Top 10 Must-buy OS X Applications

I wanted to put down (for the help of new Switchers and myself) a list of applications I consider a top 10 of commercial (have to pay) applications for OS X. There are so many applications that are free on the Mac, that cover nearly everything you want to do, but for this post I wanted to cover some of the paid for applications. I know there are Open Source alternatives for most of this software, but sometimes there is just software that *IS* worth the few pounds/dollars/euros that it takes to buy them. Please bear in mind, that I am a web developer (or application developer depending on the time of day) so these are focused on what I do. So without further ado here is my list (in no particular order): 1) TextMate http://macromates.com/ &euro 39 This is the "Missing Text Editor" for the Mac. I use this all the time, and there is a CFML plugin for it, for when you need to edit those random CFML files. Obviously for projects I use CFEclipse, but a text editor is always a handy tool 2) QuickTime Pro http://www.apple.com/quicktime/pro/ £ 20 QuickTime already comes with OS X but what you really want is the very cheap Pro edition, if only to watch stuff in full screen, and not to mention its export capabilities! 3) Parallels http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/ $79.99 /VMWare Fusion http://www.vmware.com/beta/fusion/ $ 39.99 (for pre-orders) With the advent of the IntelMacs, we can now run Windows natively or in Virtualisation, so these are the best (maybe only) tools for the job! I classify both of these as one since they do the same job (I have been checking out VMWare Fusion for a few weeks using my BootCamp drive, and I am really enjoying it, it seems faster than Parallels) Don't boot up your Mac without at least one of these! 4) iWork http://www.apple.com/iwork/ $79 I do a lot of presentations and the best software for that is Keynote, it just runs rings round PowerPoint (now if only Adobe Connect would support either PDF or Keynote files!!) I dont use Pages as much, but its still a lot nicer than the interface-cluttering Microsoft Word. 5) Coda http://www.panic.com/coda/ $69 We all have some small sites to manage, and Coda, a new kid on the block brings in some real nice features for this. I think its worth it alone for the CSS and the Site panel (which it automatically creates thumbnails of your sites!) I haven't bought this yet, but I am really liking it. EDIT: the latest version of Coda supports CFML too. 6) Adobe Fireworks CS3 http://www.adobe.com/products/fireworks/ $299 I am not a designer but I love Fireworks. I have been using it for years and its the best web graphic design software I have used. I know Adobe Photoshop is the daddy but the ability to do everything web design related in one package (down to creating the HTML for you) is just too good. I love this app! 7) Aqua Data Studio http://www.aquafold.com/ $399 There are apps for every database out there, but if you are connecting to a variety of databases this rules. Unfortunately because of the price I have to install Windows and use Microsoft MSSQL Enterprise Manager, but if I could afford this, Windows would end up just being a shell for Internet Explorer. This is a must if you do a lot of database work. (Aqua Data Studio v4.7 is actually free, but it doesn't have all the features I would like it to have) 8) OmniGraffle http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/ from $79 If you are doing a lot of diagrams, be they UML to system architecture, OmniGraffle makes it really nice with very impressive results. 9) OmniPlan http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniplan/ $149.95 I always hated Microsoft Project, there is something evil about it (maybe just because I am a developer) but when I had a go on Omni Plan, I thought "hey, I *CAN* get into project management!". As with OmniGraffle its results are impressive as well as pretty, and hey, if you are going to be staring at something all day, you might as well be staring at something good right? 10) Delicious Library http://www.delicious-monster.com/ $40 This is a great little tool if you have lots of DVD's (and books) as well as appreciative friends who like borrowing them. The main thing about this is that you can very easily create a whole library of your DVD's simply by scanning the bar-code using your iSight camera. You can then have a list of who you have lent out your DVD's too as well as loads more info and suggestions (driven by Amazon I think?) So, there it is, my 10 must-buy applications for OS X. Edit: If you think this post was usefult, why dont you Digg it?

19 comments - Posted by Mark Drew at 12:13 PM - Categories: wishlist | personal | apple | ASK MD | adobe | tips

Flights ready for Scotch!

I have just booked my flights (is it really worth it to go from London to Edinburgh?) to Scotch! I shall be getting there on Wednesday night and leaving on Saturday, so its a pretty brief time away, in a way, that is good, allows me to get everything ready for my CFEclipse presentation (more software than presentation) as well as the CF8 AJAX presentation later on in the day. Now that is 2 reasons you should go to Scotch, nevermind the free beer in the ColdFusion Celebration! Now to find a hotel (the conference is not in a hotel for a change!)...

