This is the full list of all the productivity apps that I’ve mentioned in various postings over the last three weeks. It is given in alphabetical order with product ratings:
1Password – Passwords and Form Filling
I have 1Password primarily for one reason. At some time in the future the Mac will also be threatened with malware. So I’ve bought 1Password so that even if a keylogger were running on the Mac no-one would be able to get at the passwords that I really do want to protect. As it happens 1Password is also useful for form filling and it allows me to manage more than one identity. The form filling is not so impressive given that FireFox can do a lot of that anyway, but multiple identities is good for when I prefer to be anonymous (which is not often). 1Password is a security app that costs real money.
FireFox – Browsing
I’d like to proclaim that FireFox is wonderful, but I can’t bring myself to. It’s just a great deal better than the alternatives, for two reasons. First, the base functionality and configurability beats the competition and secondly, the plug-ins extend its functionality wonderfully.
The tabbed browsing extensions are particularly good. For me, the second best browser is Opera. Safari is OK and IE is a dead duck on the Mac (I’m not going to invoke Parallels just to surf the web). However, the sad reality is that the browser is more of a constraint to productivity than an aid. Browsers in general are mouse oriented, when they don’t have to be.
iStat Pro – Monitoring Software
iStat Pro is a neat piece of freeware which summarizes the information you get from the Activity Monitor and displays it in the menu bar, with drop-down menus providing extra information. It also has the virtue that it gives you a drop-down calendar, allowing you to set clocks for different time zones. If you think the Mac’s behaving strangely then a quick glance at the Menu Bar gives you an idea of what’s happening. It shows memory usage, cpu, hard disk used and network traffic.
iKey: The Hotkey Productivity Aid
There are other Mac programs similar to iKey, but iKey was the one that I tried out in depth. iKey is a kind of wizard-based programming environment where you never have to write a line of code. You just select various options and type in the keystrokes. You use it to script keyboard entries and to script mouse movements. You can specify whether the script applies to all applications or just to a specific application. You can then attach whatever script you have created to a Hotkey combination. For more information on iKey read this post: The Fulcrum of Mac Productivity: Hotkeys
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I have 1Password primarily for one reason. At some time in the future the Mac will also be threatened with malware. So I’ve bought 1Password so that even if a keylogger were running on the Mac no-one would be able to get at the passwords that I really do want to protect. As it happens 1Password is also useful for form filling and it allows me to manage more than one identity. The form filling is not so impressive given that FireFox can do a lot of that anyway, but multiple identities is good for when I prefer to be anonymous (which is not often). 1Password is a security app that costs real money.
