantro

You guys should also check out ClipMenu. It's another free clipboard manager that runs in the menu. It has more features and is still updated. http://www.naotaka.com/mac/clipmenu/

September 02 2008 at 12:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

scott

fyi for users of the best Mac app: the Jumpcut functionality is also availabable in the form of a Quicksilver plug-in

September 02 2008 at 12:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

michas_pi

Hell yes, Bean kicks ass.

September 02 2008 at 12:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply