apps – Dave Briggs

💻 New Mac, new setup (June 2025)

June 3, 2025

I’ve recently moved into an office in the garden – a fancy shed, in other words. Doing so exposed a weakness in my tech setup, based as it was on a Mac Mini. When I returned to the house, I couldn’t access my computer!

Now, wellness gurus would probably be yelling “GOOD!” at me at this stage, but, y’know, sometimes I don’t want to have to go outside to do some work, and I fancy doing my email over a lazy breakfast, or I just want to check something in the evening. It was really annoying not being able to. So, I switched the Mini for a new Macbook Air.

I went for the 15″ one, as I don’t travel much these days, and the extra screen real estate is good for my eyes. I also maxed out the specs, so got the new M4 model with the 512GB SSD and 32GB RAM in the Midnight colour (a sort of light black, if that makes any sense at all). I don’t want to be having to replace this thing any time soon.

In terms of hardware to make it work in the office/shed, I went for:

Logitech MX Master 35 mouse – this mouse is brilliant. I find the Apple Magic Mouse cumbersome and heavy, the lack of buttons annoying, and the ability to use it as a trackpad replacement useless. This mouse is regularly recommended on various trustworthy websites, and I have to say I love it. It’s pretty light for a wireless mouse, very ergonomic, and has loads of programmable buttons which both don’t get in the way and are really useful.
Spigen Urban Fit Laptop Case – fairly standard hard case to protect the outside of the laptop. Has a pleasing texture, but isn’t sticker friendly, I don’t think. It has however proved to be very adhesive when it comes to animal hair.
Rain Design mTower Vertical Laptop Stand – went for a vertical stand, because I’m happy to keep the laptop shut when I am at my desk and plugged into the monitor. Fits the laptop nicely.
WAVLINK Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station – this was the thing I probably did the most research and agonising over. Some of these things are ridiculously expensive, but at the same time i didn’t want to go too cheap, and find myself overloading the thing. This has worked with no problems since I got it.
Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad – i umm’d and ahh’d over the keyboard – was very tempted to go for something mechanical, but in the end stuck with the official Apple one, but went for the bigger size.

This is in addition to the Dell 27″ monitor and Logitech webcam I already owned. Some of this may seem a little pricey (although by no means the most expensive kit out there) but I have to say, using higher quality gear genuinely makes a difference to my productivity (honest).

Software wise, I’ll break this down into categories to make life easier! There’s a lot and quite of a few of these are utilities that start up on login – hence why I maxed out the RAM, I guess.

Setapp

Setapp is a neat subscription that gives you access to a mighty range of Mac apps for a single monthly price. You do have to make it work for you, but luckily some of these apps are properly best in class, and the others are good enough to replace first choices which otherwise would cost extra dosh.

Canary Mail – I have an email address that runs on Fastmail rather than Gmail, and I like to have a desktop client for it (I use Apple Mail for my iCloud account. I have too many email addresses!). Canary was available in Setapp, so I use it. It’s fine.
Ulysses – one of the better writing apps for longer documents out there. I tried using it for an ‘everything bucket’ for a while but that didn’t work out.
Commander One – a Finder replacement, with a lot more options but most importantly a twin pane display, which makes organising stuff much easier. I could live without it, but it’s included, so what the hell?
Bartender – when you run as many apps as I do, the menu bar at the top of the Mac desktop gets very cluttered. Bartender helps me keep it neat and tidy.
Rocket Typist – this allows me to create various little abbreviations that automatically expand into words or phrases. For example, I can type my telephone number with just 2 characters – and I don’t have to remember what it is! Text Expander is probably the number 1 app in this space, but Rocket Typist works fine for me.
Dato – the Mac shows the date in the menu bar, but it doesn’t do anything. Dato makes it clickable, so it shows what meetings I have coming up. Inessential but neat.
Paste – a clipboard manager. It remembers everything cut, copy, and paste, so I can go back and use them again. This is one of those tools that once you’ve used it, you wonder how you ever managed before.
Yoink – rarely used but helpful when needed. When dragging and dropping stuff (files, folders, text, photos etc) around the screen, Yoink lets you temporarily leave it in a dropzone on the desktop, then come back for it later
CleanShot X – makes taking screenshots a breeze, a significant improvement on the built in Mac method
Soulver – I used this purely as a sort of conversational calculator. I’m not great with figures, and so I can type calculations in words to get the response I am after – usually working out percentages!
Nitro PDF Pro – a PDF editing tool that saves me having to shell out for Acrobat Pro. It’s fine.
CleanMyMac – a handy set of tools to keep the Mac working as it should
Coherence X – can turn websites into desktop apps. I don’t use it much, other than for Google Tasks, which I use to log daily to dos, and having it lingering in a browser tab is not something I enjoy (this is very niche, I get it)
Mindnode Classic – a really easy to use mind mapping tool. Been using this for planning and organising thoughts for years
MarsEdit – my desktop blog editor of choice. Venerable but brilliant. I don’t use it quite as often as I used to, because of the micropost system now in place on this blog, but I still prefer using MarsEdit to blog when I can.
Gemini – not something I use all that often, but Gemini hunts out duplicate copies of files, and lets me tidy them up.
Permute – really good little app for converting all sorts of media files to different formats. Not a problem many people have, but when you do, it can be really annoying.
Sip – a really simple tool for picking colours from anywhere on the screen
TextSniper – pulls text out of images
Diagrams – makes a certain type of diagram very prettily. Doesn’t work for everything though.

