Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

Sandy MacMurray Commands Us to Buy!

He commands us to buy Mac software from small companies:

Corante > Apple > Software worth buying: I want to talk about software development on Mac OS X, but I don't quite know how to frame the discussion. It seems to me that there's been a lot of activity recently in the small developer and single-purpose application space. Or maybe I'm just noticing it for the first time. A quick peek into my Applications folder turns up some well established programs from big developers (e.g. Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office 2004). However, for every big, multi-purpose program in the folder, you can program find two or three slick little programs from small developers -- apps like Acquisition, Butler, CSSEdit, NetNewsWire, PDFshrink, Transmit, and WeatherPop.... I took out my Visa card today and paid $40 (Canadian) to register Site Studio. It's a slick, idiot-proof Web design tool that can create an entire Web site in minutes...

More info:

Site Studio: It is the ease and simplicity of Site Studio that makes it a leader of the web design revolution. From paper to web in minutes. From one look to another in seconds. Dynamic content plugins like a blog, an image gallery, and a WYSIWYG editor put it at the top of its class. If you are ready for a world of hassle free web design, then Site Studio is for you. It is the little features like one click dot mac and FTP uploading, intuitive interfaces, and simplicity that make your life that much better....

Acquisition. Innovative Mac P2P.: Millions of users, billions of files. Share files with tens of millions of Mac and Windows users around the planet. iTunes Intimacy: "Integration" is an understatement...

Peter Maurer: Butler: A file launcher: You can access applications and any other kind of document by browsing fully customizable system-wide menus, pressing hot keys, clicking hot corners, or entering abbreviations. Butler will learn from your habits and remember what you want a certain abbreviation to do (e.g., enter "ab" to launch "Address Book"). A bookmark manager: Butler offers you a way to manage your bookmarks without depending on a certain browser...

MacRabbit - CSSEdit: From a solid layout to the coolest visual touches on your site, cascading style sheets are the modern way of styling web pages. CSSEdit is the editor that will handle anything you throw at it speedily and with style. Designing a site is a joy again!... Besides standard coding features such as syntax coloring, find and replace, go to line and auto-indentation, CSSEdit offers intelligent auto-complete. It will never suggest double properties, is fully context sensitive, and remembers the items you use most. What does this mean in practice? That the time you spend typing properties and their values will be drastically reduced!...

Ranchero Software: NetNewsWire: NetNewsWire is an easy-to-use RSS Web news reader for Mac OS X. Its familiar three-paned interface—similar to Apple Mail and Outlook Express—can fetch and display news from thousands of different websites and weblogs, making it quick and easy to keep up with the latest news...

Apago Product Information / Software: PDFshrink reduces the size of PDF files created by Mac OS X, Adobe Acrobat Distiller and other applications. PDFshrink compresses images within the PDF file but PDFshrink doesn't stop there like some competing software products. We also remove unused elements such as metadata and thumbnails, eliminate duplicate images, compress non-image parts of a PDF file and optimize the resolution of the images...

Glucose WeatherPop: Are you bleary eyed from staring into bright white phosphor all day? Download WeatherPop Advance for Mac OS X only and you can be in touch with what it's like outside right now. Let the current conditions and temperature in your menu bar serve as a gentle reminder to get outside, go for a walk, and stop working so hard...

Panic - Transmit 2 - The Ultimate Mac OS X FTP client!: Take the most Mac OS X-like FTP client available, and make it about a zillion times faster. The result? The new Transmit 2.6, Panic's powerful, flexible, and actually-almost-fun FTP client!...