Software That Changed My Life
I recently came across this article (via The Unofficial Apple Weblog. I thought it was a great idea and I figured I’d brainstorm about software that I may consider life-changing to me.
1. iTunes. I used to tout this as quite simply the most elegant application ever. It still is, despite some quirks as features are added (I don’t think they have quite master the podcatching, for example).
I was a big SoundJam fan in the past and thought it was a bummer when they were bought out by Apple. iTunes 1 was nice, but lacked a lot of SoundJam’s features. But then, it got better. Repeatedly. I don’t miss line-in recording direct to MP3 anymore because the user experience is so gosh darn good.
2. Macromedia Fireworks. Very rarely do I open Adobe Photoshop. Don’t get me wrong, Photoshop is a great application. But rarely do I do any work for print anymore. I find that I can better get a grasp of color within Macromedia Fireworks (I used to open the same file in Fireworks and Photoshop all the time and the color would be different. When looked at in a browser, it looked like the Fireworks file. Not sure why, but that made the decision pretty easy for me.)
I often don’t use Fireworks for what others use it for, too. Lots of folks like to slice up big images to build HTML from (argh! where are the standards!) or make dynamic drop-down menus (I hear Fireworks is using CSS now). I use it for design—not just actions and optimization.
For example, when I need to build something like this mockup, I do it in Fireworks.
3. iMovie. I used to make movies of my cat in iMovie. That was fun. Then I had a daughter. This is where the true power of iMovie comes in.
At six months of age and one year of age, I produced 45-60 minute movies of my daughter, Ella, complete with short video segments, animated photos, and music. Family members love it, I love it, and some day I hope Ella loves. it.
4. BBEdit, BBEdit Lite, TextWrangler. How the hell can a text editor change your life? Well, I can’t explain it, but when it is made by Bare Bones software, it can.
At my previous job, we had the full version of BBEdit (OS 9 days) and I had the Lite version at home. Well, at my new job, they bought me Dreamweaver so I felt bad about asking for a $199 text editor, so I started using TextWrangler, Bare Bones’ new free text editor.
How is this thing free? It is so good that I barely miss BBEdit. I actually have an old copy of BBEdit Lite installed just for the “Copy Lines Containing” and “Auto Number Rows” features. I bet if I looked a bit, I could get these into TextWrangler, but then I’d officially give up BBEdit Lite… which might make for a sad day.
5. Out of the Park Baseball 2. Well, the last app on the list is the only Windows app (I run it with Virtual PC) on the list. And the sheer amount of my time I give this app probably means this list is in “no particular order.”
I use OOTP2 to run my baseball sim league, the Ted Williams Memorial League. It is a (pretty much) text based baseaball simulator that has such features as career mode, a solid financial model, and an easy interface. There are a ton of new versions (including a Mac version of the latest), but upgrading about five versions is pretty much impossible for an existing league. Besides, I’ve used the new version and there’s just too daunting of a user experience. This version is simple, and while buggy, it gets the job done.