Fair to say I get my money’s worth from Setapp.

Free as in speech and/or beer

There’s a bunch of things I use that don’t cost money – not all of them proper open source though.

NewNewsWire – an old school feed reader for people like me who need such things. It’s free and open source, and brilliant.
AltTab – I find the Mac version of the Alt-Tab shortcut annoying – it scrolls through open applications, not windows. This fixes that – and does a load of other stuff I haven’t really looked into.
Rectangle – makes resizing windows, tiling them just how you want them etc easy peasey.
iTerm – a general improvement on the basic Terminal app. To be honest, I install this out of habit more than anything. Likewise the first thing I do with it is install Homebrew – also for no good reason.
Alfred – again, an improvement on the built in Spotlight tool. Means I can do more from the keyboard.
BBEdit – when I need to edit some bog basic text, BBEdit is my go to, especially as it now had a free version.
Google Drive – Localise runs on Google WorkSpace, and I usually happily use the browser. Sometimes though moving files around on the desktop is easier.

Stuff I have bought

I do shell out for individual bits of software occasionally, although it is relatively rare. One of the things I love about the Mac though is the time and care taken by those developing apps for it – and that makes spending the money a little bit less painful than it would be otherwise.

Mimestream – I like having email in a native app rather than a browser tab, and Mimestream – despite the terrible name – seems to be the best at working with Google accounts.
DEVONthink 3 – my new everything bucket, and it’s working great for me. Having tried loads, I just decided to splash the cash and buy the behemoth. I use about 2.5% of its features, admittedly, but I like them. Main uses are storing PDFs and archives of webpages in a library, keeping notes from all my meetings in one place, and maintaining a work journal of what I am doing and who I am talking to.
Transmit – bit of an indulgence, but I find every other FTP client annoying, so am happy to shell out for Transmit’s ease of use.
Sketch – a recent addition. I had been using Figma’s free version on the web for my very basic needs, but was reaching the point where I would have to start paying, and so I went for the native desktop option instead. It feels solid, although as with much of the software I use, I barely scratch the surface of its capabilities.
Screen Studio – a new one for me, but this seems to be the top choice for screen recording – something I intend to do a lot more of in the near future.
OmniOutliner – I bought this on the App Store years ago, and so always download it, although it rarely gets used these days, unless I am really struggling to get my thoughts in order about something
Pixelmator Pro – been using this, and the non-pro version before it, for years. My image editing needs are very basic and Pixelmator just works
BetterMouse – way better than the standard Logitech software for customising my mouse. Well worth the £7 or however much it was!
Microsoft Office – grumble, grumble. A necessary evil.

Native apps for web services

Most of these are just Electron or similar wrappers around websites, that give an ersatz sense of the solidity one gets from a proper native app. Still, at least they don’t take up valuable tab space.

