I recently realized that I spend a lot of time recommending or pointing people towards cool apps, tools or services that I use nearly every day. I thought it might be worthwhile to share a list off the top of my head here. I’ve probably left some things out, but hey - I can add them back later :)
Hardware
Apple iPhone 6 - I was an Android fanboy for years until a series of Nexus phones with poor battery life made me switch. Excellent phone, just works and I get at least a full day of charge out of it. Will likely skip the 6S and leapfrog to the 7 when it’s released. Oh, and iOS9 is the bomb when it comes to battery life - upgrade if you haven’t already.
Apple MacBook Pro 13 - I’m rocking a Late 2013 model at home with El Capitan and it’s still as solid as ever, with a 8+ hour battery life (as long it’s nothing graphics processing intensive). Might update to the new 12" model at some point, but why replace something that ain’t broke?
Lenovo X1 Carbon - My work machine, running Windows 10. Light, decent battery (I’d say around 4 hours of use) and nothing beats a native Windows experience after years of battling Bootcamp or VMs. The crazy high resolution and Window’s janky DPI handling don’t always gel perfectly, though.
Custom Built PC - My home base station, running Windows 10 on an Intel i5, 16GB of memory and a 2GB Nvidia GPU. Used to be a gaming machine, but now mostly used for media transcoding/streaming and data mining/crunching (it’s nice being able to load a 10GB data frame into memory)
Xbox One - I wish I had more time to spend gaming on this thing, but it definitely gets daily use as my media center via Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and DLNA streaming from my desktop machine. Excited to see the upcoming Windows 10 upgrade Microsoft have lined up.
Desktop Apps
Using across both OS X and Windows, unless otherwise stated. Services with apps skipped as they have their own category.
Microsoft Office - An absolute necessity for work, but I maintain that Excel is still one of the most useful swiss-army knives when it comes to working with data.
Adobe Photoshop - Another obvious one, for any serious image editing there is no real alternative.
Babun (Windows) - A drop in, pre-configured Cygwin shell for Windows with oh-my-zsh integrated. Pretty much nullifies the “I need a Mac to do dev work because of the terminal” debate.
iTerm2 (OS X) - A drop in replacement for the default OS X Terminal app. Highly configurable and just works.
Google Chrome - My default browser right now, although I’m actively looking for an alternative as I feel it’s become bloated and in some cases unresponsive. I keep my extension toolbelt minimal, but some choice picks include uBlock, Flickr Tab, JSON Formatter, Favicon Badges and the 1Password add-on.
1Password - My password manager of choice, I can’t imagine how I got by without it in the past. Encrypted, integrated with Chrome and synced with my Dropbox account, which means awesome cross-device workflows.
Sublime Text 3 - Killer text/code editor that I’ve been using for years. Highly extensible and great performance… it can even open multi-gigabyte CSV files. Not a fan of newer alternatives like Atom which are based on a Webkit wrapper, as I can still sense a bit of non-native lag going on. Choice add-on packages include the Preap theme, Monokai Low-Profile Gray color scheme, and Sidebar Enhancements.
Sequel Pro (OS X) - By far the nicest MySQL GUI around, I wish there was something as polished on Windows.
Cyberduck - My FTP/SFTP/WebDAV client of choice, also has S3 baked-in which can prove handy. Cross-platform and free, which is always a plus.
Transmission (OS X) - The nicest torrent client for OS X I’ve come across, although I don’t do a lot of torrenting these days.
Tixati (Windows) - A lightweight and customizable torrent client for Windows that gets the job done.
Screenshot Tool / Preview (OS X) - For simple image editing on a Mac, nothing beats the built-in Preview app. Often used in conjunction with the built-in OS X screenshotting tool.
Snipping Tool (Windows) - As above, but my Windows tool for taking quick screenshots and marking them up.
Limechat - On the rare occasion that I visit the mysterious underworld that is IRC chat rooms, I prefer to use Limechat. The OS X version seems maintained, but the Windows version is old and in Japanese only.. believe it or not, I’ve been using it with a Japanese UI all these years.
Caffeine (OS X) - Need to stop your display from sleeping? Just click the coffee cup and it’ll stay awake indefinitely. There is a newer app called Amphetamine with more features, but I think it’s overkill and stick with the original.
Caffeinated (Windows) - Same as above, but for Windows.
Mobile Apps
All apps listed are iOS based, although there is probably a lot of overlap with Android. Services with apps skipped as they have their own category.
Microsoft Outlook - A much nicer (and stabler) mail experience than the default iOS Mail app. Extra nice if you’re connecting with Office 365 or an enterprise account, as everything works super smoothly (in my experience, the default Mail app doesn’t get along too well with Exchange accounts)
Sunrise Calendar - Although the integrated calendar in Outlook is nice, you can’t go past the UI of Sunrise Calendar. It syncs nicely with all of your calendar accounts and the “Today” add-in is great. This startup were recently purchased by Microsoft, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see Sunrise integrated into Outlook somewhere down the line.
1Password - Entering long passwords on a mobile device can be a real pain, but 1Password solves that while helping you keep your accounts more secure. It syncs with my Dropbox account too, so all my devices stay up-to-date with my latest login credentials.
