This post had its nidus in a discussion on Twitter, here, here and here. DrCris’s post is here. My twist on this theme is more of a personal and historical approach to Mac software, hardware and practices.
In 1988 (and on), it was a Macintosh Plus, Jasmine 40 (MB) backpack, Phaser 800 (KB) external floppy drive and an Apple ImageWriter. Those were the days of System 3 and the Mac Plus provided a faithful ride through 1990 and System 6. Core software was:
As one of the chief-residents in emergency medicine, I used Trapeze to schedule 18 residents for over 2,000 shifts. MORE outlines automatically created slide-like presentations. And HyperCard was used to create HyperSpine—a series of HyperCard stacks that taught cervical spine x-ray interpretation and drove the Slice of Life IV laserdisc to show the corresponding x-ray images.
In 1998 (and previously), it was a Macintosh Quadra 650, LaCie external hard drives and Visioneer scanners (and PaperPort). This was the time of System 7 and System 8—the last to run on the original 68K processors. Companions at this time were Newton MessagePad 120 and 2100 (still running). Core software was:
- PaperPort, later replaced with Adobe Acrobat to provide a stable digital document format (PDF) (anyone remember Mainstay’s Marco Polo, lost a lot of digital documents in that proprietary format)
- Chena Software’s Fair Witness, later renamed InfoDepot is by far the application, next to HyperCard, that I miss the most. The closest modern Mac application to Fair Witness is OmniOutliner. Fair Witness has the most unique source for its name.
- Filemaker
- Word, Excel, PowerPoint
- Eudora and Claris Emailer for email
- AOL, CompuServe and eWorld (a harbinger of .Mac and MobileMe) were replaced with Netscape, Internet Explorer.
- BBEdit for text editing
From 1999 to mid-2006, I used Windows machines only and with the demise of the Newtons moved first to Windows CE devices and then to Palm and Treo devices. Core software was:
- Still using Visioneer scanners and Paperport, eventually converting completely to PDF format.
- Word, Excel and Powerpoint
- Emal; Outlook predominantly, replaced with Thunderbird
- Browsers: Internet Explorer initially, replaced with Firefox and Opera
- Desktop Notetaking: OneNote, TexNotes, and mostly MindManager
- Server-based Notetaking: Mediawiki
- Web-development applications: Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Homesite, TopStyle
- Newsreader: FeedDemon
- Communications: uReach, Skype (Skype-in)
Now, in 2008, the core hardware consist of an iMac and a MacBook Pro, Drobo for onsite storage, Fujitsu ScanSnap, Time Capsule, Airport Extreme, HP Photosmart C7280, and iPhone. Now the system is Leopard and the core applications (including web services) are:
- Safari primarily, Firefox where Safari does not render well or where I need a browser that supports Gears (e.g., WordPress 2.6, Google Sites)
- Mail, iCal and Address Book have now been replace primarily by Gmail (includes Contacts) and Google Calendar. (the secret sauce for keeping Google apps, Mac desktop apps, MobileMe and iPhone sync’d—BusySync)
- News Reading/Bookmarking: Google Reader, Google Shared and Google Notebook
- Notetaking (desktop, web-based, iPhone): Evernote, Google Notebook
- Pages has replaced Word; Keynote has replaced Powerpoint; Excel has many features lacking in Numbers
- Task/Project management: OmniFocus (syncs well with iPhone OmniFocus app) and OmniPlan
- Preview and Adobe Acrobat Pro for digital viewing and markup; Acrobat for creating and managing complex documents and forms; Papers for journals
- Image management: Aperture (desktop) and Picasa (web-based, Flickr) is an alternative
- Writing: Scrivener
- Asset management: Delicious Library and ROV scanner
- Filemaker remains the database workhorse
- Blogging/web-presence applications: WordPress, Google Sites, Textmate, CSSEdit, Transmit, Marsedit
- Social web: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
- Twitter Clients: Twitterrific (desktop and iPhone), Twhirl, Twinkle, TweetDeck
- Privacy Management: 1Password (desktop, web and iPhone)
- Misc core apps on Mac: Finder (it really is an app, esp. Cover Flow), Activity Monitor, Quicksilver and TextEdit
- Offsite storage: Amazon S3 (either via JungleDisk or using Transmit and SFTP), Mozy is very close
- Communications: uReach, Skype (Skype-in and Call Recorder)
- Instant Messaging: GTalk (Gmail can be set to enable GTalk and AIM and create a transcript), AIM and multi-protocol desktop client Adium
- Virtualization: Windows XP and Fusion (I have Parallels as well, minor differences); used Fusion today to view CT scans on a CD with a windows-based viewer.
- Medical apps: Epocrates (web-based and iPhone), PEPID (web-based only)
Some finally thoughts on practices:
- File naming style: simple, consistent and implemented; I use the format: descriptor_YYMMDDx#.ext
- Repository or registry of filename with a description and tags; I use Filemaker and files are assigned: project, status and tags and a description
- Go as digital as possible, Spotlight is our friend
- When going digital you need to consider onsite and offsite storage solutions (supra)
- Storage is cheap, you should be saving and not syncing
- Consider solutions that integrate well across services and devices; e.g., consistency of email or calendaring from desktop to web to portable device, e.g., iPhone
- Avoid proprietary formats because of the problems of content being trapped in a legacy form (don’t be a legacy orphan); notable exceptions Word and Excel
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