Setting up a new Mac: my software choices for every day tasks

I bought a MacBook and I’m a new to this operation system. So I didn’t have an experience even how to use the file system or what I should use if I want to write some text. But I’m a developer and IT professional and this kind of things wasn’t takes long for me to understand.

The next problem was: I have a strong habits of using some software on Windows (like a mail client, developer tools and etc) but I had no ideas what I should use on Mac and which one is really good and suitable for me.

So, I did some research and experiments and made my list of software my for daily routines.

File manager

Finder — a standard one. I didn’t suffer even a minute to get used it.

The Unarchiver — packaging manager. For any types of achieve files.

DropBox client and OneDrive client— it has good integration into Finder, so you don’t have to think about HDD <-> Cloud synchronization. It works by design.

Mail client

Mail — a standard one. I used to use Microsoft Outlook for last 10 years, but this one is almost the same, even lighter and easier to configure all the mail accounts and rules.

Calendar

Google Calendar — I’m using just online one (from browser or from my mobile phone). I’m the person who is planing everything. All the tasks, meetings and things to do. Even the time for eating and sleeping are in my calendar too. The good thing about it, I always can say in what day and at what time I’ll be available and for how long. And almost never mistaking or making a mess with my plans ;)

Office

Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac — Microsoft office still the best for this king of things. Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. I can’t live without it.

Notes, meeting notes and todo’s

Microsoft OneNote — I didn’t check Evernote, just because I have Office and it’s easy for me to stick in my habit and continue write everything in OneNote. I’m doing it a lot, I’m writing everything what I want to remember, planing to do, want to check, read, visit, watch and all the crazy ideas. Because my memory is rubbish and I don’t want to put more stupid things into it, it needs some space for more important things than movies or dates of my competitions.

Communications

Skype — other messengers are online or just in my mobile phone.

Browsers

As a developer, I must have as many browsers as I can.

Google Chrome — my primary browser for internet and development. I like plugins and Bookmarks management. After authorisation I can have the same settings on my work machine too.

My plugins:

• Feedly — for daily news which I want to check every day. Maybe, later I’ll organize and publish list of resources which I’m reading to know what’s going on in industry.
• Window Resizer — can resize you’r browser window into popular sized (phones, tablets, monitor screen sizes). Good for quick testing during development.
• Postman — to call or test any types of web services.
• Awesome Color picker — check what is the color code (for testing and dev purposes)
• What Font — check what is the font (for testing and dev purposes).
• User Agent Switcher — it can change header and change your real user agent. So, you can still use Chrome to open a web site, but it’ll think that you are using IE, for example (for quick testing and dev purposes).
• Grammarly — this plugin can check your grammar during the writing or posting and, at least, show stupid and silly mistakes. But it can’t work with Medium (that’s a pity ;)). Maybe I’ll buy a full version of it. A full version can help you choice a better words, avoid plagiarisms and many other things which I’ll probably need for better writing.

Safari — still good choice but not suitable for me, because on my job i’m using windows machine and I want to have the same browser settings.

Firefox — just for testing purposes.

Opera — just for testing purposes.

Developer tools

Sublime 3 — I have been suffered for 2 days, but now I’m fine. I don’t have a habit that to create a new project and run server or emulators I have to run a few commands in Terminal and even I have to find a good project template too. But now I know it and even like this npm things and modular stuff.

Visual Studio for Mac (Preview) — I still have to work on .Net projects and this editor is really good for it.

XCode 8 — no comments. For me was easy to create first “Hello world” project and run it.

Android Studio 2.2.3 — I spent a bit more time than with XCode. Because I forgot Java from my long past and Android emulators and API versions are given me a headache to configure ;)

GitHub Desktop — version control and code repositories management. Yes, you’ll need it.

Graphic editor

Sketch — I like it more than Photoshop. For me Sketch is more user friendly and less complicated. Still using trial…

Craft plugin for Sketch — repositories for graphics, designs and prototypes? Yes, you can.

ImageOptim — tool for image size optimisation. Less size, faster site.

Balsamiq Mockup 3 — tool for quick prototyping. I used to use windows version as well. You can create a mockup in a few minutes to explain your idea. Imagine, you’re in caffe with client, you want to explain your idea and you don’t have a napkins… ;)

ProtoPie — I’ve installed it just to play, but it looks good and very useful. I’ll try to make early, fast and live prototype using it next time when I’ll have an opportunity.

Performance and Utilities

CleanMyMac 3 — even I bought it. It can clean your machine and resources (disk, memory and etc) quite well and it’s not heavy.

Connections

TeamViewer — to connect to other machines (for ex to the my work environment).

Microsoft Remote Desktop — to connect to the any windows machines or servers using ip address and credentials.

Transmit — FTP\SFTP\WebDav and etc client.

Music

Spotify — premium account for 0.33 pounds was a good offer.

Torrent

Transmission — easy and fast torrent client. I’m not using torrents very often. But from time to time I do ;)

As well, I found lots of good stuff for web developers, like javascript modules, tools, servers, debuggers and etc, I’ll publish my choices in this blog next time.