I recently bought a new Mac, and I decided not to migrate years of cruft over to a pristine Snow Leopard install. I also decided to shed years of stale workflow and adopt a new way of doing things. Enter the power tools: software that augments the power and performance of OS X to do things faster and smarter. I'll examine some general system enhancements and look at a couple of powerful Mac/iPhone app combos that really work well together.

Step one was finding a replacement for my beloved QuickSilver. I had abandoned QS well over a year ago due to performance issues on most of my Macs, but after a nagging pain in my wrist surfaced, I realized I had to find more keyboard shortcuts. Enter LaunchBar, which fills in for 90% of what QuickSilver used to do for me. LaunchBar is one Ctrl-Space (configurable, of course) away from Spotlight searching, Google searching, application launching, math calculations and much, much more. LaunchBar is $25 around $35 per seat, and worth taking 15 minutes to learn the basics. Go ahead, hate me for giving up QS, but try LaunchBar before you hurl the insults.

Next I needed a better way to juggle 3 Gmail accounts. But I also needed a way to track the metric ton of inbox items that flow through those email conduits. The solution was the combination of MailPlane and Things. I had really dedicated my heart to Toodledo, but there's one trick I couldn't replicate on any setup (The Hit List included): when I get an email in MailPlane, I can select some text and press Shift-Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-0 and the Things HUD pops up and autofills the notes section with a link to the email itself. It is awesome. Not perfect, mind you, but a huge thing for me.

Read on for more power tools and tips.

One of my favorite little utilities has been updated to fully support Mac OS X 10.6.1. Default Folder X makes it easy to navigate when both saving and opening files, and it has saved me constant hours of prowling around for folders where I save and open stuff. It's been particularly valuable when I'm working on a new book, because I have graphics and text strewn all over the place in folders on multiple disks.

This new update also adds improved capabilities in Mac OS 10.4 and 10.5. In Snow Leopard I saw some nasty strange screen drawing anomalies, and that is now fixed with this most recent version. The developers also say there are improvements when using Final Cut Pro, QuickTime Player 7, and other applications that export files using QuickTime.

You can try the utility for free for 30 days. Otherwise it is US $34.95, or $14.95 for users of versions bought before June 1, 2007.

It's nice to see this utility updated, and while I love it dearly, it would have been so nice if more of this functionality had been built in to OS X natively. Until then, Default Folder X is a great solution for opening and saving files in a completely quick and sane manner.

I was excited to speak with Jon Gotow of St. Clair Software, creator of Default Folder X, which is an invaluable tool to me. He is also an important voice in the OpenMeta debate and evolution happening right now, which will get its own article in the near future. He attended WWDC with his son, Ben Gotow, and had a lot to say about the state of Apple and looking forward. Continue reading for the video.

Update: This video has been moved to YouTube and is now watchable.

Parallels started offering a bundle of applications for sale last night (yes, that Parallels -- the one that makes VM software). The Parallels "Green Computing Bundle" is a collection of 9 applications for $49.99 including:

• Parallels Desktop for Mac
  
• MacScan
• PasswordWallet
  
• Macintosh Explorer
  
• Macaroni
  
• Drive-in
• PageSender
• Default Folder X
• docXConverter
  

The biggest application (and therefore the biggest deal) is by far the inclusion of the Parallels Desktop. You can purchase the bundle by visiting Parallel's Green Computing Bundle website.

St. Clair Software has just released version 4.0 of its well-known Default Folder X for both Leopard and Tiger. This utility enhances OS X's Open and Save dialogs in a number of ways, allowing easy access to favorites and Spotlight comments, defining a per-application default folder, integrating with open Finder windows and more. The new version revamps the interface with a more HUD-like Leopard look and offers support for Quick Look as you can see above. Last week Macworld posted a preview video that does a good job of explaining just what makes Default Folder X so handy.

Default Folder X is $34.95 and a demo is available. The upgrade is free to registered users of version 3 who purchased after June 1, 2007. The upgrade cost for other OS X registered users is $14.95 (and $19.95 for OS 9 registered users).

[via Macminute]