This feature alone is enough to warrant the PathFinder price tag:
If you spend any time on Windows, you know that the Mac Finder is missing cut and paste in the OS. Don't even get me started on the other awesome features of PathFinder or this post will take all day to write. Let's just say the Drop Stack functionality is insanely useful.
The Omni Group The Omni Group has produced some of the best iPad and iPhone apps available. By “best”, I mean that they have both a highly polished asthetic quality as well as a sophisticated and inventive user interaction design. For example, OmniGraffle for the iPad is an absolutely stunning achievement. The app is better than most desktop diagramming tools. It is comprised of clever little multi-touch and tap interactions that make working with it a breeze.
Here's a quick followup to my recent post about TextExpander on iOS. You can download the snippet file from the link below by right click and saving to your own Mac. You'll need TextExpander for the Mac to import the file and share with your iOS devices. It should save the effort of having to manually create all the snippets. Notice that some snippets have changed from my last post. Trial and error testing has allowed me to refine the workflow a bit.
Tinkering Dropbox is incredibly useful and I enjoy extending it's utility whenever I can. I also enjoy choosing projects that will teach me something new about my Mac. My latest project was to provide SFTP access to my Dropbox account. For security reasons, I am not allowed to install Dropbox at work. I considered several options for direct access to my files (email, webdav) but FTP is the most simple and universal access I could develop.
Things that cost me money* Dropbox------$10/Mo. Spootnik------$3/Mo. MobileMe -----$8/Mo. Shawn Blanc---$3/Mo. Web Hosting---$8/Mo. Simplenote ----$2/Mo. Pinboard ------$7 lifetime Netflix--------$8/Mo. Amazon Prime--$7/Mo. Instapaper------$3/Mo. Things that cost me peace of mind* Google (Search/Mail/Reader) Mint Twitter *These lists may not be mutually exclusive. Nothing is free. EDIT: I forgot about the terrific Instapaper service
Indev makes some ridiculously useful software. I own licenses for them all. Today MacZOT! is having a bundle sale that includes all of the email tools that Indev makes. You're not going to find a better deal on some great Mail.app plugins.
I have been a long time fan of the Logitech Revolution MX mouse. It was a comfortable mouse with a good bit of functionality. The prize feature was the weighted free-spinning scroll wheel. I could really zoom through a long post (which was much more useful before sites began spreading posts across multiple pages to scrounge for more views). I really liked the MX. However, it was a flaky piece of technology that lived fast and died young.
I've written about Hazel before. It is the more successful big brother of Apple's Folder Actions. Here's an example from Practically Efficient of integrating with Hazel for automatic file organization. What I particularly like about this example is the use of TextExpander to quickly rename files with the date and triggers needed for Hazel. This trick is being added to my list of every expanding time saving shortcuts.
I use Omnigraffle on a regular basis. I primarily use it as a tool to accompany Pages and Keynote. I use Omnigraffle to build custom graphics and icons for presentations and reports. I also recognize that I use a small fraction of it's power, but Omnigraffle is an incredibly deep application with many uses. I love this example from Dr. Drang.
I bought into the Simplenote world from the moment I read John Gruber rave about it. Since then I have relied heavily on the Simplenote platform for both personal and professional note taking and list making. The beauty of Simplenote lies in its unique restriction to plain text. I have been tempted by the luxuriousness that is Evernote. However, after a brief project to extract all of my notes from Evernote into a file structure that would outlive the hosted service, I realized that there was safety in simplicity.