Trello – still one of the best ways to throw together a collaborative to do list / lightweight project plan
Slack – a customer uses it heavily, and i am a member of a couple of community focused groups
Miro – no idea whether Miro is the best app for the online workshopping thing, but it continues to serve my needs just fine
Whatsapp – seems to be the default comms method for an awful lot of people these days. Being able to type on a full size keyboard speeds things up, even if it doesn’t reduce the typos!
Zoom – still my preferred way of doing online meetings. Google Meet is quick and easy, but feels flakey still. Teams is a royal pain in the backside, although sadly it seems to now be the default for most of the people I talk to regularly.

So, quite a lot of stuff. It’s taken me an age to put this together, so hopefully there’s something useful in there for everyone. My question: have I missed anything?!

📅 Daily Note: December 18, 2024

December 18, 2024

Ed Zitron:

The people running the majority of internet services have used a combination of monopolies and a cartel-like commitment to growth-at-all-costs thinking to make war with the user, turning the customer into something between a lab rat and an unpaid intern, with the goal to juice as much value from the interaction as possible. To be clear, tech has always had an avaricious streak, and it would be naive to suggest otherwise, but this moment feels different. I’m stunned by the extremes tech companies are going to extract value from customers, but also by the insidious way they’ve gradually degraded their products.

# – micropost 22871

The English Devolution White Paper.

That is why I am wasting no time in finally giving local leaders and communities the tools they need to deliver growth for their area and raise living standards in every part of the country.

Need to read it through properly.

# – micropost 22873

Denise Wilton writes One for all and all for none:

You can look for available GP appointments using the NHS app. Pretty cool. Unless your local surgery has opted to use a different system. If that’s the case, you need to make sure you don’t click the ‘Check for available GP appointments’ button in the app because it will just say ‘No appointments available’. And when you phone the surgery, you’ll get a recorded message which says to use the app. So you’ll try again of course and get the same result: No appointments available. Perhaps you’ll feel bad for being a burden – because it’s flu season and the surgery must be flat out. Perhaps you’ll wait another day and when you try again you’ll find there are still no appointments available.

# – micropost 22874

Rachel Coldicutt, Words Matter:

Digital technologies require a strange combination of seemingly unconnected things, including (but not limited to) big material things like data centres, small things like phones and computers, even smaller things like chips and processors, and a bunch of invisible processes and protocols that conjure tools and services and apps and web pages and all the rest into being. What we see at the end tends to look quite neat and tidy, but many decisions and things are hidden behind those icons and dashboards and shiny cases, so they need great big stories to talk them up and make them feel exciting.

# – micropost 22875

Writing apps – the software I use to get words on a page

April 11, 2014

writing I probably think about this sort of thing far more than I should – after all, doesn’t everyone just use Word? – but I like playing with different tools for writing.

After all, for me, typing words into a computer makes up probably 75% of my job. That’s a lot of typing and so it’s worth making it as little of a painful experience as I can.

So here is a list of the different tools I use to write text with.

Byword

Byword is a ‘distraction free’ writing application which works on my Mac and iPad, syncing through Apple’s iCloud service. It’s a very simple editor, that pretty much just lets you type in text in plain text format. You can do some formatting with Markdown, which you can then export, but I tend to use it when I just want to bash some words down, without thinking too much about how it looks.

Find out more about Byword

MarsEdit

MarsEdit is the app I use to write my blog posts. It’s a bit of desktop software that lets me bash in the content for my posts offline, using a very simple plain text editor. I’m able to add tags and categories to my posts, which I then send up to my blog in draft, ready for a final check, adding images and hitting publish.

I don’t know why, but I just find writing posts in MarsEdit more comfortable than using the WordPress editor – hence why I class WordPress as a publishing tool rather than a writing one. A big part of it is probably down to the keyboard shortcuts I use to quickly enter and mark up content in MarsEdit, rather than having to constantly switch to the mouse to select icons.

Find out more about MarsEdit

Apple Mail

An awful lot of the words I write are emails, and so my email client has to feature in this list. I use Apple Mail mostly by default nowadays – previously I have used Gmail’s web based interface, but I do find using a desktop client helps me pace myself a bit and be a little more thoughtful. It’s basically ok – I have no complaints but then I’m not exactly a huge fan either. It works.

