Executive Productivity – Mac Style

Ann and I like Macs because they are simple, elegant, low-maintenance productivity tools. One of our clients switched to Mac, recently, and asked for advice on productivity. Here are my thoughts, current as of 2006-2-21.

Applications: All apps can be found through www.versiontracker.com

System Apps:

Operating system – use Panther, Mac OS X 10.3.9 if you can. Tiger 10.4 has more quirks just yet.
Cocktail – run monthly.
DiskWarrior 3 – run monthly.
SuperDuper – create a clone backup of your hard drive on inexpensive external drives
Iclock – menubar clock.
Default Folder X – recent file and folder manager. Priceless.
LaunchBar – super-intuitive file and application launching.
Norton Antivirus – adequate AV protection

Productivity Apps:

QuickBooks Pro Mac
Quicken Mac
Office 2004 – for e-mail, contacts and calendar, Entourage is adequate for most.
Omnigraffle Pro – for diagrams. Think VISIO for Mac.
Now Up-To-Date and Contact – if Entourage doesn’t cut it for you, this is the next best thing.
Acrobat Professional – when you need to do more advanced things with PDF’s
Adobe Photoshop Elements – manipulating graphics.
Either Palm desktop 4.2.1.d or TheMissingSync – synchronize your contact and calendar to your smartphone or PDA.
Qumana.com – blog editor

Communication Apps:

Remote Desktop Connection for Windows – control remote PC’s.
Timbuktu Pro – the granddaddy of all cross-platform sharing applications.
Adium – manage multiple chat clients.

Websites for info:
www.missingmanual.com – the missing manual series is the best way to be a master of your computer and its applications.
www.macintouch.com – news for Macs
www.macfixit.com – troubleshooting for Macs

So there you go. A recipe for productive stability on a Mac.