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On the Mac, TextExpander.
On my phone, overcast.
Both of them are essential to daily life.
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Favorite, to me, doesn’t mean the “best” app or for that matter the app I’ve used the most. It doesn’t
mean the app that has benefitted my life the most, either. Favorite doesn’t mean any of those things.
Plain and simple—my favorite app ever (independent of platform) is ResEdit. The fun it brought was
almost equal to its usefulness. It made other apps easier to use, more powerful, and even more fun.
Sometimes it was all about looking under the hood of various files, poking around in their resources,
extracting some for use in other ways or replacing them with customized alternatives. ResEdit FTW.
To repurpose a famous Homer Simpson quote: "ResEdit – is there anything it can’t do?"
Additional favorites from the Windows platform…
Two apps which were/are both immensely useful and joy-giving: PowerGREP and Microsoft Access.
Additional favorites from the modern Mac platform…
Three apps that “check all the boxes” for me: Adobe Illustrator, Sublime Text, and VMware Fusion.
Although each of those has worthy substitutes that I have also appreciated over the years, such as:
Freehand & Inkscape, BBedit & Atom Editor, and Parallels Desktop & VirtualBox.
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OmniOutliner and its predecessor MORE. It’s a great way to focus thoughts. On the iPad, GoodNotes. It has replaced 25 years of heavy yellow-pad use.
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Favorite App Ever — SpeedScript on a Commodore 64 was the first program that I opperated by thought. Given 40 column screens and, and… It got so ingrained that just laying down words was the act. It danced.
And no i do not want to have the tech of yesteryear. Ulysses, Drafts, and services like Audible are wonderful. But actually mastering an app is a real kick.
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Favourite app for me changes so frequently but as of this hour, its Todoist. In my humble opinion, the fastest way to add tasks to your Task Management App is through Todoist. The natural language support is something that no other task manager has. Not sure why others don’t have it but certainly a game changer for me. The same reason for using Fantastical then any other calendar app.
My favorite app ever is this adorable little game called Zoombinis! I use to play it on my Mac. I used it with my primary students. My friend Julie and I talked both loved the game. You might remember it when you a kid. I did a search while reading this post and it found it in the App Store for my iOS iPad mine 4.i can’t thank you enough for this forum!
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Hi!, Tim et al. Does Pixelmator have a feature wherein they can merely clean up a photo, aside from the adjust colors?
@Katie not sure what you’re asking exactly. It has a tool to ‘repair’ spots in photos (eg. blemishes or removing things from the background)
A vote here for Launchbar, gateway into my Mac.
Soulver is pretty darn awesome. I love being able to type math and link lines. It’s magic once you learn how to use it - I always feel like I’m showing someone a magic trick when i introduce them to it. Haha
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Dropbox! I know that people will say its a service not an app but it really did change my life when I first started using it… and of course it is actually an app as well. With computers in three locations (including a Windows one) plus my mobile devices, it was an app that linked them all up and completely changed the way I worked. No more USB sticks and portable hard drives. Yay!
Coming in a close second is Evernote and then probably the humble Alfred 3.
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Hazel would have to be my favourite app, so useful but also so much fun to be had when building automated workflows.
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I’ll have to say TextExpander with 1PASSWORD and Evernote a VERY close second. This is despite the fact that I only use TextExpander on MacOS and almost never on IOS. The other two I use all the time on both. Nonetheless…
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@ijd65 Hazel is so easy to forget about. I use Hazel for so much automation and the fact that it’s done completely in the background, I don’t even think about it. Fantastic application!
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Sorry this is a dumb question. Apps are tools and the best tool depends on what you are trying to do and when. At different points in my life, my favorite tool may have been MacDraw, iMovie, Blender, or Scrivener. But there’s a lot that we take for granted now that we did not always have. Having a Contacts app that can be backed up is kind of fundamental. Before Contacts on the Mac, a family member had a standalone Sharp PDA that allowed you to store contacts. One day the thing upped and died, taking all the contacts to the grave with it.
If I had to nominate a desert island app (presuming a way to power devices on the island) it would be iThoughts / iThoughts X.
Or Xcode. Give a person an app, they have an app. Give them Xcode, they can make their own apps. Although fishing may be more important on a desert island.
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Tim, I’m trying to restore a photo in which its exposure has faded. I tried to use the light-dark feature and it came out wrong. Several years ago I had an app on the Mac and it restored a 50 year old photo instantly. No idea the name of the app. I think Pixelmator is certainly one of the best iOS photo softwares out there. I wish these apps came with manuals! The nerd in me use to read them cover to cover.
@Katie did you try adjusting brightness? On iOS, click on Paint Brush>Adjust Colors and then swipe right to left to find the brightness pane. I’m not at my Mac right now but you may be able to search for brightness within the Pixelmator app. Hope that helps!
I’m a novice that tinkers with photos, but maybe others in the group will be able to offer more suggestions. Good luck!
Thanks, Tim! I’ll try it!! I’m a novice myself! I use to be pretty good at it for an amateur. I’m wracking my brain trying to remember which app i used for the old photos. It was marvelous in a lot of ways. I don’t have a computer so I’m limited. Hope to see you around!
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