Mac OSX Apps are a part of my daily life as they are for all Mac users. But not all Mac OSX Apps are equal, some perform better, some are more useful than others, and some are just downright amazing. In this post I hope to share the Mac OSX Apps that I have found to be the most helpful, useful, and effective. Or in other words I hope to share my favorite Mac OSX Apps.

My Favorite Mac OSX Apps

1: TextMate

I have already done a review previously on Textmate. But it is definitely my go to app each day. As a web developer I need to have tools that help me craft code quickly and efficiently. There are so many apps out there that try to hard and become very cluttered, which make it difficult for me to use. But with Textmate they found the perfect balance, loads of features and wildly extendable so I can customize commands to match my individual requirements. But with a very clean and simplistic interface I don’t have to worry about which button to push, I just write code, and learn the keystrokes that do the things I want.

2: SourceTree

This next app is also used daily because I am a Developer. I am a developer, a linux server user/administrator, and I love doing things from the command line. But despite that I really like using a good GUI application, especially if it streamlines my tasks. That is exactly what SourceTree does… I could run to the command line and use GIT from there, but SourceTree makes it very easy for me to see the overview of changes to my code, and easily add/update changes, or pull changes from the source repository. It easily integrates with Git repositories that are hosted online by Bitbucket (the Developer and provider of Sourcetree) and GitHub.

3: Google Chrome

I know some of you are saying Google Chrome, it’s just a web browser… Why list it as one of your Mac OSX Apps? Well Google Chrome has worked its way into my list because of one feature which I have yet to find in any other browser. The first of these is the Task Manager. The task manager shows me a list of my open tabs and browser extensions. The listed items have their CPU and Memory usage displayed, which allows me to kill individual tabs that are consuming to much ram/cpu without having to kill the whole browser. If I need the contents of a killed tab I just open that tab again and refresh the page… and the page is back. Needless to say I use this feature constantly.

4: 1Password

Being a web developer I work with many clients usernames and passwords, they all have their own hosting accounts, domain management accounts, merchant accounts, youtube accounts, facebook accounts, etc… Having all these usernames and passwords to remember can be a very difficult matter.  1Password not only allows me to securely store my clients credentials, but they have some plugins/extensions that work with the most popular browsers to let me retrieve my clients credentials and automatically populate the login forms without ever leaving my browser. I would be truly lost without it.

5: Evernote

Evernote has just recently made its way onto my list. I resisted using online note storage apps for quite a while, but then after some insistance from friends I gave it a try. Now I can take notes at a work meeting on my mobile device, review them on my work computer, and add a last minute bit of inspiration about one of the topics discussed either while I am on the road or at home. Evernote does a great job of not only cataloging my text notes, but audio notes, images (which are also sent through an OCR process so you can search for them based on the text you snapped a picture of), etc… It has been a great addition, and helps to keep me organized.

6: Skype

While not a specifically Mac OSX App, Skype has become an indispensable part of my workflow. Wether I need to shoot off a quick question to a Co-Worker or Family Member, or if I need to do a Screen Sharing/Video Conference, Skype takes good care of this Web Developer. I have also added a telephone number to my Skype username, so I can take my phone wherever I go, Home, Work, or on the road. I used to waffle between other IM clients, MSN, Yahoo, etc… but with Skype I think I have finally found the swiss army knife of communication clients.

7: Cyberduck

I have weathered many development storms clinging tightly to my cyberducky. Cyberduck is an great Open Source Storage Communication Client. Cyberduck supports many different storage protocols. You can use it for FTP, FTP-SSL, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, Google Cloud, Idisk, Google Docs, Swift, Dropbox, etc… The developers who have built and maintained the Cyberduck project have done a great job of making a seamless easy to use UI that is featureful without being overwhelming.  I have yet to be let down by this amazing tool.

8: iTerm

A giant leap above the default Terminal App that comes bundled with OSX. Yes it is just a simple terminal app itself. But adding tabbed browsing, default tab profiles and hotkeys iTerm makes it much easier to work with the terminal, and deal with several servers/consoles open at the same time without littering your screen. This lightweight app lets me keep my server logs and server command consoles all up and accessible but not use up much in the way of resources, so I can keep them available for other development tasks.

