What Im Running - Open Apps - March 1st 2014
Macs don't crash much. They also handle themselves well when a ton of apps are running. This was brought home when a co-worker saw me do a Cmd+Tab app switch. Here's a shrunken version of my active app icon bar that popped up.
From left to right:
nvAlt | My grimoire and external brain
Sublime Text 2 | The go-to text editor
ExtendScript Toolkit | For making Photoshop JavaScriptsex
Oxygen XML Editor | Totally worth the expensive cost XML tool
iTerm2 | The better terminal for Mac
CodeRunner | The handy code snippet tester
Chrome | Google's Netscape Navigator
Lightroom 5 | Main photo workflow tool
Photo Mechanic 5 | First step on the photo workflow path
BBEdit | Backup text editor
Soulver | The reimagined calculator
SQLite Database Browser](http://sourceforge.net/projects/sqlitebrowser/)
Dash | The pain reliever for looking at documentation
Finder | Apple's happy app
Firefox | Mozilla's Netscape Navigator
Safari | Apple's Netscape Navigator
DayOne | Daily note taking
Preview | Non-Adobe PDF viewer
1Password | Bringer of sanity and security
ScreenFlow | Maker of screencasts
Better Rename 9 | Bulk renaming of files without the command line
Spotify | The replacement for my 20,000 song mp3 library
System Preferences | Machine tweaker
TextExpander | Auto-Expander for text snippets
Console | The tool to peak behind the machine curtain a little
Terminal | For long running items that would be distracting in iTerm2
MAMP Pro | The Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP stack, but for Mac
Stickies | Post-it notes for the virtual desktop
OmniFocus | A fighting chance against the ever-growing TODO list
Activity Monitor | Checking performance when this many apps are running
Contacts | Names, numbers, addresses, etc...
Transmit | FTP, SFTP, etc...
Quicksilver | Most used app - Don't let the position in the list fool you
Calendar | Days, Weeks, Months... Time flies.
iTunes | Relegated to a Podcast tool in the post-Spotify world
Of course, this post wouldn't be complete without also showing the apps running in the menu bar:
Again, from left to right:
Hazel | "Automated Organization for your Mac"
Quicksilver | Menubar access to the go-to app launcher
ScreenFlow | Not currently recording
DayOne | Unnecessary, but doesn't appear to be able to be disabled
TextExpander | Menu access to snippets when you forget the keyboard way
Dropzone | Drag things here and make them go elsewhere
Divvy | Hotkeys for shuffling and positioning windows
Monosnap | Quick and easy screengrab posting
i1 Profiler | Shame on X-rite for not updated software even though the hardware is discontinued
Flycut | Continuing the search for a multi-clipboard tool that works with my brain
Caffeine | Single click to keep monitor from going to sleep during presentations and processing
Houdini | Tries to keep the desktop clean by hiding apps after a time
GeekTool | Sends output from scripts to the desktop background
Symantec AntiVirus | Must have for the corporate network
1Password | Menu bar access to password sanity and security
VMware Fusion | To run Linux and Windows machines inside a Mac
Messages | Another icon that won't die
MenuMeters | The next two icons are: Disk Activity and CPU usage
TimeMachine | Only use this if you care about keeping your files and data
Bluetooth status | I wonder who came up with the name "Bluetooth"
WiFi status | Signal strength at a glance
Volume | Don't really need this since I just use the hotkeys
Batter level | Figure out technology to make this irrelevant and make a zillion dollars
Keyboard | To look up key combos to make letters with umlauts
Date & Time | Day of the week I can remember - Day of the month I need help with
Spotlight | Haven't been able to kill this one
Notifications | Haven't been able to kill this one either
That makes 62 apps (not counting all the behind the scenes stuff). Pretty good considering I haven't rebooted the machine in a month. The negative aspect is that with all this stuff open, I really put off any software updates that require restarting.
Based on this XKCD strip, I'm not alone.