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My Favourite Mac Apps - What's on my Macbook Pro

2018-08-28 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 7:35 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Tools, apps and tech (also: YouTube, writing online and creators) · mode: Review and recommendation

Unboxing his new 2018 MacBook Pro, Ali tours the Mac apps he uses daily: Alfred, which he calls his most important productivity app because being quick at operating the computer saves time, Moom and Bartender, Adobe Creative Cloud, Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, Spotify, Things for to-dos, Bear for notes, WhatsApp Web and 1Password.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Intro: unboxing the new MacBook Pro and a tour of his daily apps

00:00:29 — Unboxing the MacBook Pro

00:01:00 — Alfred, Moom, Bartender

  • ★★★ Ali's theory of being productive on a computer: broadly it is about doing the right things, but it is also about being quick at operating the computer itself. — 00:01:00 · keyboard navigation, Alfred
  • ★★★ Ali calls Alfred the most important app for his personal productivity: a Spotlight replacement on the Mac, opened with Command and Space, that searches Google and files and opens any app, more efficiently than clicking with the trackpad. — 00:01:00 · Alfred
  • ★★ Opening a known file with the mouse through the Dock and Finder takes Ali about 10 seconds, repeated endlessly over his hours at a computer; with Alfred he types the file's name and it opens within about one second. — 00:01:29 · Alfred
  • ★★ Ali uses Moom to snap windows to either side of the screen, a feature Windows has long had but Macs lack natively; he presses Command-Shift-M and then types left or right. — 00:01:58 · Microsoft Windows
  • ★★ Ali uses the app Bartender to keep his Mac menu-bar icons minimal, because he fancies himself a bit of a minimalist: only the most important ones, such as battery and wifi, show, while apps such as Google Drive and Adobe Creative Cloud hide behind three dots. — 00:02:28 · Google Drive
  • ★★ Ali has the monthly Adobe Creative Cloud subscription that gives him every app; quite cheap when he was a student, it has become a lot more expensive, so he will probably need to reconsider how much he spends on it. (hedged) — 00:02:28

00:02:50 — Adobe Creative Cloud, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro

  • ★★ Ali's most-used Adobe apps: Lightroom to edit his Instagram and Facebook photos, Photoshop for graphics for his websites, Audition for occasional audio editing of his videos, and occasionally After Effects, modifying downloaded templates as for his Medical Mondays intro. — 00:02:57 · Adobe Lightroom, Instagram, Facebook
  • ★★ Ali edits his videos in Final Cut Pro and uses Logic Pro for music editing when he records songs, covers, or guitar and piano parts. — 00:03:26 · Final Cut Pro
  • ★★ Apple's education bundle gives Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Compressor, Motion and other Apple apps for about 200 pounds in total; still a lot of money, Ali says, but much more affordable than Adobe's monthly fee. — 00:03:26 · Apple, Final Cut Pro

00:03:53 — Spotify, Things, Bear

  • ★★ Ali listens to music on Spotify: he tried Apple Music and did not really like it, and although he is an Apple fanboy in almost every other way, he thinks Spotify the superior product. — 00:03:53 · Spotify, Apple
  • ★★ Ali has zero qualms about paying for software he uses daily, especially software that saves him time, even when it is expensive like Things; expensive, he says, is all relative. — 00:03:55 · Things 3
  • ★★★ Ali's to-do list app is Things, a nicely designed list with an inbox, a someday list, a today list and areas of life such as his YouTube videos and his medical work; he has fallen in love with it and with the Getting Things Done approach. — 00:03:55 · Things 3
  • ★★★ Ali makes his notes in Bear: he used Evernote for ages but switched a couple of years ago as Evernote grew very bloated and slow; Bear is a much simpler writing experience and lets him write in Markdown. — 00:04:24 · Evernote
  • ★★ Ali writes his weekly emails and blog posts in Bear and pastes them as Markdown into Ghost, which hosts his blog, so they appear nicely formatted on his website. — 00:05:01 · Ghost, aliabdaal.com
  • ★★ Ali tracks his gym workouts in a single Bear note that he adds to as he goes, because, as the saying goes, what gets measured gets managed. — 00:05:01
  • ★★ WhatsApp Web, which surprisingly many people do not know exists, improves Ali's productivity: typing on his phone's little keyboard is so inefficient compared with a computer, and the Mac client logs in by scanning a QR code with the phone. — 00:05:01 · WhatsApp

00:05:24 — WhatsApp Web, 1Password

  • ★★★ Ali uses the 1Password password manager: though it costs money, it generates secure passwords for every website, and for anyone whose life is in the cloud a compromised account would be an absolute catastrophe. — 00:05:30
  • ★★ Everyone now recommends using a password manager, Ali says; there are also LastPass and others, but 1Password is the one he started with and he has found no reason to stop. — 00:06:29
  • ★★ Ali has made few tech videos so far but wants to make them more of a thing: he is a tech enthusiast and quite likes making them. — 00:06:29

00:06:36 — Wrap-up: more tech videos, an Alfred video planned, the MacBook Pro's specs

  • ★★★ Ali is definitely planning a really extensive video on how he uses Alfred and how it supercharges his productivity. — 00:06:58 · Alfred
  • ★★ Ali may also make videos on things related to the iPad and on the apps on his iPhone. (hedged) — 00:06:58 · iPad, iPhone
  • ★★ Ali's new MacBook Pro is fully specced except storage: the 4-terabyte drive costs like 3,000 dollars extra, so he has the 1-terabyte drive, and he hopes the machine will speed up his video editing. — 00:06:58 · MacBook

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: 1Password · Alfred · Bear · MacBook · Things 3

Also: Projects: aliabdaal.com · Medical Mondays

Works: Getting Things Done

Organizations: Apple · Facebook · Instagram

Concepts: keyboard navigation · Markdown

Products: Adobe After Effects · Adobe Audition · Adobe Creative Cloud · Adobe Lightroom · Adobe Photoshop · Apple Music · Bartender · Evernote · Final Cut Pro · Ghost · Google Drive · iPad · iPhone · LastPass · Logic Pro · Microsoft Windows · Moom · Spotify · Spotlight · WhatsApp

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