9: Asana

Ok so Asana may not be a Mac OSX App, it’s a Web App. But it is one of the best Task Management utilities that I have ever used. I have tried many different task management apps only to stop within a few days of getting the app, either because of having a tedious task entry process, or not synchronizing properly between devices. Asana has added a slew of keystrokes to make it amazingly easy to add and manage tasks. An added benefit is that as a web app it is also extremely easy to share tasks with a group of individuals working on a project with you. Asana has made it onto this list by being the task management software that I have been able to stick with the longest, primarily because it is brilliantly easy to use. And a special thanks to my colleague for directing me to this amazing web app.

10: KeyCue

This amazing little and recent addition to my list of Mac OSX Apps is a very useful single purpose app. It does one thing and one thing only… When you press your command key for a user configured amount of time KeyCue displays a window in the middle of your screen that shows all of the keystroke commands currently available in the application that currently has focus. KeyCue makes it very easy to quickly find and master the keystroke commands available in any new app.

Well there you have it my Top 10 Favorite Mac OSX Apps that I use Everyday. Without these little apps my daily job would be much more difficult, but with them it becomes much easier to manage my time and maximize my productivity. I hope that they help you as much as they have helped me.

The post Mac OSX Apps – My Top 10 Favorite I Use Everyday appeared first on MacNative.

If you are like me then when you set something up, like the “Spaces” on your Mac, then you want them to be setup the same way when you go to use them the next time. But in Mac OS X Lion (and presumably Mountain Lion) apple had a seemingly brilliant idea, have Mission Control take care of rearranging spaces for you based on your most recent/frequent usage.

So initially this process must have seemed like a feature not a bug to the developers. But when an average user like myself starts using spaces and finds that the spaces that I had so carefully arranged for themselves are not in the places that I left them, it can become a bit frustrating. And not only can it be annoying but it is the default behavior for Lion.

But thankfully there is a fix for this, and it is actually quite simple, but the additional productivity that I have added as a result of conquering this little “issue” has been amazing. Never underestimate the power of simplifying your workflow.

Automatically Rearranging Spaces – The Fix!

1: open System Preferences from the Apple Menu

2: In the Personal section, select Mission Control.

3: Uncheck the Automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use checkbox.

And here is a brief Video Tutorial that goes through the basic steps with you.

A big thanks to TechRecpies for the post that helped me find a solution to this problem.

Stay tuned for more Tech Tips, Mac Mayhem, and Developer Deliciousness.

The post Rearranging Spaces – Keep Mission Control Under Control appeared first on MacNative.

I love my Mac. it adds greatly to my productivity and abilities. But as with any system there are always little things that we each need to tweak and change to allow our systems to run optimally. For me one of those things is the SystemUIServer.

I like to run apps like iStat Menus that shows me some amazing information on what my computer is doing (RAM, CPU, Disk, usage etc…), and it runs up in my menubar, os it is out of the way but easy to access. But the problem seems to be that over time the SystemUIServer process (which manages how those things display in the menu bar) keeps allocating more and more memory. And I don’t much like rebooting my machine, so it usually only happens when I am forced to for some reason. So in the meantime I needed some way to keep the SystemUIServer from consuming all (or lots of) my RAM.

The SystemUIServer Ram Solution

Joshua Taylor outlined this solution on his blog, and I found it both easy to implement and very effective for the SystemUIServer on Snow Leopard, Lion and I am sure Newer and Older versions of OS X as well.

Open your terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app).

Type:

crontab -e

..and hit enter.

Hit the letter “a” on your keyboard.

Enter the following, using tabs for the large separations:

0 */2 * * * killall SystemUIServer

Hit the escape key on your keyboard.

Type:

:wq
.

.(that’s colon, w then q) and hit enter.

Close Terminal.app.

So there you have it, I implemented the fix on my Mac and it has performed beautifully on both Snow Leopard and Lion. The SystemUIServer simply restarts itself every other hour and frees up any hoarded RAM. The only drawback seems to be that when that time hits the menubar icons reload so I get a brief blip of randomness in the upper right hand corner of my screen, but I will deal with that happily if it means that I get to run my Mac for a few more days/weeks without having to reboot it. I may even make it till the next update for OS X.

