#1 Caffeine by Lighthead Software
Caffeine can be a small, simple application that has a singular purpose: preventing screen dimming and sleep functions when you work. If you have your screen set to turn off after a small delay you understand how annoying it may be when you are doing something that doesn’t require constant interaction. Caffeine requires hardly any system resources and elegantly enables you to force the display to be active without mouse or keyboard interaction as long as you will need.
#2 TextWrangler by Bare Bones Software
Bare Bones Software is the developer of the venerable BBEdit – a Mac developer’s staple. TextWrangler is BBEdit’s free (as with beer) younger sibling that provides the essential text editing capabilities essential for web and shell script development. This is one of the first programs that I download when establishing a new Mac.
#3 Transmit by Panic
Transmit is without doubt the best file transfer client on any platform. Clean, simple, simple to use but feature-rich, Transmit plays a role in virtually every project I work on. Transmit supports FTP, SFTP/SCP, WebDAV, even Amazon S3, providing fast and consistent access to your servers and files constantly. Honestly, almost every application manufactured by Panic will be worth looking over. I use Coda for WordPress development and could not live without it. Do your hair a favor and also at the bare minimum buy Transmit.
#4 Rsync
This is an easy one. Rsync is often a Unix command-line tool included by default on every Mac. Use it. Rsync allows lightning-fast copying/synchronization of local and/or remote directories. Combine Rsync with cp-la for quick versioning and straightforward management of dev/test environments. There are far too many useful applications of this tool will enter into now but Google it and I am sure you will learn to believe it is indispensable in a short time.
#5 Remote Desktop Connection by Microsoft
While the RDC client is not particularly sexy it is really obvious should have for any Microsoft developer transitioning to iOS development. On a fast network, the RDC experience can be almost transparent plus it provides an easy way to jump back into a familiar environment when needed – as an example when implementing the WCF .Net backend for that app. I would certainly recommend attempting to do whenever possible natively for the Mac (even Office for Mac is fantastic) but RDC comes through inside a pinch. If you have a Mac and a PC sitting side-by-side with a secure network you may want to consider Synergy.
Update: Bonus! Three more Mac apps which I am awaiting testing soon.
Querious by Araelium Group
I mostly develop with SQL Server and Oracle databases but also for days past (WordPress) when I connect to MySQL I am usually limited to using the exceedingly clunky phpMyAdmin. Querious is often a native Mac application that seems just like a fantastic alternative.
CloudApp
CloudApp just isn’t likely to get the proper tool with an enterprise environment however it looks just like a fantastic service form of hosting file-sharing that could be that much easier to make use of than Dropbox.
FontCase by Bohemian Coding
I currently use FontAgent Pro to manage my extensive font library about the Mac – and I believe it is to get ugly, slow, and buggy. FontCase doesn’t have the symptoms of nearly as many choices and features but when it will what it lets you do well and without show-stopping bugs, I just could possibly be influenced to switch. The interface is undoubtedly far more Mac-like.
Happy Coding!
