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Moving to the Open Source World: Mac Software I Use

10 September 2010

This is the second post in the series. In this post I am going to look at the software I currently use, the ones I am basically going to have to replace. There are a hell of a lot of good apps on the Mac and I will honestly be sad to replace these apps.

  • iBank – By IGG Software is one of the main apps I use for my accounting, it will be hard beaten to be replaced!
  • OmniFocus – I use this both on my mac and on my iPhone, I think the iPhone version will be the hardest one to replace.
  • OmniGraffle – I use this in my PhD thesis for making sexy diagrams, I think I can replace this but the new app may not be as good.
  • AdiumX – Instant messenger (Open Source)
  • Apple Mail – Mail client
  • Transmit – FTP client from Panic
  • iTunes – We all know what this one is, biggest part of this is the iPhone syncing and also getting all my music into non DRM versions before swapping
  • DevonThink Pro – This will also be a big app to move from. DevonThink is awesome, I use it for storing all my mail ever received.
  • 1Password – Used religiously to store all my passwords to websites and credit card details to make my online life easier.
  • Dropbox – No need to replace this, there is a free linux version.
  • MacTex – Latex client (Open Source)
  • Aperture – Photo library and basic photo manipulation (Handles RAW)
  • iCal – Calendar app that I sync to Google calendar with…..
  • Spanning Sync – Used to sync my address book and calendar to Googles.
  • Steam – Online games client that I mainly use for Civilisation :)
  • Chronosync – Used to sync certain folders to my external hard drive for real time backup
  • MacTheRipper – Used to make backups of my DVDs
  • VLC – Used to watch media files (Open Source)
  • MailSteward – Used to backup the contents of my Apple Mail, which is basically every email I have ever recieved
  • MacFamilyTree – Used to construct my family tree
  • Jungledisk – Backup interface to Amazon S3
  • Backblaze – Used to backup my whole machine and external drives
  • Superduper - Used to make full bootable backup of my machine
  • Skype – Video calls
  • Knox – File encryption

This list is not exhaustive, there are many more applications I have purchased and never use. The apps mentioned above are the main ones I use on a daily to weekly basis. Baring in mind that I have paid to upgrade a lot of the mentioned apps it may shock you to know that for the apps above, if you were to go and purchase that list right now it would cost you $1082.74!!! I must have easily spent almost $3000 on software for my desktop alone, add to this the tie in I have with my iPhone and the equivalent apps I have bought to use them on the go and you can see just how much money has been wasted when there are free alternatives out there.

The next part of the series looks at how I have started using open source software and how you can also use it for free right now. Please feel free to comment below.

All of what you have read today, was written and edited on Ubuntu Linux

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My names David Moore. I'm an Engineer working in oil and gas

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