The post SystemUIServer – Recover RAM appeared first on MacNative.

I have recently been dealing with this issue, (having my Magic Mouse randomly drop its connection to my Mac) and thought that you might encounter it at some point as well. So here are a few helpful tips to get you back up and running without having your magic mouse continually disconnect while you are using it.

Disclaimer: This fix worked for me but your results might be different depending on what your actual problem is.

To fix this problem you first need to remove the bluetooth properties plist file (you might be able to fix the problem without performing this step, but if it doesn’t work, come back and try this step first.)

Step 1: Delete the Current Magic Mouse Connection

• Open a New Finder Window
• In the Finder sidebar select your Hard Drive
• Navigate to the system ‘Library’ folder and find the ‘Preferences’ folder
• Inside the ‘Preferences’ Folder Locate the file named ‘com.apple.Bluetooth.plist’
• Delete the file
• Restart OS X

Once your computer has rebooted, it will have loaded up the Bluetooth default settings, and you need to make it a “Favorite” device, to do this follow step 2.

Step 2: Add the Magic Mouse as a FAVORITE

• Click on the ‘Apple Menu’ in the Menu bar
• Select ‘System Preferences…’
• Click on the ‘Bluetooth’ icon
• Highlight your Magic Mouse entry
• Now click the ‘Gear’ icon located to the bottom of the device list
• Select the ‘Show More Info’ option
• Click on the ‘gear’ icon again and mark the Mouse as a ‘Favorite’.

There you have it, you have set your Magic Mouse as a Favorite device. This new setting should keep your Magic Mouse from Disconnecting randomly from your computer. Please post your feedback below and let me know if this helped solve your problem or not.

UPDATE:

I used this process on my Mac and it did help my Magic Mouse connection issue… But it didn’t totally solve the problem, occasionally my Magic Mouse does disconnect itself, but the reconnection time does seem to be greatly reduced. Usually it only takes about 10 seconds or less for the mouse to reconnect and have me back on my way. So while this is an amazingly annoying issue with the Magic Mouse it is obviously greatly reduced since I made these changes to my Mac.

and here’s a link to the Apple Support Communities discussion on the same topic…

The post Stop Your Magic Mouse From Losing Its Connection To Your Mac appeared first on MacNative.

Whenever I write one of these posts or work on a web dev project. I am always hunting for a free icon that represents the product, project or post that I am working on. This task could be very hard if it were not for these great resources. But be prepared for fits of joy as you access the tools that are now within your reach.

These Free Icon Search Engines can help you easily find the design icons that you need for your project. At the same time they readily help you determine what the license details are for each icon. They make it much easier to create license compliant projects than it was in years past.

I have found these resources to be very valuable. In keeping with the spirit of the icon artists who have offered them freely. I share them with you and hope that they help you add some class and color to your projects. We all know that free and open source developers can usually use some additional class. Many of these icons help provide that in some degree.

So here are the free icon search engines in no particular order.

Icon Finder

 Find Icons

Icon Archive

The Noun Project

Iconlet

Web Tool Hub

Very Icon

Icon Wanted

Mr Icons

Icon Fever

 Icon Seeker

Icons Search

The post Top 12 Free Icon Search Engine Resources appeared first on MacNative.

When you do a lot of web browsing like I do, you can find yourself inundated with a myriad of different browser windows, each with different content in them. This can easily become overwhelming and even make it virtually impossible to find your way back to information that you had kept in a “Previous Window”. But there is an easy solution that can give you an instant way out of that nasty situation… and it all boils down to a simple keystroke.

Using this keystroke you can merge all of the existing windows into tabs in a single window, making your life much easier to deal with.

