If you use a Mac and might be in the market for things that could make your daily Mac life more efficient or better, I thought I’d draw your attention to this Black Friday sale, as I’ve tried five of the ten apps:
Each app is on sale individually (%50) or you can get %75 off if you buy the lot.
I have comments for 8 of the 10 apps, five of which I own or have owned, one of which I bought today. Bolded apps I own.
Unclutter - I’ve used this a few years and it’s now mandatory for me. It gives a rich clipboard history of up to 50 items that you can access just by rolling down from the top of the screen. There’s also a notes tab and a place to chuck files in up there.
Lasso - Bought this today at 50% off. Lets you quickly rearrange windows on a (default) 4 x 4 grid of real estate, save default layouts for favoured window combinations, etc. I’m enjoying it so far. Used it while writing this post.
Soulver - I bought this in the past. I don’t use it super frequently but it is useful when required. Sort of a text calculator that’s more practical to use than a calculator or calculator app. You open a document, type lines in (e.g. 3 + 4 x 8) and the answers just appear. The input stays in the document. Type multiple lines and the totals are added automatically. You could do this stuff in a spreadsheet, but Soulver is smaller, faster to get at, and accepts sloppier and wider-ranging input. You can mix English in, too. e.g. ‘Jen’s book cost $3 and Dave’s cost $4’.
Default Folder X - I owned a past version of this. It tries to help with a lot of common Finder nav/handiness situations like: I recently closed a window and want it back… I want to tell a file dialogue to go HERE IN ONE CLICK, not have to manually navigate my way back there again… It had so many features, I never got in the swing of it. Then it went out of date on me. So I haven’t updated (current version supports Sonoma) but it remains well reviewed.
DaisyDisk - I own this, bought it in the past. Quick, Star-Warsy circular visualiser of your hard drive’s storage use. You can move in and out of folders and watch the space chart redraw on the fly. It’s neat, but I never found it especially useful, as I’m well organised. If you’re the kind of person who reckons they might suddenly identify a huge bloat directory/app they don’t need while wandering their drive, especially if the point’s hammered home visually, you might benefit.
Name Mangler - Haven’t tried it. For batch renaming, I use freebie app NameChanger.
Scapple - Haven’t tried this. Looks like Twine without the interactivity i.e. make visual maps out of text and stuff. It tempted me but I don’t really need it and could potentially use Twine instead.
Rocket Typist - Haven’t used this, and I was interested until I researched it and found it poorly reviewed. The idea is to keep a handy snippet library of little bits and pieces you type all the time. This strikes me as a good idea. I may look up an alternative app myself.
-Wade