Though I personally find Apple less antagonistic than Microsoft, that, obviously, isn’t exactly high praise either. The thread inherits the same spirit of the Windows one: “de-shittifying”, customizing, recommendations, setting(s) adjustments, app alternatives, etc.
Alfred (Free* / £34 / £59): Application launcher / productivity software. I really like it, can do a lot.
Alternative: Raycast - WHA!? SUBSCRIPTION?! No way, Jose! Buuuuut it’s pretty popular right now so, here it is.
DaisyDisk ($9.99): Disk space analyzer / visualizer.
Cork (Free* / €25): GUI for Homebrew. Probably superfluous tbh…
Settings Worth Reviewing:
Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom + Zoom style: Full screen
Tap to click, rather than pressing the track-pad.
Three finger drag
Hotcorners.
Prefer tabs: always
Night Shift
General Advice:
Not unique to Apple really but I recommend always clean installing new full macOS versions; i.e. don’t update; wipe (comp / disk) and install. This guy + his YouTube channel can hold your hand through the process. Oh, also: Don’t rush to upgrade to the latest, for it is rarely the greatest…
I personally consider the Apple trackpad to be peak macOS experience rather than any mouse. That’s just me dough.
And finally ofc: The real solution to the macOS / Windows problem is to install Linux. jk / not jk.
I have a MBP that I use occasionally and here are a couple of apps I pretty much require to use MacOS at all:
LinearMouse lets you change settings on a per-pointing device basis. If you like inverted scrolling on your trackpad but not on your mousewheel and you swap between the two often like I do, this is a must have just for this feature alone (also, it’s free and open source!)
Rectangle gives Mac’s window manager a similar amount of power to Windows, with snapping and auto resizing and shortcuts to move windows around (also, it’s free and open source!)
I really like ForkLift, a dual-pane file manager (paid). I bought this mainly as a convenient SFTP client, but I use it as my main file manager tool now. The sync tasks are really great - e.g. I sync files both to my webhosts and my digital audio player with ForkLift
I think you covered pretty much everything else I thought of. MaybeMountain (paid) could also be useful if you have drives that take a while to unmount.
I used a Mac from Mac OS X 10.1 until 10.4 then took a long break to do free software stuff and eventually got a MacBook Pro 16 inch in 2021, effectively skipping the entire Intel era of Apple.
Much of this stuff is paid, proprietary stuff but very little of it is a subscription.
Text editors
Nova – I use this for most of my web work, including writing Ruby on Rails stuff which I’m also coming back to after a while away. Big fan.
BBedit – the old familiar Mac editor. I use this to do fun things like “show me all the HTML pages in this giant website that don’t have alt attributes on images” via regular expressions. It has a lot of features I don’t use, but there’s also a free version and I’m unclear on what features I actually need to be paying for. Something to reevaluate for next renewal perhaps.
TextMate bought this in 2005 or something. It’s now open source but my old license key worked. This was the editor used in the original Ruby on Rails demo and that’s 100% why I bought it at the time.
GNU Emacs. I used this for approximately 35 years and don’t use it much anymore, but it is still my go to editor in a terminal emulator situation.
mg. This is an Emacs-like editor maintained by the OpenBSD project I believe. mg means micrognuemacs which feels like a New Order record title.
Fun fact:
I don’t use vim because vim didn’t exist at the time I started using Emacs. vi did exist and I probably would have used that had I known about it. I also probably would have given up fairly quickly. I used Emacs to tweak bits of my old old webpages when I would type them in on my old computer/slow modem era (1993-1996)
Graphics
Inkscape – I love Inkscape. I use it at least once a week and sometimes I find myself thinking of things, waking up and mocking it up in Inkscape. I do this with HTML too.
the GNU Image Manipulation Tool (not linking to their website) – the name should be changed. I think it’s a huge disservice to everyone to not do it. Free software is almost always universally poorly named so why not change the name of this?
PixiEditor – just recently started using this one after my friend Ernie mentioned it to me.
Affinity Suite – I bought this on a whim during a sale and really want to use it more but don’t. I am considering starting a printed newsletter if only to force myself to use this a bit more.
Old version of Photoshop on my old PowerPC Mac. I was never a big fan of Photoshop as my timeline with it was effectively: I don’t need it, I can’t afford it, I can afford it but it’s proprietary and doesn’t run on Linux, I got it from work for free, I got laid off and don’t have it anymore. But I have an old copy installed on an old computer but I don’t use it much.
Photomator and Pixelmator. I paid the one-off $20 or whatever it was to register one of these. Apple bought them. I can never remember which one I like and paid for so I have both installed. I hope Apple makes these $0.
Preview. I find myself using Apple’s Preview to do some things too. It works nicely.
Fun fact:
Made the credits for my first monkey movie in Inkscape and the file is many thousands of pixels tall and takes forever to open.