Here’s how you do it,

1. Open System Preferences from the  Apple menu at the top of your screen
2. Click on “Keyboard” and select the “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab
3. Choose “Application Shortcuts” from the list on the left, then click the “+” plus icon to add a new shortcut
4. Select “Safari” from the Application pull down list, then type “Merge All Windows” as the menu title
5. Finally, set the keyboard shortcut to use, I went with Control+Command+W as a variation of the common close windows command
6. Click “Add” then go back to Safari, open a few windows, and hit your keyboard shortcut to verify it worked.

And there you are, with just a few simple clicks of your mouse you can avoid being stuck in a Jungle of Safari windows ever again.

Good luck.

The post Merge Safari Windows into Tabs appeared first on MacNative.

Now you might be thinking why would I want to Disable Dashboard in Mac OSX?

Well heres a bit of history… When Apple released Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) one of the bold new features that it had rolled into it was the “Dashboard”, a quick and easy to access part of OS X that could quickly give you access to a calculator, or help you know what the weather is, or even play a fun little game. The possibilities were virtually endless, and there were lots of available developers to create Dashboard “Widgets” since the widgets were essentially just HTML and Javascript bundles that were parsed by the Dashboard engine. So almost overnight you had widgets that could wash your dishes and walk your dog, and just about anything else you could dream of, but there was a downside to all this fun simple single use widget mania… Resource Hoarding!

These simple little widgets would wait in the background for the moment when they could satisfy your whims, but the cost for that was lost productivity as Ram and CPU time were being “minimally” eaten up by these seemingly harmless widgets.

After dealing with these issues for far to long I finally decided that I had to find a way to rid myself of these little bundles of “UnJoy” and Disable Dashboard. After a long hard search I finally found the answer that works on Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger), 10.5 (Leopard), 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and 10.7 (Lion). It’s not all that difficult really, just a few simple commands and you will Disable Dashboard so you will never have to deal with it again… unless you want to.

Enough with the History lets Disable Dashboard

So to Disable Dashboard open up your Terminal application in the Applications -> Utilities folder and run the following commands:

• defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
• killall Dock

The post Disable Dashboard in Mac OS X appeared first on MacNative.

Ok, so we shared some hidden skype emoticons previously, but time marches on. Although those emoticons are super cool to use, Skype has included a new set of secret skype emoticons, that were released with Skype 5.5 for Windows. So for those mac users out there, you won’t see these secret skype emoticons until skype sees fit to add them to the Mac client.

They are very useful, and rather than waiting around for me to describe them all let me just show you what they are.

Here are the new secret skype emoticons

	(mooning)		(fubar)		(ph) (mp)
	(finger)		(poolparty)		(u) (U)
	(drunk)		(swear)		(~) (film) (movie)
	(smoking) (smoke) (ci)		(wtf)		(o) (O) (time)
	(toivo)		(zilmer)		(e) (m)
	(rock)		(punch)		(skype) (ss)
	(headbang)		(call)		(wfh)
	(bug)		(talk)		(hollest)
	(oliver) – in Skype 5.9		(soccer) – in Skype 5.9

The post New Secret Skype Emoticons for your commenting enjoyment appeared first on MacNative.

You can do virtually anything on a Mac that you can do with a PC, Office Suites, Photoshop, Programming, Itunes, etc… But every once and a while there is something that comes up that requires a machine running Windows, or possibly even Linux.  And for those infrequent occurrences you can keep a separate computer lying around to use for those random purposes, or you could run some Computer Virtualization Software, so you can run windows on mac and linux on mac.

Virtualization has been around for a while and has really driven the quest for putting more and more cores in a single CPU so you could run windows on mac, or even linux on windows. There are many options available to get you started in the virtualization world. You could use VMware Fusion, or Parallels to get the job done, or you could use Virtualbox. Virtualbox is the lesser known Virtualization software originally released by Sun, now maintained by Oracle, that is Open Source and completely FREE.

Now there are a couple of features that the paid options have which Virtualbox does not, but Virtualbox is constantly getting updated as well, and many new features are being added with each release.

Windows on Mac, which is the best choice?

I have used both of the commercial alternatives to Virtualbox, but ultimately the handful of features that they have over Virtualbox have not been sufficient to keep me from using this great piece of Open Source software. So give it a try, Download Virtualbox and give it a test drive. Install a copy of Linux or Windows on your Mac and play around with it. The best part is, that when you are done working in the nightmare that is Windows, you can easily switch it off and keep running your favorite software on your Mac.

