Escalation. Costner brings a knife, Connery brings a gun. Wayne dresses in a bat suit, a smiling psycho gets green hair and a purple suit. And I write an article about my iPad Home screen, so Peter goes and posts about his Mac dock. Well, two can play the escalation game. So, here's what's on my Retina MacBook Pro dock right now!
- Wallpaper: I'm Captain Default, live with it.
- Mac App Store: It's where I get and re-download most of my Mac apps.
- iTunes: I use iCloud for sync so the only reason I keep iTunes around — aside from the occasional DFU restore — is to convert our podcast files to MP3 and add metadata before I upload. There are other tools that can do both, but iTunes is easy.
- iBooks: I don't really read on my Mac but I like having all of Apple's stores all lumped together.
- Mail: I have both my personal iCloud and work Gmail going into Apple's default mail client. I like unified inboxes.
- Safari: I use Safari for 80% of my web browsing. I do keep Chrome installed for occasional Flash files and Google services, but I vastly prefer the look and experience of Safari, and the ties to iOS Safari as well.
- System Preferences: I could probably remove System Preferences from my Dock but I sort of like the comfort of it being there, omnipresent.
- iPhoto: Thanks to Photo Stream all the screenshots and photos I take from my iPhone and iPad show up in iPhoto for easy dragging to Photoshop, almost instantaneously. - Free with new Macs - Download now
- Aperture: I mostly use Aperture to do a few quick adjustments before right-clicking and "editing in Photoshop". That's why I use it over Lightroom. The lack of updates and features have minimal impact and I don't need the workflow Lightroom provides. - $79,99 - Download now
- Photoshop: I've been using it for decades. It's muscle memory at this point. Almost all imaging I do is done in Photoshop. (And I kinda like the new Creative Cloud subscription model...) - $(variable) - Download now
- Napkin: How we do all the how-to diagrams we do on iMore. There's nothing faster or easier. Most of the staff here use it now. - $39.99 - Download now
- Tweetbot: There are several great Twitter apps for Mac but Tweetbot fits the way my brain works. - $19.99 - Download now
- iMessage: Most of my friends and family have Macs and use iPhones and iPads so we all stay connected via iMessage. Yeah, there are rare glitches, but 95% of the time it works fast and flawlessly, and it has apps on mobile and desktop.
- Skype: The Mobile Nations office phone. When I'm working, I'm on Skype. And angry about it!. - Free - Download now
- TextExpander: Most of what I write online is in Markdown and TextExpander makes entering frequent passages, links, data, and boiler plate so fast, so easy, that I don't know how anyone can work without it. - $34.95 - Download now
- Feeder: I produce 5 or so podcasts a week here at iMore and every one of their RSS feeds is burned using Feeder. - $39.99 - Download now
- BBEdit: If it's plain text, chances are I wrote it in BBEdit. For what I do, it's like bringing a nuke to a fist fight, but I like the idea that I'll likely never out grow what I'm typing it. - $49.99 - Download now
- Coda 2: I don't manually edit web sites as often as I used to — we have far smarter people for that on our tech team! — but whenever I have to tweak a header or CSS file or do anything else on any server, I do it with Panic's Coda 2. - $74.99 - Download now
There are a couple other apps I use all the time but aren't in my menu bar, like Final Cut Pro and Garage Band, because I'd forget to quit them when I was done if I got overly used to seeing them there, and they hit the resources hard enough I don't want to forget to quit them. There's also a bunch of stuff, Like Dropbox, 1Password, and Fantastical, that I use all the time but that sit in the menu bar rather than the Dock. Let me know if you're curious about them and I'll do a follow up about what's in my menu bar. Also, fair's fair — now that I've shown you mine, tell me yours! What's in your Mac Dock right now?
