Peter Cooper asks: “what are your tools of the trade?”
Just sitting there
MacBook Pro 15″. I like to take my work places, and by places I mean coffee shops with WiFi access. I prefer back-friendly 13″ notebooks, but needed the real estate, and compromised on a 15″ MBP. SSD, and I can’t imagine ever switching back to platters; in spite of the 85GB official capacity, it still got 3GB to spare. Black Screensavrz keep keyboard from clawing screen.
Dell 2408WFP. I read in enough places that, if you can’t afford the Cinema displays, go with the 2408WFP. White (but not the right kind of white) Mini-DP to DP adapter by Circuit Assembly. For dual uplifting action, I got the MBP sitting on an mStand.
Apple keyboard. Bought 2nd hand because I didn’t know if I’m going to like it. Still not sure that I like it: it’s a good keyboard, looks awesome, feels and sounds right, but it’s very similar yet not identical to the MBP keyboard, which gets me confused whenever I switch.
Mighty mouse. Inherited wife’s old one. Biggest gripe is having to clean the knob every few days.
Sony MDR-V300. Reasonably comfortable ear muffs, had these for years (read: good build quiality), good sound quality and insulation.
Uni-ball Vision RT and Moleskin Softcover. The Uni-ball has nice grip, effortless flow, and the tip retracts when you slide it into a pocket. Feels nice against the Moleskin, too. For drawings, though, I prefer something with a more precise needle.
Old Navy coaster. Can’t say I recommend this brand in particular, but having a coaster between drink and table is generally a good idea.
Timbuk2 Laptop Messenger and Alpinestars Vader 2. Got the Timbuk2 a million years ago. It’s holding together surprisingly well, built like a tank. Since the messenger bag doesn’t work well on a bike, I also have an Alpinestars backpack with a laptop pocket. The trick to quickly switching bags: pack all the loose stuff into zipped plastic bags — the bags that pack 3-pairs-underwear are just the right size.
Bouncing on the Dock
MacVim. There’s no excuse to using any other Vim app on the Mac.
Fluid. I use Safari for regular browsing, got 5~10 tabs open at any one time. Separately, I’ve got four Fluid apps: one for GMail, another for team work, with tabs for Bantam, Basecamp and Google Sites. Third app for offline docs: Rails API, Ruby gems and Visual jQuery. Fourth app used exclusively for testing, and appropriately named Localhost.
Tweetie. On the Mac and on the iPhone.
Things. On the Mac and on the iPhone, mostly for personal stuff.
Parallels. Because people still use IE. Sigh. I bought a license way back to make the PC->Mac transition easier. Not too happy with the lagging release schedule, or the occasional (though rare) grey screen of death, but also not dissatisfied enough to switch.
LittleSnapper. Take, collect and organize snapshots. Would be awesome tool once it stops crashing every other snapshot.
iTerm. Still prefer it over Terminal.
GitX. I fire it up from the command line, so it opens in the current directory, stage a commit and close it down. I do everything else from the command line.
Pomodoro. It’s easier to tackle boring work when you get scheduled breaks. And going on a forced break while in the intense of work gives you just enough time to reflect — you may be solving challenging problems, but are they worth solving? I keep the working list on a Moleskin, it works better than any high-tech alternative I tried.
iWork. Keynote is the most pleasant presentation tool I’ve used, including when I’m just making a presentation to myself (helps organize ideas). Pages is my preferred tool for drafting and writing, except that it sucks at sharing, so I don’t get to use it as often. Still trying to figure out what I can use Numbers for.
OmniGraffle. Indispensable for mind mapping, visual thinking and most frequently: wire framing and layouts.
S3Hub. Keeps the mess that is my S3 accounts under (some) control.
BackBlaze and DropBox. BackBlaze is continuous backup for $5/month, saved me once when I had to switch machines. I use DropBox for real-time versioned backup of hot directories (documents, desktop, etc). Less fussy than Time Machine, works away from home, no hardware to worry about. I also put reading material on my desktop, then read it from the iPhone in bed. Oh, and occasionally I use it to share files with others.
Erik
Assaf
Toby