Safari - The fastest browser on iOS, especially when coupled with iOS9’s new content blocker add-ons. I highly recommend the Purify ad blocker - it’s not free, but it speeds up the mobile browsing experience a lot (in both Safari and in-app web views such as websites viewed within the Facebook app)
Amazon - This one is a double-edged sword. While it’s super convenient and fun to sit in bed of a night and browse through impulse buys, it can also hurt your pocket. Might need to uninstall this myself :)
Venmo - Super simple peer-to-peer payments app powered by PayPal/Braintree. There are no transfer fees, which makes it really great for paying your friends back after a night out drinking or dinner. I’ve recently been experimenting with Facebook’s payments option that is built-in to Messenger, and it’s a very worthy alternative that I might end up switching to.
Mr. Chilly - If you live in San Francisco, this is the easy-to-glance-at weather app that you’ve been looking for. Really nicely designed and gets the job done.
Hopper - This is a really cool airfare prediction app. You input where you’re flying and your preferred dates, and it gives you advice as to whether it thinks the price will go up if you leave booking the ticket another week etc. Great for people who like to seek out the best priced airfare, or last-minute booking comparisons.
Office Lens - Another cool, free app from Microsoft. It takes a photo of a whiteboard or document, uses some magic to flatten it and make it readable, then lets you easily email it or save it to your camera roll. I use this all the time to snapshot whiteboards at work for reference later.
Notable mentions - Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter etc. I tend to stick with the default apps for services.
Services
Fastmail - Back in the day I used to rely on free services such as Outlook or Gmail for my email, but a) never really liked their UI and b) didn’t like the idea of a company being able to scan my email contents freely (it’s in the ToS, check it out). I started paying for a Fastmail account a couple years back and it’s fantastic. Custom domain and alias management is a breeze, and you can customize just about anything you want to.
Dropbox - A few years back I took the plunge and bought the $99/year Dropbox account to reduce my stress levels about losing all my photos - now I’m hooked. Basically every file I’ve ever worked on is backed up to my 1TB (it’s hard to cap out) Dropbox. The desktop sync beats all competitors and the auto camera upload from my iPhone is seamless.
Spotify - I used to maintain a 160+ gigabyte mp3 collection on external hard drives, but after taking the leap and purchasing a Spotify Premium subscription haven’t looked backed. In the rare case that something is missing from the library, you can download it (legally or illegally) and import it as a local source in seconds. Since moving to the US from Australia, the larger licensed library seems to cover most of my bases. Also, their machine learning “Discover Weekly” playlists are on point.
Netflix - Just like Spotify, Netflix has replaced my need to maintain a library of ripped movies or TV episodes. The service is truly cross-platform and well worth the $7.99 a month, which seems almost too cheap for what you’re getting.
Pinboard - I’ve tried a lot of bookmarking services in my time, from Google Bookmarks through to Delicious through to Kippt (I think they might have gone out of business, actually). A few years back I stumbled across Pinboard and paid their upfront one-time fee. It’s a great, minimalist service that doesn’t get in the way of what should be a simple task - bookmarking. The creator/developer of the service is also really cool, I recommend you follow him on Twitter.
Telegram - My instant messaging platform of choice, based on it’s simplicity, security and cross-platform support. Everything just works, and you can really see both the platform + native apps actively developing over time. Pretty incredible for a free service.
Inoreader - I was a Google Reader junkie for many years, until Google made the bizarre decision to decommission the service. After building my own and using that for a couple years, then giving AOL Reader a 6+ month run, I eventually landed on the paid offering from Inoreader. It’s super customizable and doesn’t get in the way with clutter. I’ve tried just about every RSS service out there over the past 7+ years, and Inoreader takes the cake. Great mobile app is a plus.
Uber - Since moving to SF, Uber has become my primary mode of transport around the city. The reliability of the service and polish of the mobile app beats any competitor out there, and it’s something I use at least every few days. Super excited about the potential of their new food delivery service Uber Eats, too!
Caviar - My go-to food delivery service in San Francisco. Their “Fastbite” menu gets you food for under $15 in under 15 minutes, and they’ve never failed me on that promise. Extra points for paying their employees properly too, so you don’t have to worry about what to tip when they drop off your food (it’s included!)
TweetDeck - Hands down the easiest way to manage your Twitter account and build a fully-customized view of the Twittosphere.
Namecheap - The most reliable and well-priced domain name registrar I’ve come across. They offer a Free DNS service and just pushed a revamped dashboard for managing all your domains / host records. Solid service.
DigitalOcean - I’m fairly well-travelled when it comes to web hosting, and I’m really glad that I’ve finally been able to settle on a single provider with DigitalOcean. For $5 a month, their smallest size droplet powers Gifbase.com, Reddpoll.com and my development server. Within 30 seconds, you an easily have a fresh Linux machine spun up and SSH in. LEMP is my stack of choice with Ubuntu, nginx, MySQL and PHP-FPM.
GitHub - I use GitHub at both home and work, and can’t recommend it enough. Their desktop applications are fantastic for people who are new to git / version control as well. I host several websites (including ummjackson.com) on GitHub Pages, which supports Jekyll static sites. Pretty awesome.
Notable mentions - Product Hunt, Hacker News, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, Soundcloud.