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Apple applications you're using

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#41
Time for some updates. I usually try and test new apps once a week, and it has been a few weeks since May (my last update). Here are my current favorites I've added in the last few months.

Living Earth HD is the coolest weather app and I now run it on my computer, iPhone, and iPad. It is phenomenal as a weather app in the menu bar and looks amazing!

Boom rocks! Literally. It is software that enhances the loudness and even the quality of your speakers. I have found it to work best on Apple laptops. It turned my 11" Air into something I could actually hear and my 15" Pro Retina into a boom box. This is a gotta have app.

OmniGraphSketcher is another great app from the OmniGroup (makers of OmniGraffle and OmniFocus). It is relatively inexpensive compared to other Omni apps. But it is a basic way to play with graph visualizations. You can plug numbers in and blow your Excel graphs out of the water. I like it for presentation purposes.

Soulver has replaced all of my calculators. I have even stopped using Excel quite as much as I once did. It is like talking to your calculator - so easy! If you do a lot of calculations or need an audit trail of calculations or even want to save a file of calculations, this is a great app.

SketchBook Pro has become my favorite vector drawing program that I use with my Intuos tablet. Painter 12 and Photoshop are definitely better painting programs (both in the $300 territory), but both of those are pixel-based. When I'm sketching something (usually concepts) I like to start with SketchBook because vector imagery can be scaled-up to larger sizes.

DashExpander has been pretty cool for inserting text that is used over and over again. If I were in the dealership, I'd be using this as my email template generator. It is really slick for that. Admittedly, I don't use it enough to have found the desire to pay for it yet. And if I did, I'd probably put my money into TextExpander instead.

CheatSheet has become a daily part of my life. I have it set to show me all shortcut keys in any program I have active when I hold the Command Key down. Really useful! If you've recently or are about to switch from a PC to a Mac, get this app.

Day One has recently been added to my daily regiment. I try to summarize every meeting I've attended into Day One simply to keep track of everything I'm involved in. Day One is a journaling software. It kinda reminds me Tumblr but as a program on your computer that syncs to other devices. So far, I'm really liking it.

Hazel went into my trial run yesterday. It is very slick as it automates a whole lot of system cleaning and folder maintenance. For the people who don't pay much attention to where things are downloaded or have a ton of stuff on their desktop this is an app for you.

For the most part I'm still using most of the apps I already mentioned in this thread. These are just a few more. Maybe one day I'll get around to talking about mobile apps.
 
#44
KCourter said:
Couple mentions of Sparrow (acquired by Google) earlier on here and I'm sure many of you are aware of Mailbox. This gesture based app has been getting tremendous fanfare and the waiting list is miles long. However, just 37 days after being released, they've sold to Dropbox.
Click to expand...

I missed the news on the sale. I had no idea that went down. Yeah, that was a fast sell.

I was in line to receive one of the first downloads of Mail. Ever-since leaving my Blackberry I've lost touch (and the ability) with the InBox Zero rule.

Mail is a real game changer for iPhone and email all together when it comes to efficiency and accomplishing InBox Zero.

Unfortunately I can't seem to fully adapt since it has no support for exchange. I can't bring myself to use 2 different apps for my email.
 
#45
Dropbox has become a pretty productive app for us here at the dealership. I created a folder on my account for trade-in pictures. I have had my salespeople with smartphones download the app and have shared the folder with them. Whenever they trade a vehicle, they take as many good pictures of the car as possible and upload them to the folder. The pics sync to the master folder on my laptop, so as soon as the car hits our inventory manager I have pictures to upload. These are temporary pictures only. We still take several more once the vehicle has been through service and reconditioning, but this process has really cut down on the amount of vehicles on our website with missing images.

Flipboard and Feedly are two more that I use frequently. They are RSS and article apps that I have all of our social accounts synced to. They make sharing automotive related material to your networks "on the go" via mobile pretty easy.
 
#46
It has been nearly 6 months since my last update and I haven't changed much, but there are some additions:

Characters is a program that lives in your menu bar and provides access to a number of characters you don't find on the keyboard. I use it mostly for writing software requirements. For example: ½ of a dozen is 6 and that's the same as 12 ÷ 2. ¿Como?

Display Menu is nice if you're on Mountain Lion because Apple got rid of a lot of the available resolution sizes for monitors. When you jump between conference rooms all day long this app becomes invaluable.

*DEVONthink Pro is something I'm playing with right now. I haven't even begun to unlock its potential, but between iCloud, Adobe Creative Connection, Google Drive, SkyDrive, DropBox, and my various harddrives I have a ton of files. DEVONthink helps me to catalog things by project, so it is great for staying organized.

*Prizmo applies OCR technology to scanned items and images. It is really nice for pealing text off of screen shots. If you work with people who like to send you a lot of screen shots and then need to turn those into tasks for others to work on, this sure makes life easier!

*iStat Menus is something I've used for a long time as a widget. I finally got their latest version and can monitor CPU power, RAM, and even set fan speeds all from the menu bar.

*MacUpdate Desktop has become one of my favorite new apps as it helps me to keep all of my applications up to date.


*purchased as part of a bundle sale at https://deals.macupdate.com
 
#47
Any updates to the already great apps listed? I took the plunge and invested in a MacBook Air this weekend. I'm hoping it will be the perfect machine when traveling to conferences. I no longer have to pack a PC for work purposes and an iPad for taking notes. I'm hoping this lightweight machine can do both. I have already downloaded Pages, Keynote, and Numbers.

Thanks!!
 
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