Mac|Life - July 2008

EDITORS AND SYSTEM UTILITIES
What these apps lack in glamour, they make up for in usefulness, keeping your data backed up, offering shortcuts
to the Terminal, and helping you write code.

27. SUPERDUPER!

We live on our Macs—for work and play—which is why we can’t afford to lose even an hour over a hard drive failure. SuperDuper! provides the gold standard of worry-free backups by making a complete, bootablecopy of your Mac”sstartup drive(called aclone).

I f the drive dies, you simply boot from
_SuperDuper!y ourbackupdisk, andcontinue working
w ith all of your applications and files
intact. Afreeversionis available,
but only the paid version is capable of
scheduling backups and reducing the
time required for subsequent backups by
copying only changed files. Other options
include repairing permissions on the
source disk before each backup
(useful for preventing errors),
and backing up to a disk image
instead of an external drive.
SuperDuper! does one thing,
and it does it well.

The first full backup with SuperDuper! can take many hours, but subsequent backups are much faster, thanks to its Smart Update feature.

TextMate
macromates.
com/
Cost: $64
Developer: Allan
Odgaard
Requirements: OS
10. 4. 2

28. TEXTMATE

When it comes to file formats, ASCII text is as simple as it gets. So it speaks to how discerning Mac users are that we have so many choices for text editors. Mainstays such as BBEdit, Text Wranger, and SubEthaEdit all have their place, but if you’re looking for a hardcore coding platform, TextMate is hard to beat. Of course it has the basics: syntax highlighting for a dozen different markup and script languages, options for file encodings and line endings, powerful find-and-replace filters, and so on.

But TextMate becomes a coder’s dream with Bundles (preformatted chunks of code and common actions for different coding languages and environments) and with its easy handling of multifile projects. When we saw the pages and pages of keyboard shortcuts built into the Bundles, we almost wept for joy. It takes some time to discover all the tricks in TextMate, but it’s worth it.

A good text editor should save you time and conserve brain power. TextMate does both.

29. CODA

Ever hand-coded a website on your Mac? Then you know how quickly the desktop disappears under a dozen different windows and apps. Coda replaces this mess with a remarkably clean, single-

w indow environment that combines a ^Codat ab-separated text editor, FTP client, www.panic. com/coda/ a nd terminal window. The FTP function Cost: $79

_Developer: _Panic incorporates Transmit, Panic’s celebrated ^{Requirements:} ^OS standalone FTP client, and the terminal 10. 4

function incorporates OS X’s own Terminal

app. The text editor covers the essential bases (line numbering, syntax highlighting, etc), but it’s the one part of the package that feels a bit lightweight.

Function aside, Coda’s presentation is gorgeous. Imported
websites appear as thumbnail images of each site’s homepage.
And the interface enjoys a delightful consistency. The purchase
price includes electronic
reference books on HTML,
CSS, Javascript, and more.
In short, Coda offers a
revolution in workflow.

Eye candy aside, Coda offers an elegant, considered approach to coding websites.

30. GEEKTOOL _GeekToolGeek Tool is aptly named, as its most useful feature is its ability to overlay the output of shell scripts onto the desktop. If that doesn’t sound impressive, consider that simple shell commands can provide an instant report on resources, such as remaining hard disk space, system uptime, or memory usage. True, you could bypass Geek Tool by running these same commands in the Terminal (Utilities > Terminal), but nothing beats the convenience of having real-time output right in front of you. A good trick: install Geek Tool, open its pane inside System Preferences, click New Entry, select Shell from the dropdown menu at the top, type df in the text box, and hit Enter. Geek Tool will display a list of all mounted file systems and the available free space in each.