- Photobooth
- Photos
- Preview
- QuickTime Player
- Safari
- ScreenFlow
- Siri
- Stickies
- TextEdit
- Time Machine
- Terminal
- Xcode
- Activity Monitor
- Airport Utility
- Console
- Disk Utility
- Migration Assistant
- Other (name it in the comments)
I suppose my #2 favorite app would be Firefox. But I’ve discussed that at length on other threads.
WRT Apple apps, past or present, that would have to be iTunes. More specifically, version 12.6.5. This was be the last version to include:
- Podcasts (the standalone app was far inferior, to me)
- iOS app management, including home screen organization
- The Internet radio stream directory (today, you need to know the URL in order to stream from a non-Apple source).
After that, Apple started removing features I liked, and later split iTunes into separate apps for Music, Podcasts, Movies, etc. - none of which worked as well as when they were all together in iTunes.
Well, David, if there is one thing we all know about Apple, it is they love to pull the rug out from under us. We enjoy, and become quite accustomed to a certain app, and then something like what you describe happens. I too remember when they dumbed down iTunes.
I actually like Microsoft ToDo, I use it a lot in work.
Lightroom (Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, to give it its full title). Fantastic piece of software.
I use Calibre to manage my ebook library. The conversion feature is really nice.
I really liked FrameMaker by Frame Technology. It was bought by Adobe and discontinued for the Mac.
Things, by Cultured Code.
Not just the finest To-Do/task tracking application I’ve used in 25 years, on both computers and handheld devices; but probably the most elegant and flexible user interface I’ve encountered as a computer user and software developer. Allows me to do it “my way” – but in a consistently intuitive manner.
Runs on my Mac, iPhone and iPad. My primary Life Hack tool – allows me to organize and prioritize my days. (Very good support, too, though I have rarely used it.)
Gilken, don’t you just love it when one company buys out another company’s product just to kill it? They can be ruthless, and we end customers are the ones who suffer for it, particularly after we have depended on a particular app for so long in our daily workflow.
Xee 2.2 (32-bit only). Xee was my assigned default over Preview. It was the fastest, no-nonsense image viewer, parser, culler I have ever used. Just about any feature could be assigned to a keyboard shortcut. As you flipped through batches of images it was a simple matter to fling each one to different, pre-set folders or delete altogether. While Xee did not have editing per-se, you could crop and re-save images in a few different formats, making it easy to create a lightweight JPEG from a PS file, for example.
Xee 2.2 became more unstable in 10.13 and stopped working in 10.14. Sadly, the next major release of Xee3 never fully delivered and was unstable.
I have since moved on to the extremely capable FastRawViewer which has a lot of Xee’s functionality and adds much more (except PS file handling). It just doesn’t launch quite as fast. (NOTE: FastRawViewer does NOT handle WebP images so it did not require an update due to the recent, wide-spread critical updates to all web browsers, OS’, etc.)
Another favorite is the XLD app (X Lossless Decoder) which is useful for audio file conversions and accurate CD rips. Batch processing is quite useful for conversions.
GNU-Emacs is definitely my all-time favourite application (been using it for the past thirty five years and it’s never let me down) but an honourable mention also for HyperCard. It saddens me that there’s no application quite like it on the market now - would love to have a modern day HyperCard running on my iPad!
Preview - hands down, IMO. It does so many simple tasks quickly and relatively easily. A bit like the multi-tool of the Mac userscape.
Just wish Apple would improve it more than they have done previously over the years, as it could be made better with OCR built-in, for example, and/or more reliable text box entry, et al.