The post Virtualbox – Run Windows on Mac and Linux on Mac for Free appeared first on MacNative.

Let’s face it, Skype has changed the way most of us communicate. From it’s early years it was the application that allowed many people to first cut their teeth on the usage of VOIP, albeit Skype’s own original VOIP creation.

With that innovation came an almost ubiquitous usage of skype as the Instant Messanger and Audio/Video messenger of choice. And while that makes it pretty easy to get in touch with other people… is there something that helps Skype continue to stand out from the pack of so many different Instant Messaging platforms?

Well strap yourself in because we have 5 of the Top Skype Addons for your Mac that can help you get the most out of your Skype experience.

Skype Addon: FireArc Arcade

FireArc Arcade integrates with Skype to let you play several different games with your friends online over Skype.

The Games included with FireArc Arcade are:

• Table Tennis (Like Pong)
• Navy Ships (Like Battleship)
• Line Up 4 (Like Connect Four)
• Mancala
• Multiplayer Whiteboard
• Go
• Chess
• Tic Tac Toe

Get FireArc Arcade

Skype Addon: Callnote

Callnote allows you to record your Skype calls and save them to Evernote. So no more of this He-Said, She-Said stuff, simply record your calls and conversations and then they are automatically uploaded to Evernote so you can always find them.

Some of the features of Callnote include:

• Record the call.
• Save voice recording as an Evernote note automatically.
• Record up to 8 participants simultaneously.
• Includes participants’ names in the note.
• Includes call time and call duration in the note.
• You can choose the note to be sent to Evernote automatically as soon as recording stops.
• You can choose to be asked for approval before sending the recording to your notebook.
• You can choose for recording to start and stop automatically when the call starts/stops.
• You can manually start/stop recording at any time.
• You can select the destination Evernote notebook.
• Use the voice recordings from your hard disk for other purposes.
• Set the frequency for purging recording files from your hard drive automatically.

Get Callnote

Skype Addon: InnerMeeting

InnerMeeting allows you to have greater control over your Skype Screen sharing session. It provides an easy and elegant way to present a Powerpoint or conduct an online training class, and all the observers need is to have Skype, no additional plugins required.

Some of the Features of InnerMeeting include:

• Show your entire desktop.
• Show just one application.
• Privately chat with one another.
• Conference bridge available.
• Send out invitations.
• Skype call-out integration.
• Pass control to any guest.

Get InnerMeeting

Skype Addon: YugmaSE

YugmaSE takes meetings over Skype to a whole new level. Rather than simply having a screen sharing session, YugmaSE turns skype into a full blown web conference presentation tool.

Some of the Features of YugmaSE include:

• No Yugma registration required – only a Skype Name is needed to use Yugma SE.
• Free, unlimited online meetings for 1 host and up to 2 attendees.
• Easy-to-use desktop and application sharing.
• Share your desktop or any application with Windows, Mac or Linux users.
• Shared Mouse & Keyboard control
• A Whiteboard feature that allows you to interactively brainstorm and capture your ideas during a Yugma meeting.
• Annotation tools allow you to draw lines, shapes, and freehand in order to highlight what you are presenting to others. You can save your whiteboard diagrams and annotations in standard JPEG format for later use.
• Shared File Space
• Meeting Recording, Playback, and Webcast
• Change Presenter

Skype Addon: Click to Call

Skype Click to Call adds some web browser integration that highlights phone numbers on websites and gives you a button to call them via Skype directly from your browser.

Some of the Features of Click to Call include:

• Automatically highlights Skype Names and numbers wherever they appear on the web, and lets you call them with one click through your Skype account. It’s free to call numbers highlighted in blue; they’re labeled Free call. For numbers that are highlighted in gray you’ll need a little Skype credit or a subscription.
• Calling destinations are represented by a country flag next to the number.
• Add a Skype Name or number to your Skype contacts and copy a highlighted number to paste it into an email or instant message.
• See the latest Click to Call updates.

Get Click to Call

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