My Fab Five
This week on the The B&B Podcast Episode 7: Fab Five where Ben Brooks and Shawn Blanc talk about the five applications they would need to remain productive on their Macs. There choices are not based upon their five favorite applications, but the five apps they would need to get by if their computer was a desert island with no other applications on the horizon.
They start by counting Mac OS X as an application, but none of the integrated applications that come with it. I won’t include Mac OS X in my Fab Five because I believe a platform to run all of my applications is as essential as the unmentioned computer itself. (Consider the computer to be the sand, and the operating system to be that lone palm tree on the picturesque desert island in your head.) What I will uphold is the rule that none of the apps in the Applications folder would be present unless I specifically bring them along with me. After all a desert island would not be a uninhabitable destination if it came with all of the goodies Apple packs into Mac OS X for free. And just so that everybody is clear all of the frameworks for reading PDFs, playing MP3s, watching movies, and running my apps would be present as well as the Finder at no additional cost to my Fab Five app count. (After all those capabilities aren’t in the Mac OS X Applications folder now are they.) Finally as a sign of the times and to make my Fab Five challenge more interesting I am limiting my choices to applications that are available in the Mac App Store or on Mac OS X already. (Screen sharing applications are obviously excluded because that would be cheating.)
I already use Mail for everyday email so it would be hard moving to the browser no matter how well MobileMe’s web mail mimics the desktop Mac OS X mail client. In addition to writing, reading, and responding to electronic correspondence Apple’s Mail is a capable RSS reader with Notes, To-dos, and HTML template features. I don’t use any of that functionality today, but Mail’s additional features might look pretty appetizing compared to the alternatives of coconuts and salt water.
Including Coda in my Fab Five is a little like cheating. Not only is it a capable text editor designed for coding HTML and CSS, but it includes a dedicated file manager, FTP client, web browser, and terminal application at no extra cost to my app count. With Coda I can stay productive writing and coding my websites, uploading articles and templates to Egg Freckles, and browsing the results all from one window. Dragging a PDF, MP3, or movie file into Coda’s web browser plays all three, and with terminal access there is almost no limit to what Coda can do. Coda is the Professor to most app’s Gilligan on an otherwise barren island.
In recent weeks Pixelmator has become more than just a Photoshop alternative, it is now my go to app for all manner of image editing. Available exclusively in the Mac App Store, Pixelmator can perform many of the same actions and effects as Photoshop for under $100. And because it can open all of the same RAW formats as Mac OS X it makes a decent digital darkroom as well. You never know when you will get the perfect sunset on a island all to yourself.
Until Pixelmator gets vector tools or Adobe Illustrator makes its way to the Mac App Store Vector Designer is the next best thing for image creation and manipulation without jaggies. My latest Egg Freckles Newton MessagePad backdrop was drawn entirely in VectorDesigner before being imported into Pixelmator for slicing. I just wish this app had better performance, and pixel perfect lines for web export. It is hard for me to go without an adequate vector drawing app even while stranded on an island in the middle of the ocean.
The Dropbox application isn’t available in the Mac App Store because its subscription based pricing isn’t compatible with Apple’s terms, and its syncing functionality requires admin authentication. That being said I couldn’t imagine living without it. Even if I am the only person on my desert island with no one to share with, and no other computers to sync with everyone needs a backup right?
So I cheated. Dropbox isn’t available in the Mac App Store, and if I had my choice of almost any app I would have included half of the Adobe Creative Suite, Lightroom, NetNewsWire, BBEdit, Transmit, and Twitterrific. But being stranded on a desert island means making the hard choices, and if I was stuck with only five apps these would be it.