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The 13 Applications I Use Most
What computer programs do you use that you just couldn’t get through the week without? Yes, this is a biased Mac user’s list. Anyway, mine are, in no real order of preference:
Microsoft WordI use this on a daily basis. My journal entries have been kept in this as my handwriting has deteriorated to an unreadable scrawl because of typing everything and a decided lack of practice. I can also type faster than I write so, it seemed no contest. I’ve learned to use many of the features that I’d never touched before. I’ve learned to merge files, use the comments and revision tracking, set up different styles and even how to set up a concordance file to generate an index. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out how to jump to those indexed entries automatically within the program. One of the joys of using a Mac is not everything is as advertised for PC.
I’m a spreadsheet junkie. I have one set up to track how many words and how much time I’ve been spending on a project. I’ve used this mostly during WriMos to chart my progress. I also use it a lot for Cub Scouts.
E-Mail. Can’t live with spam and can’t live without the cheap, fast communication. I subscribe to far too many mailing lists and newsletters. I would not survive without all my rules for sorting the deluge into separate folders that I can check based on priority or curiousity. I’ve also been using the calendar function and it’s made getting events onto DH’s calendar at work much easier as well. I also use this to organize contacts over the default address book.
4. FireFox
I only use the above Micro$oft products because there aren’t alternatives with which I’m willing to spend the time it would to familiarize myself and not lose productivity. Firefox is just plain better than IE in many ways. It’s not just a religious war, it’s a practical thing as well, since things render correctly in Firefox and NOT IE. *grumble* That and they’ve even stopped supporting IE on the mac, at least the banks and other finicky places are mostly allowing FireFox access now.
Ah, this is my friend for chat challenges. I wore out my kitchen timer last fall. My laptop doesn’t like it as much as I do. It tends to make it run even warmer than usual. You can use this little flash applet on the webpage or download your own. Twenty-minutes of focus, coming up!
Why don’t Macs come with a basic paint progra any more? Oh yeah, they expect people to be more hardcore. I’m learning all sorts of stuff with this one as well. I finally broke down and put it on my laptop.
7. iTunes
I often forget I have music at my fingertips. I used to listen to music all the time, but lately it’s been an after thought. On the laptop I’ve limited song choices to instrumental pieces as I find lyrics very distracting as I’m trying to write.
I love collecting recipes. I may never fix some of the ones I’ve got, but I love reading them and getting ideas. This is as powerful, if not moreso, as MasterCook for the PC. What’s better is that it reads MasterCook and several other formats and has a great developer who cares about what he’s making and good food as well.
9. Adium
Ahh… another time sink. This is basically an instant messenger client that talks to all the different servers. You can use AIM, GoogleTalk, yahoo and several others. Everything’s in one place and you don’t have to think about who’s on which service.
10. BBedit
This is a mac text editor. I use it for composing html, Thursday Thirteens and anything that needs sorting lists that aren’t already in excel. This is a holdover from the text game days, but I love it.
11. Quicken Personal Finances 2007 for Mac
Quicken. Yup. I have a bachelor’s in Business Administration and Economics. I hate balancing my checkbook. This at least makes it kind of fun with the fast reports and pretty graphs. They just need to support the Mac better. C’mon, guys!
This is a fairly new tool for me. I haven’t used it enough as I need to. My laptop came with a camera in it. You can use this program and the camera to scan the barcodes on books, CDs, DVDs and computer games to keep track of what you have. I got one bookshelf done. Phew. We have WAY too many pieces of media that need to go in here.
13. Adobe Reader
This is my reader of choice over the mac’s Preview. There’s just something about it’s two-page up view that makes reading e-books on my laptop more comfortable.
Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
| 1 Lanie Fuller | 2 Heather | 3 Carol – |
| 4 Talk About My Favorite Authors | 5 Savannah Chase | 6 amy |
| 7 Susan Helene Gottfried | 8 Tempest Knight | 9 Paige Tyler |
| 10 Los Angeles Traveler | 11 Bernie | 12 Winter |
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Ooh, good list. I use at least 3 of those daily. And I’m with you on the spreadsheet thing. I’m a total nerd; I admit it. As of recently, I started using yWriter to help me plot *cough* and another program to shuffle my taskbar, otherwise I’m forever closing things to have them organized. 😀
Also, is CS3 much better than CS2? I have CS2 and love it, love it.
I skipped CS2, but I really like this version. Don’t know what the differences are, sorry. I don’t use most of the suite, just PS mostly.
I only use MS Word daily, and Adobe occasionally (when it decides to work, which lately is hit and miss). I’m not that tech oriented. *g*
I’m a Mac user as well! Of course, my old iMac probably isn’t as up to speed as yours, so I run older versions of just about everything that will fit on here. I am using OS X.3something. Hubby says I have the Panther and not the Tiger or Leopard. Do you understand what he means? I sure hope someone does ’cause after 21 years, it’s getting unlikely I ever will. LOL.