Find out more about Apple Mail

OmniOutliner

This is a seriously good outlining tool, which I mostly use for drafting pieces of writing or presentations. Outliners let you build up bullet style lists of content, indented at various levels of a hierarchy, which you can then drag around and reorder. It allow you to structure a document really well in the planning stage – to figure out your ideas and how they slot together.

Find out more about OmniOutliner

Google Docs

When I need to collaborate in the early stages of preparing a document, I usually turn to Google Docs. Due to the fact that it is online, it does tend to stress me out a bit – I prefer desktop apps with local copies of files when possible – but Docs is the best solution to working on something with others, particularly at the same time.

Find out more about Google Docs

Scrivener

I occasionally work on longer pieces of writing, although they almost never get published anywhere. Scrivener lets you write chunks of content for a larger work, which you can then reorder, drag around and so on. It also lets you save research notes in the same place as your draft document, which can be helpful. At the end, Scrivener spits out a rich text file that sticks all your chunks together, for a final edit, or formatting exercise in a word processor.

Find out more about Scrivener

Evernote

The writing I do in Evernote differs wildly, from meeting notes to pasting in web addressees to check out later, to

Find out more about Evernote

Pages

Pages is Apple’s own word processor, which I use occasionally for more graphical documents. It just has a more creative, desktop publishing type feel to me, which makes it ideal for that kind of work. It’s really easy to use, and I find it the best tool to work with when a document has a lot of graphical elements.

Find out more about Pages

Vesper

A super iPhone text editor. It does one thing very well, and that is writing short notes on my phone. It has a beautiful design and is incredibly easy to use and for when I just need to quickly write something without worrying about it syncing up anywhere else, Vesper is perfect.

Find out more about Vesper

Simplenote

Yet another cloud-syncing text editor. I use this to quickly get text onto my phone from another device. It’s fairly niche, but stuff like when I look up an address for a meeting on my laptop and want to get it to my phone – I’ll usually use Simplenote rather than creating something in Evernote.

Find out more about Simplenote

Word

OK, so I do use Word. Quite a lot, actually, in its various incarnations – Mac, Windows, online (via Office 365) and now, of course, on the iPad. When it comes to needing to share a document with others in a format they are likely to be able to edit, its still the best option.

Find out more about Word (really?)

What are your favourite writing tools? Do you use as many, or even more, than I do?

Drag and drop app development from Mozilla

October 11, 2013

One of the things we get asked about all the time, whether from artists, community groups or bigger organisations is how to develop apps for mobile.

Usually the answer has to be ‘pay someone to do it’ – even though this can be an expensive process.

There are some do it yourself options – the App Inventor for Android from MIT springs to mind – but it’s fair I think to say that they still aren’t terribly easy to use, and of course in the case of App Inventor, your projects will only work on the Android platform.

Mozilla – the cool folks behind the Firefox web browser amongst other great projects – might just have another option in the works. It’s part of their development of FireFox OS, a competitor to Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Phone. In other words, a smartphone operating system.

The unique thing about FireFox OS is it’s use of web apps rather than native apps. What this means is that instead of having apps that are written specifically for one platform, whether that be iOS or Android or whatever, these apps work through the web, and so can be accessed on any device.

This also means that no one company can control what apps you decide to put on your phone or tablet – as they are all accessed via the web, the user is completely in control.

Mozilla is also aiming this work at emerging markets – in other words, they aren’t necessarily out to steal Apple’s crown. Instead they want to bring the power of mobile computing to those areas of the world where tradition feature phones dominate.

One early example of this endeavour is the ZTE Open, a phone running FireFox OS. You can buy one, completely unlocked, here on ebay for just £60. I have one, and it’s fair to say it won’t be impacting on sales of the iPhone 5s any time soon. It’s closer to the low range Android phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy Ace range. However, as a cheap, effective and open entry point to smartphones, it’s an interesting device and it will be fascinating to watch how other manufacturers decide to use Firefox OS.

So, how to make apps for this environment? Mozilla is working on that too, with Appmaker. This is at a very early stage in its development, but you can have a play with it. It gives you a drag and drop style interface to build web apps, and seems really easy to use, and could put the power of app development into the hands of pretty much anyone.

Of course, tools like this make developing apps easy, but I suspect developing great apps is still just as hard!

Here’s a video explaining more.

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