4 comments - Posted by Mark Drew at 12:43 PM - Categories: scotch on the rocks | cfeclipse | coldfusion | adobe | ajax | CFConferences

CFEclipse to the MAX?

Did you know you can suggest topics for this years Adobe Max? I don't know about you, but I think the people's favourite free IDE for ColdFusion should be there, don't you think? Not saying anything but *hint* *hint*, Barcelona isn't that far from London, and I think I might know someone that knows a bit about CFEclipse that could go and talk. Up to you really, but you could go and suggest a topic. Now, what comes to mind eh? Did I also mention, that at each conference, I shall be unveiling a MAJOR new feature of the product? I am sure I did. So the first feature, called Project:U will be...

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1 comments - Posted by Mark Drew at 4:04 PM - Categories: cfObjective | cfeclipse | coldfusion | max | adobe | CFConferences

Adobe Round Table tonight...

Tonight I am off to Olympia 2 for the Adobe Round Table (I sound like a knight!) on the future of the internet as an applications platform. Should be interesting, and its a nice diversion from a normal UK CFUG presentation. Nothwistanding I shall be presenting ColdSpring next week a the UK CFUG.

0 comments - Posted by Mark Drew at 12:16 PM - Categories: ukcfug | adobe

cf_teachers (sung to Daft Punk's Teachers)

Ben Forta, Sean Corfield, Ray Camden, Spike Milligan in the house. Joe Rinehart, Doug Hughes, Simeon Bateman, Rob Rohan, Ollie Tupman in the house.
Jared Rypka-Hauer, Nathan Strutz,  Mike Nimer, Tim Buntel is out the house. 

Just a little sing song for all the people who have helped and taught me things about ColdFusion and CFEclipse along the way.

THANK YOU!
(Check out the song on )

2 comments - Posted by Mark Drew at 5:25 PM - Categories: model-glue | cfeclipse | personal | coldfusion | fusebox | flex | webdev | reactor | adobe

Adobe adds documentation to Eclipse

Notice I didnt say CFEclipse? Anyway, in the latest round of plugins that Adobe has released, with the new CF/Flex Super Wizard they have also included the ColdFusion documentation under the help menu. This is great news for all you developers.

One strange thing I should point out. All these plugins which are labeled under "Flex" are actually very good Coldfusion plugins, the RDS data viewer (unless you are on a Mac, where you are stuffed if you want the Query Builder tool), the RDS File explorer, the RDS -> DAO/Active Rectod wizard and now the ColdFusion documentation. They are all branded under the labs as Flex and you have to click on the "Download Flex Builder" before you get to them. They are very handy even if you dont even touch Flex (like me)

I am now not sure what to do with the inline help for CFEclipse. If all the developers are using Flex Builder, and using all the CF extension/plugins then all is fine. If not, then we would have to deploy the CFHelp docs and add our own extension to go to the right help item. So you could then have two versions of the documentation, which is mad.

Adobe seem to be doing very well adding features to Flex (which are really very useful CF Features too). Now not sure if I should continue doing work on CFE, and just let them do it all.

7 comments - Posted by Mark Drew at 12:36 PM - Categories: cfeclipse | personal | coldfusion | flex | adobe

Why CFMX wont run nicely on my MacBook ... yet

Ok, so its a bit of an alarmist headline, but I went through a whole procedure of installing CFMX to run on JRun and THAT runs (see my previous post) which is fair enough, but I dont like the following:

• putting all my sites in /Applications/JRun4/servers/default/cfusion, where I cant run PHP and other websites (I feel its untidy but that is just me)
• having the context as /cfusion and the url on a port like: http://localhost:8100/cfusion/
• having to start JRun manually.

Ok, so lets go through these and fix each one, and this is why the title of the post, to kill the first two I thought that I could manually deploy the wsconfig, since I was getting errors and the gui version didnt see my apache webserver: Then I tried the console version of wsconfig
Ok, so if it is just getting errors, lets do it manually as defined by this document over at macromedia

I wont detail how I did this as the document describes how to manually do all of this, and then I come to the last part, which is where you get the mod_jrun.so from the expanded wsconfig.jar, the options didnt have what I was looking for:



So, being the person I am, I tried them all and got the following error each time:

So that is where I am at. If I could get the source to mod_jrun.so and recompile it under my MacBook Pro it might work. I tried the intel, but that didnt work, I tried the linux and the mac versions still with no use. If anybody has any ideas, let me know!

EDIT: Simeon Bateman pointed me to this article on rebuilding the mod_jrun.so! so I shall be giving this a go tonight to see if I can get it all working smoothly!

11 comments - Posted by Mark Drew at 10:48 AM - Categories: coldfusion | apple | adobe