Another Thanksgiving has come and gone, and with that, another birthday. In addition to hosting Thanksgiving, my parents took Rhonda, Aaron, and me out to Rocco’s Townhouse in Hammonton to celebrate my turning 51. It was, once again, excellent. I have some duck legs in the sous vide tank right now, which we’ll have around 4 pm before Aaron heads back up to New Brunswick for the final act of his first semester as a Freshman.

Black Friday is a great time to score some deals on software you’ve been ogling. The other side of that coin: It’s also an opportunity to drop some virtual coin on apps you don’t need, but want. All good! Here are some notables for you Mac nerds. I also ordered a Samsung T9 to replace Rhonda’s iMac’s spinning hard drives, which I’ll repurpose for something else.

Unclutter App Editors Choice

Unclutter has a collection of very cool utilities. It’s also a great way to update your Cleanshot X sub if you’re due soon. I grabbed Downie, which was featured on the latest Talk Show, as well as Forklift 4. I like apps like Forklift for interfacing with Google Drive instead of running the native app.

Take Control Books

Take Control Books is offering 25% titles, and 50% off their subscription-ish Premium tier (free updates to books after iterative updates). I grabbed these:
• Take Control of Photos – Ebook
• Take Control of iPhone Photography – Ebook
• Take Control of Notes – Ebook

Supasend

I tried Supasend when it first came out. I reminds me a bit of Drafts and Remind Faster, both of which apps prioritize input and quick filing to another application (in the case of Drafts, just about any app, and in the case of Remind Faster, Apple’s Reminders).

Acorn

Acorn competes in the same creative space as Pixelmator, and I’ve owned a license since it came out. It’s a photo editor for people who don’t need or want the complexity or expense of Photoshop. Developer Gus Mueller has been creating great Mac software for decades, and Acorn is his crowning achievement.

Retrobatch

I also have been trying out Retrobatch; I take a lot of pics for Uncorrected, and would very much like to streamline my resizing workflow (WordPress doesn’t like photos above a certain size). The excellent MarsEdit will take care of this for you, but I often post from Ulysses, because I like to be able to use my iPad to post as well. Retrobatch’s layout reminds me of Audio Hijack, with modules you string together into a module and save for batch processing images.

MailMaven

I’ve been using MailMaven since it came out in beta earlier this year, and I have a great affection for it. I can’t stop using MailMate for work email, but I do like having all of my accounts in this productivity beast. I figured I’d pay the first year introductory price and decide if I wanted to continue the subscription after that, but this price was hard to pass out.

DevonThink

DevonThink is an impossibly feature-rich document manager and note keeper. The most recent version, version 4, is available for a 25% discount. I stopped using DevonThink after moving to Windows for a spell, and now that I’m back in the Apple ecosystem, I’ve been using Notes because I love handwriting notes and Notes’ amazing Smart Script.