Eighteen months, or so, on from my impulse purchase of a MacBook Air, I now own three Macs: a MacBook Pro and an iMac in addition to the Air: what Mac software makes it to my personal recommendation list?

Blogging: I'm an irregular blogger, but as we're on the subject, I use almost invariably MarsEdit rather than the on-line editor offered by my service provider. It's simple to use, offers an instant preview of the post and works off-line.

Task Management: I posted a while back on this topic. One of the products I'd considered was Things. I rejected it at the time because of the problem I had synching between machines. However, I got round this when I got an iPhone 3Gs. Cultured Code have an iPhone app that integrates well with the desktop; so now I don't both to try to sync between machines. When I'm at home I use Things on the iMac and, when away, I use Things on the iPhone and sync to the iMac on my return.

File Manager: I'm still surprised at how many rough edges there are in Finder. Path Finder is a no-brainer to install as an alternative. A handy add-in for file management is Default Folder X, which makes the file open/save dialogue more flexible and friendly.

Back-up: I have three recommendations here. For local back-up and synching between machines, I use ChronoSync. It does what it says on the tin: easy to set up, easy to use. For on-line back-up for extra peace of mind, I use JungleDisk. This sits in the background and every now and then copies my valuable files to Amazon web servers — AES-256 protection, so stuff is as safe as is reasonably possible, but accessible from other machines that have JungleDisk installed. This has proved useful on the odd occasion when I've forgotten to run ChronoSync before leaving home and had to download the latest version of project documents from JungleDisk to the MacBook.

My third recommendation is SuperDuper! This makes it very simple to take bootable snapshots of the entire system, either for back-up or testing.

E-Book Manager: I'm on my second e-book reader. My first was the BeBook. I enjoyed the BeBook, but it has sufficient shortcomings that I didn't hesitate to buy the Sony Reader Touch Edition when it first appeared. It doesn't get an unqualified recommendation: it is well-made, but a tiny bit too heavy and a screen that has too much glare. What gets complete condemnation is the appalling software that ships with the Sony Reader. It is dreadful: slow, convoluted in design — altogether awful. The final straw came when the installation of the latest upgrade wiped out the contents of my library. I now use Calibre. It's an open source application that has Windows and Linux versions as well as Mac. It is free, but donations can be made to support the product.

Uninstall Utility: One of things I've enjoyed about changing from Windows to Mac OS X has been the search for useful software. Of course, this means that quite often stuff is installed that turns out to be not what's needed. This is where AppZapper comes in: a simple and painless way to remove the programs that didn't make the cut.

Up-and-coming

These products I also like, but can't put them on the unqualified recommendation list simply because I haven't used them enough.

iCombiner: merges multiple documents into a single PDF.

Cyberduck: an open source FTP, sFTP, etc. browser.

Finally, in this section I should mention several products from The Omni Group. I own use use regularly (just not every day): OmniGraffle (for diagrams), OmniOutliner (for outlining) and OmniPlan (project planning).

Honourable Mentions

Two products that I like and gave a real work-out to, but ultimately stopped using because they didn't quite fit my modus operandi: Curio and VoodooPad.

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A few weeks back, I posted about my search for a Mac replacement for managing tasks on Windows...   more »

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Just over a week ago, I took delivery of another Mac...   more »

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Since I've got some spare time, I decided to sort out my wireless network at home...   more »

I was a complete Mac neophyte when I bought my MacBook Air...   more »

A week or so back, two of my MyBook drives unexpectedly died...   more »