Happy T13! And Power to the Macs! 😛
CC
Check out the T13 today at the Midnight Moon Cafe: http://midnightmooncafe.blogspot.com
I’m sorry, CC! I have a G4 on my desktop and it wasn’t fast enough to do some things DH needed me to test. I stayed with OS 7.5 for the longest time before giving in to X. I had to give up on my ancient copy of word.
I like my macbook pro despite it running a little hot at times. I’ve been using one since ’86 in college. We were one of Apple’s test campuses.
The Panther/Tiger/Leopard thing is just a codename Apple gave each update of OS X. They’re all named after big cats. There’s a Jaguar somewhere in there too. Maybe that was first? I don’t remember.
I was blown away when I finally updated to OS X. This last one 10.5.3 is really nice and much less temperamental than, oh say, Vista. 🙂
I use MS most days and Excel, also Adobe Reader. Mostly I seem to be writing these days, so I don’t have time to play. I wouldn’t mind a good note program. I hear One Note is good.
wow, I remember os 7.6. I had it for a long time on my old powerbook. I loved that thing, the way it felt and the nifty curves, it was more like art than function.
I can’t deal with photoshop, watching Cowboy layer things makes me think of track-changes.
Happy T13! This list is pretty cool and very informative. Hope to see you at my 7th edition about Charlaine Harris.
Very techie list! I use a few of those myself.
I’ve JUST started exploring all my programs in the last two years. I’ve been SLOW. I use my Microsoft Word for everything. Windows Movie Maker has been a useful program for Book Trailers and Adobe Reader is all I have.
I have Photoshop which I haven’t figured out yet. LOL.
I totally have to hit you up on getting more organized on my computer.
Ok mine is Microsoft Word, Itunes and Adobe Reader, havent heard of the other ones….Cant use Adobe photo shop..Vista doesn’t like it and well they cause problems…
I love firefox!! NEat list!
Mines up as well!
Hubbys having a give away at his blog at http://www.valtool.blogspot.com
Hope you will visit us both!
I use Word (just to type), Excel (to keep track of titles and names for future stories), PhotoShop (to create covers), Firefox (to surf the net), Microsoft Ebook Reader (to read ebooks – doh! *lol*), CCleaner, Nero (to burn my CDs and DVDs), Dreamweaver (to create websites), and Windows Media Player (I need my music when I’m on the computer!).
Happy TT!
Good list. I use a lot of them, but really like my Thunderbird for mail.
Word and iTunes for sure!
*hugs*
Paige
My TT is at http://tinyurl.com/4zejcp
I’m with you on Word, Excel and Firefox. And I am in lurve with your TT graphic. Did you use Adobe Photoshop to creat it?
Very swanky!
Yes, Andi.
Except for the online-stopwatch and the Adium (the green duck) images, those are all actual icons. Ok. I cheated with the Firefox one too. Basically, I copied the icon images into PhotoShop and made files out of them. Since it previews the image in the file icon, that’s how I got those nice little borders. Then I arranged them in the window and took a screen shot of it. Opened that up and put in the type layer and did the nice pink glowy effect to that and saved. I played with it longer than I should have, but still pretty basic.
And yes, Jodi, the layers can make it easy to keep changes separate. You get one thing you like in place and then work in a new layer so you don’t screw up what you’ve already done. Don’t like the changes? Toss the layer. If Word’s track changed worked that easily, it’d be great! LOL
Oh dear. I’ve never tried Entourage. I may have to now…
Not a Mac user because I build my own, but my list is certainly similar: Outlook, SeaMonkey, YIM, Twhirl, Photoshop, Feed Demon, Adobe AIR, Adobe Digital Editions, Word, Excel, Woopra, Filezilla, Crimson Editor, and Rhapsody. At the office, my list would be about 50% different. Great TT, Kaige! Funny how most of us never think of this stuff.
Woah, Winter. I didn’t recognize a bunch on your list. DH read it and asked “Who’s that? They’re into hardcore programmer territory.” LOL
Only the Adobe AIR and Crimson Editor is programmer territory. And it’s mostly website building related. SeaMonkey is a browser by Mozilla. It’s like Firefox but has more bells and whistles like a composer and IRC chat functions. True, IT types tend to like it better than Firefox, but still, it’s related to website/blog building because of the composer. YIM=Yahoo Instant Messenger. I use this to “talk” to the other Bar writers as well as friends. Twhirl is a desktop client for Twitter which is a social networking IM that bloggers use. Adobe Digital Editions is what I use to read my ebooks (instead of Adobe Reader). Woopra is a beta stats program for blogs. Filezilla is an FTP client for uploading files to my domains/websites. Rhapsody is a pay music client. I can listen to anything in the Rhapsody library which includes new releases, as much as I want, at home or at work, for about $12/month.