Video
Final Cut Pro. Bought it as a one off thing. Am slowly learning it.
iMovie. I tend to fall back on this for simple stuff. I used this in the PowerPC era with my old mini DV camera to make terrible comedy bits for a TV pilot that went nowhere.
Kdenlive. I used this on Linux to do much of what I do now with iMovie. It’s fine.
Blender. I edited an entire feature length live action movie in the video editing mode of Blender. Many people don’t know this mode exists. My movie contains 0 3D models and several orangutan costume wearing actors.
I have all the Rogue Amoeba apps. I use them for the occasional time I stream myself doing video games but mostly I use them to record and edit the output of VoiceOver (Apple’s screen reader) especially when it was my full time job but also occasionally for my own testing.
Logic Pro. I am very very slowly working on making some new music. I’m still technically in the same electronic band I was in from the 1990s but our output is minimal. I have a half dozen half baked ideas for things and various MIDI things.
Fun fact:
Office style apps
I really don’t like these kind of apps, but spreadsheets are the one exception to that.
Apple Numbers. It came preinstalled and I came to accept it.
Microsoft Excel. This is the only Microsoft product that’s not a video game I use with any regularity. I actually own a copy of Office but this is all I have installed.
LibreOffice. Nothing against it, but I don’t use it much at all. When I am forced to make a Word Document I use this instead.
Keynote. I really like Keynote but I don’t give many presentations these days. When I did, I didn’t have a Mac and didn’t use this.
Fun fact:
Web browsers
Safari
Firefox
Vivaldi
OmniWeb.
That’s it and in that order. I try to avoid Chrome as much as possible and only use Vivaldi in a pinch.
Fun fact:
Other things in no particular order.
1Blocker
1Password
Adium
Alfred
balenaEtcher
Balsamiq Wireframes – I don’t actually use this anymore, but I keep it installed so I can remember the thing I use instead. I wish they’d just sell me a cheap license for this though, tbh.
Beat. An editor for Fountain files for writing movies and TV shows. I’ve done both, but never with Beat. Using Beat a little on my current movie screenplay but sometimes I just use BBEdit instead.
(Apple) Books. I use this for keeping all the PDFs in my life such as game rules and old magazines around.
Calibre. For ebooks.
Choosy. Let’s you choose which browser to open things in. Very handy.
Crossover. I’ve paid for this for years. Occasionally I need to run some Windows thing but mostly I try to get Steam games working on macOS with limited success.
Discord. I have it installed. I do not like Discord at all.
dupeguru. I have this installed. I think I used it a few times and it worked well enough to keep it.
Flacon. For ripping FLAC files into MP3s. My hearing isn’t great but I do like to buy FLAC files and then encode them myself. I got this to encode my copy of Radiohead’s Minidiscs Leaked from Bandcamp and put it on my phone.
Frame0. The thing I actually use instead of Balsamiq Wireframes.
Freeform. This is one of those Apple default apps I use it to make strange diagrams.
GB Studio. I want to make a Game Boy game when I have the time. I made one in C many years ago and it wasn’t very good. I made something in 15 minutes with this when it first came out and loved it.
Handbrake. Video encoding and format shifting.
HEY. My email client.
Ice. A menu bar manager for macOS.
iMazing. Very useful for pulling files and things off iPhones and iPads.
Ivory. When I used the social web, I used Ivory to post on my phone and very occasionally on my Mac.
jwzlyrics. Shows you the lyrics to the thing playing in Apple Music in a window. Very handy.
Klack. Makes my Mac sound like I’m typing on a mechanical keyboard when I’m not and sometimes when I am.
Little Snitch. 100% essential app for the Mac. Blocks apps from accessing the internet. I use this to try and keep myself sane in a world that’s increasingly hostile.
Local. Local WordPress dev.
Rectangle. Very very useful for moving things around from the keyboard.
Scrivener. I will learn to use this one day.
SetApp. Netflix for Mac apps. I use this for:
CleanMyMac.
TablePlus
Batteries
Plus I have the following installed from Setapp.
BetterZip
Dash
DisplayBuddy
GetAPI
Marked
Paletro
Rocket Typist
Ulysses
Yoink
iStat Menus
Smart JSON Editor.
Speedtest. I have a need for speed as I once told the Comcast technician. I use this to make sure I’m getting good internet speeds.
Steam. I have a complicated relationship with video games and far too many Steam games.
Stop the Madness Pro. This makes websites a bit less awful.
The Unarchiver. Great little unarchiving thing for macOS.
Transmission. BitTorrenting random stuff from archive.org and Linux distros. Shares a name with a Joy Division song which makes me happy.
Unison. No longer supported but still works most of the time. For reading and posting to USENET.
VLC. The world’s best media player bar none.
Windows App. The horrendous new name for the Remote Desktop app from Microsoft.
