June 15, 2011 

The Native Mac Apps I Use Every Day

I’m always interested to know what apps people rely on for their daily work. It seems our computers can do just about anything we want them to, and I know there are a number of apps that I use every day which I would not want to live without. Here’s a look at the native Mac apps I’m using these days…

Sparrow »

I’m not a Mail.app fan. When the beta of Sparrow came out last fall, I downloaded it immediately. People were saying it was to be “Tweetie for Gmail”, and I was pumped. It’s only gotten better since its original beta and subsequent 1.0 release. Originally Sparrow only supported Gmail and Google Apps accounts, but it can now handle pretty much any mail account that supports IMAP.

Now, I will concede that the revamped version of Mail that will ship with Lion does look pretty good, and I’ll probably give it a try, but it will have to do all that Sparrow does and more to take its spot.

Things »

Confession: I’ve tried pretty much every to-do list application that’s out there, including Remember The Milk, Google Tasks, Nirvana, and more. They all do some things great and are missing some key features as well. I chose Things for two reasons: (1) cost is a concern for me, and they offer an educational discount off the sticker price of $49.99; and (2) I didn’t want to try and learn Omnifocus.1

I have a couple of beefs with Things, however. Cloud sync has been “on-the-way”, well… forever. They’re in a limited Mac-to-Mac beta right now, but that won’t cut it for me completely because I want to sync with the iPhone and iPad apps as well. Speaking of the iOS versions, why couldn’t they be a universal application? I want to support the developers at Cultured Code, but triple-dipping (Mac, iPhone, and iPad) is too rich for my blood at the moment. However, when cloud sync ships, I’ll most likely shell out the $20 for the iPad version; it’s darn pretty, after all.

Evernote »

Admittedly, I’m an Evernote novice.2 I’ve been a member since 2009, but only recently have I focused in to try and learn the app. Evernote is capable of so much in the way of storing files, images, and so forth. It’s premiere feature may be its ability to OCR every image you upload, making the text in images searchable. Very cool.

With the purchase of our Doxie scanner, I went ahead and purchased the premium Evernote account, which allows me to upload up to 1 GB per month. Without a premium account, the maximum is 60 MB. It’s a great freemium option, but if you end up using Evernote for any amount of time, you’ll probably want to go for the additional storage and features.

Twitterific »

You name the Twitter app for Mac, and I’ve tried it. To be honest, I was excited when Twitter for Mac was released with the Mac App Store earlier this year (after waiting for Tweetie 2 for Mac forever), and it’s okay, but I don’t love it.3

I decided to try out Twitterific when it went 4.0, and it’s a nicely-designed Twitter app with some nice features, like Instapaper integration, CloudApp support for posting links and images, and more. It’s also ad-supported, which I don’t mind.

Reeder for Mac »

Finally, Reeder for Mac is my RSS-reading app of choice. They started with apps for iOS devices and then launched a Mac beta, which I’ve been using for a long time. Then, just recently, Reeder went 1.0 on the Mac App Store.

Not only was Reeder designed beautifully, it’s the only Google Reader-syncing app I’ve found that integrates every service I use on a daily basis: Instapaper, Pinboard, and Twitter. Try it, you’ll like it.

So, there you have it, a look at some of the native Mac apps I find so useful in my daily work and play. I plan to share about my favorite menubar, web, and iOS apps in a future post.

Question: what’s your can’t-live-without-it native Mac or PC app?
  1. Although, according to Shawn Blanc, maybe I should. ↩
  2. To read: Evernote Essentials by Brett Kelly. ↩
  3. As I was writing this post, I opened Twitter for Mac for the first time in a long while. They’ve returned to a more traditional Mac UI, and it looks great. ↩

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  • http://about.me/jasonkehrer Jason Kehrer

    Excellent list and commentary, Andrew!

    Haven’t yet checked our Reeder on Mac, although I’m a fan of the iPad App.

    I’m a major Evernote fan, although I only scratch the surface of its functionality. I use it religiously on my iPad, iPhone and Mac in nearly every meeting. It partners well with the Fujitsu ScanSnap 1500M in our office.

    I’m also giving WunderList a try, from 6wunderkinder. Cool, simple, beautifully-designed task management, with excellent syncing across devices and a nice web interface to boot.

    For Twitter, I’m stuck on TweetDeck on my Mac, even though I think the UI is lousy and clunky. I like being able to add and remove search columns at will…it’s the app I started using first, and I haven’t been able to jump ship.

    And for mail…Mail.app is my tool of choice. Before OSX, I was a hardcore Outlook Express user…until it created some major issues as a result of a corrupt database. I started fresh with Mail.app and haven’t had the guts to move away (tried Entourage for a stint, looked at Sparrow, etc.) With 5 active IMAP accounts, I’ve just found that it works best for me.

    • http://andrew-meyers.com Andrew

      Thanks for your kind words and comments, Jason!

      I tried out Wunderlist on the Mac before, and although I love that it syncs between everything, the UI just didn’t feel right to me for some reason. It felt like Flash rendering in a browser window or something.

      Do you use a lot of rules in Mail.app? I know that’s one of the main reasons that people like it. I don’t have that same kind of workflow (yet), so Sparrow’s been good to me.

  • Davidclarkmoore

    What about dropbox?

    • http://andrew-meyers.com Andrew

      I definitely use Dropbox, but I’m saving my menubar apps for a future post.

      I’m really interested to see how my Dropbox workflow changes when iCloud comes out. It’s already changed since I started using Evernote more.

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