10 of the Best Mac Apps
Outfit your Mac with the very best in apps and resources. From entertainment and play to serious work and organization, here are the best Mac apps you need on your computer.
1. Evernote
Evernote is a suite of data management apps designs to help you keep track of notes and documents across multiple devices. The service has expanded over the years to an impressive number of organizational features that go far beyond simple note taking and allow you to detail and share all sorts of information. From meetings to shopping lists, this app can do a little of everything. This is one of the free mac apps, but it works best if you use it not only on your Mac but also on all your devices, mobile and otherwise.
2. CloudApp
CloudApp is a sharing service designed especially for Mac, and is great for individual scouting and sharing activities. You can save and share screenshots, documents, code, video, zip files, bookmarks, Photoshop projects and lots of other media. Sure, you may need to use Drive or Box or whatever your company prefers for work activities, but when sharing on your own, CloudApp is one of the best apps for Mac – plus it’s free.
3. Spotify
Spotify has proven itself as a premiere music streamer for the 2010s, and the Spotify Mac app is a great piece of software, vaguely reminiscent of iTunes, that allows you to browse music, pick albums, create playlists, choose radio channels, and more. The basic service is free, and you get on-demand songs from all the artists of your choice (except, of course, Taylor Swift). If there’s one thing to complain about, it’s that you can’t mute the commercials the way you can in the Web app, but you get a great interface in exchange for that little quibble.
4. Airmail 2.0
If you haven’t heard of AirMail before, it is a great Gmail client designed for Mac that makes it both easy and elegant to manage your Gmail account. You can create labels and starring systems like in Gmail proper, but you can also download a number of extra plugins to customize your email experience the way you want it. It’s a more professional way of managing your email for around $10.
5. iA Writer
There are a ton of writing apps for Mac, ranging from minimalistic and free to incredibly deep text editors for huge projects and big budgets. iA Writer is notable because it walks the line, presenting a completely clean page to write on without distraction, but also offering bonuses like Word imports, syncing, keyboardextensions, and more. You can get this app for $10 in the mac app store.
6. ReadKit
RSS readers are also very common, but ReadKit manages to be something special with its Mac-friendly, all-around hospitable interface that lets you tap into posts from multiple RSS providers, save articles for later reading, and browse all the different news that you care about. If you find yourself jumping around from site to site to get all your favorite news pieces (or if you are still suffering from the lost Google Reader) this $6.99 app may be for you.
7. Fantastical
Fantastical is one of the nifty organization apps for Mac that allows you to replace Calendar with a deeper scheduler, calendar, event and note-taking app that works with the Mac reminders system and can also sync with your mobile devices. If Calendar isn’t enough or you find your current calendar system annoying, give Fantastical a try. The trial is free but the permanent version will cost around $20.
8. Little Snitch
With security more important than ever, you may feel a little nervous about your Mac hiding away so many of its Internet processes. No need to worry with Little Snitch, which tracks all your other apps and browsers and lets you see exactly what information every app is sending out through the Internet. This makes it easy to track down apps that relaying a little too much information for your liking – and curtail that communication quickly. A single license will cost you $35.
9. 1Password
1Password is an open-source based password manager, the top of the line when it comes to collecting and managing your passwords for all your various sites and accounts. You can also generate new passwords at will for any of your logins, making it easy to switch up passwords at regular intervals. The price is a little high at $50, but this is one of the best Mac apps for security.
10. Photoshop CC/Pixelmator
Photoshop remains the best image editor on Mac, especially for professional work, although you can have a lot of fun on it for all sorts of reasons. The addition ofAdobe Cloud and other features has made this app even better. However, you’ll have to pay $20 per month to use it, which quickly gets old. A less widely-used but adept image editor is Pixelmator, which you can buy for a one-time fee of $30. Another options for Adobe fans is Photoshop Elements, which ditches the cloud features but also the monthly fee, bring prices back down to more manageable levels.
