Mac Software for Academia
A few of my academic followers on Twitter (@frogo if your thinking of following me) asked recently what software I used on my Mac. As recent converts from Windows they want to get going and start using there shiny new fruit based computer and so this post is for them. It lists, in no particular order the software I use every day on both my iMac at work and my MacBook Air to make me more productive. While most of the software on this list is free, or freely available through my employer, every consideration has been taken to suggest an open source option so that your not shelling out hundreds of pounds (or dollars) on premium software. Hopefully someone at some point will find this list useful.
Utilities
- Tiny Expander – Decompresses most archives
- VLC – Great media player – Plays most movies
- GIMP – Photoshop Alternative
- Flow (FTP/SFTP) – $10 – £6.99
- CyberDuck (FTP Free)
- Skype
- Spotify
- Evernote – Store notes across platforms
- Dropbox
- Growl – Notification Manager – £1.99
- Colloquy – (IRC)
- SuperDuper! – Total Backup Solution – $27.95
- TweetDeck
Document Creation
- Pages – £13.99
- Keynote
- MS Office 2011
- Text Wrangler – (AppStore)
- TeXShop (MacTeX)
- LyX – LaTeX IDE
- Omnigraffle – Drawing Charts and Flow Diagrams – $99
Virtualisation – Run Windows as a Virtual Machine
- VMWare Fusion – £39.99
- Virtual Box (Free Alternative)
Cartographic Software
- QGIS – Free GIS software
- Till Mill – Create Map Tiles
- Google Earth
- Google Notifier
Development
- GitHub
- iTerm
- Remote Desktop Connection
- Chicken of the VNC
- Sequel Pro
- Versions
- Xcode
- Hex Fiend
- Processing
UCL Specific
- Cisco VPN
- Sophos Anti Virus