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Ryan Wu
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Just got a 13” MacBook Air.

Updated to OS X 10.8.1 the day it arrived. Fast, and comfortable.

Notes on what I installed. Free apps first. Paid ones can wait.

Productivity

  • SizeUp: window management. Convenient, though it pops a demo window.
  • Mou: Markdown editor with a live preview.
  • Dash: quick snippets and doc lookup.
  • Calendar for Mac: a menu-bar calendar that actually shows events. (Added 2012/09/01)

Browser

  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Opera

Storage

  • Dropbox
  • SkyDrive: still using it because an earlier promo left me with 25 GB.

Development and editors

  • Sublime Text: my favorite plain-text editor. Settings are in this post.
  • SmartGit: the best Git client I have used so far. SourceTree has wrecked a repo of mine.
  • Xcode: iOS development.

Multimedia

  • Hao Zhao Pian: handy photo effects.
  • Skitch: screenshots, with a basic pen for markup.
  • KKBox
  • VLC Player (added 2012/09/01)

Terminal

  • Go2Shell: open Terminal in the current Finder folder.
  • iTerm: a stronger Terminal.

Social

  • Adium: MSN, Gtalk, and the rest in one client.
  • MenuTab for Facebook: a solid Facebook integration.
  • TweetDeck: Twitter client. Useful when you are juggling accounts (I still have the jsdc.tw one).
  • Skype
  • Line

System

Still exploring Dashboard widgets:

  • iStat Pro
  • Currency Converter
  • Day Counter
  • HSlider
  • Page Capture
  • PEMDAS
  • Translator

I had never owned a MacBook, so I actually read up on keyboard shortcuts. I was also tired of opening and closing System Preferences while I kept changing settings, so I bound a shortcut for it. This walkthrough is the one I followed.

A few commands and small tricks:

Show hidden files

Terminal window
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

List installed packages (.pkg) — package or bundle, take your pick

Terminal window
pkgutil --pkgs

Sample a color on screen with the built-in DigitalColor Meter.

I also installed a few everyday tools (htop, for example) through MacPorts. I will add more as I think of them.

Still unsolved: I want a good blog editor. Still looking between MarsEdit 3, Ecto, and the rest.

Other reference: 40 Useful Mac OS X Shell Scripts and Terminal Commands