Feedbin/NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire came back on the indie software scene first as Evergreen, until Black Pixel returned the name of the app to its original creator, Brent Simmons. NNW was always my favorite RSS reader. It was standalone for a while, but then Brent released it with Feedbin support. So it was bye-bye Feed Wrangler (which was cheap but slow, at least for me) and hello (again) Feedbin. What’s more, there’s an iOS app in beta as I write this.

Agenda

Agenda is a note-taking app. You don’t really need another application for taking notes, I know. But Agenda has some hooks that will, well, hook you. Agenda’s prime feature is the ability to attach a note to a calendar event, a link for which inserts itself into the notes field of the calendar. It supports Markdown, syncing with Reminders, and archiving projects. The developers add new features regularly, which your annual subscription, should you choose to subscribe, funds. There’s a free tier as well.

MarsEdit

I moved from Tumblr to WordPress last year, and decided to purchase my favorite blogging software for the Mac from a long time ago. I don’t write as much as I’d hoped, but I’m happy to be able to write (and post) from MarsEdit when I’m in front of my Mac. (Drafts, generally, is where I write most these days.)

PDF Pen

I’ve had a license for this app Ford years but never realized how often I need it. I don’t need it for much but it’s invaluable when I do.

Acorn/Pixelmator/Pixelmator Pro

I have all three of these… There are selection tools that work better in Acorn (instant alpha)than Pixelmator, while outlining a shape is easier in Pixelmator for me. I don’t edit photos much, but I like having these highly capable and affordable apps on my Mac.

Wifi Signal

Moving my computer to the back porch, and playing some bandwith-hungry games, revealed to me the attenuation that my WiFi signal was suffering lo these many years. Apple doesn’t provide a quick and easy way to tell what the quality of your signal is (unless option-clicking the WiFi menubar widget and interpreting signal to noise ratios), which is where Wifi Signal comes in. This menubar app shows you a cell-phone-style five-bar icon, and clicking on the icon reveals a qualitative rating (Excellent, Good, Poor, etc) as well as other info (like the SSID of your access point). WiFi Signal’s basic functionality is worth the price, and additional features are there when you need them.

DayOne

Journaling gives you a place to drop your thoughts and ideas when publishing them on a blog or social media site isn’t necessary. I like to add entries to DayOne to share some thoughts with a familiar, future reader–me. Instagram integration shows you what you found salient enough to capture in the past as well. It’s a great way to see where you were at specific points in time.

Drafts

Almost everything I write starts in Drafts. I don’t have to have a place in mind for an idea or consider the best application for the job: I just open Drafts and start writing. Is it another inbox to process? Yeah. But it’s Drafts on the Mac! You get actions from iOS–with sync, no less. You can get fussy with tags and turn Drafts into a capable digital junk drawer… and if you don’t fancy mixing PDFs and text and web pages, then there’s no reason not to.

Transmit

I have to hop between multiple google drive accounts and there’s no better way to do this than Transmit. It doesn’t act exactly like the Finder but it’s pretty close for an FTP client. It’s a Mac app through and through, from one of the very best and oldest Mac developers out there.

Keep It

Since making (some semblance) of peace that Yojimbo was never going to be ported to iOS (I know, there was a version that supported one-way sync to the app on iPad), I’ve tried EverNote, Bear, and went in big with DEVONThink. Keep It succeeds Together and KIT, and actually precedes Yojimbo. It feels and acts more familiar to me than DEVON. It’s a digital junk drawer, which supports notes, PDFs, images, and links, and you can tag and file to suit your needs. I love it.

Microsoft Edge

I like Safari, and I would use it exclusively were it as extensively tested by software developers as it should be. But Chrome is the new Internet Explorer, so you have to keep a copy of Chrome on your device to deal with some websites. And the new Chrome is… Microsoft Edge. I know… it’s a crazy world. If you, like me, need to make frequent use of Gsuite on the Mac, you need a Chromium-based browser. And Edge is a good one.

Last Year’s List

My list from last year remains fairly untouched, with one exception: I haven’t needed Scrivener for any projects and so I’m not really using it. MailMate still rules my email usage, although for work only; I like Spark from Readdle for everything else. And 1Password remains quite possible the most used app ever.