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Davenport Internet Bookmarks

I'm a Mac | Internet Bookmarks and Favorites

I'm a Mac and I Think Different because Apple Rocks. Gerald Davenport shares his favorite Apple/Mac items

I am a Mac user and proud of it!

The popularity of the Mac, or I should say Apple products, since 2004, has increased due to the iPod craze, Mac OS X, and the Intel chip kept it going; the iPhone, and the iPad — There are ten times as many people using Apple products than there was since 2004. This is a good and bad thing.

The GOOD thing is that there is no shortage, nor will there be for sometime, of products for the Mac. Scanners, Printers, Backpacks, Hard Drives, Accessories, Software, Games, and so forth.

The BAD thing is that there is no shortage, nor will there be for sometime, of products for the Mac. OH THE IRONY!

Yes, now us Mac Users have to tread through the list of thousands upon thousands of items, and find what we think is the best one for us just like windows users have had to do for many years before. Downloading, installing, trying it out, deleting it — this task is much easier on a Mac, I know I run both — We now have the over indulgence of software to choose from, and finding the tight, clean, and very stable version of a particular genre is a more time consuming and daunting a task, especially for those that have no idea what they really need.

My biggest peeve is that there are too many renditions of a particular task, such as system maintenance that helps the common user to use unix commands. How many do we really need that do the same thing? Some are free and others you pay. They just look different.

Speaking about looks. There are so many programmers now, both young and old, that have come from the unix and windows world that they have no idea how to make a Mac looking application. Their apps are probably really good, but I will not use them if they are blocky and square looking.

The following, not exhaustive list, is of NOTEWORTHY websites, products, and applications that we use on our Macs.

News & Information

Apple History

May 7, 2005

Mac Daily News

January 17, 2009

Mac Maps

Mac Tech Support.

May 23, 2019

Macworld

March 7, 2008

OSXDaily

OSXDaily chronicles important Apple news, helpful information, worthwhile software, tips, tricks, reviews, and whatever else may be useful to Apple users.

January 15, 2019

Updates

MacUpdate

Better than Version Tracker. No Windows.

May 6, 2005

Desktop Pictures · Icons · Fonts · Customizing

Download Fonts

February 27, 2006

Mac Font Vault

February 27, 2006

WallpapersCraft Desktop wallpapers, hd backgrounds

March 28, 2020

Programming

Apple Developer Connection

The main place to learn about programming for Max OS X

January 12, 2002

Software

A list of Out of date software we used to use.

April 15, 2020

Image Editors

Still and Moving Picture Editing Applications.

Adobe Creative Suite

I use Adobe apps often. They work and do what I want them to do — most of the time. What bothers me about the Adobe line of products is, each app is designed and maintained by a different department and those departments do not talk to each other to make the user interface or commands the same.

For instance: When making items larger and you want to keep the ratio in Photoshop, you just drag the item at any of the corners. In Illustrator you have to hold the shift-key down. And in InDesign, well, good luck remembering its combination just to get the container and the object to size at the same time.

I understand each app was developed before it was an Adobe app, or it was developed before the user interface guidlines were standardized, but come on. After 10 years one would think there would be a better uniformity.

What do, or can, you do about it? I like the fact that each app works well with its sibling's files. And no other app does that seamlessly. But I am still looking.

I do use Gimp and Graphic Converter for imaging now and them. Avid and DaVinci Resolve for editing. But I have not found a replacement for Illustrator, and my favorite Adobe app I cannot live without, Bridge!

June 2011

Avid Media Composer

Trained extensively at Video Symphony from 2004 - 2005, a now defunct media training school in Burbank California, on the Avid system. At the time was the most popular, or most used, editing tool for the film industry.

Avid is also the provider for ProTools Music Software and Sibellus Music Notation Software.

March 22, 2020

DaVinci Resolve by Black Magic Design

A truly simple and VERY powerful editing software, and 90% of it is FREE to use. it is a little different with the way they handle media, projects, and archiving, but. the features are incredible.

March 22, 2020

GIMP Wilber image logo.

Gimp - GNU Image Manipulation Program

Free for tasks as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring. Line Photoshop, but Free.

2.10 - July 31, 2013

Graphic Converter new logo. Graphic Converter old logo.

Lemke Software GraphicConverter 8.8.3

August 1997 started with v2.9.1 • $35.00

Handbrake Video app logo.

HandBrake

HandBrake is a tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs.

1.2.0 - September 5, 2016

ImageOptim

ImageOptim makes images load faster Removes bloated metadata. Saves disk space & bandwidth by compressing images without losing quality.

1.8.8 - January 16, 2019

Miro Video Converter

A beautiful, simple way to convert almost any video to MP4, WebM (vp8), Ogg Theora, or for Android, iPhone, and iPad. Batch conversion, custom sizing, and more! AND 100% Free and open-source.

3.0 - December 5, 2012

VLC media player

VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

Get VLC media player logo.

3.0.6 - January 16, 2016

Internet

Browsers, Chat, FTP, RSS, and more.

Browsers

Browsers come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and flavors to access the web platform that is an open standard for all to follow. The multiple engines that browsers are built upon vary with speed, features and security — and do they play nicely with what the server dishes up.

Brave and Opera the one i use the most now, use Blink, as do applications built with CEF, Electron, or any other framework that embeds Chromium.

Apple created the WebKit engine for its Safari browser by forking the KHTML engine of the KDE project. iCab is also uses the WebKit engine.

Gecko is Mozilla's browser engine, used in its Firefox web browser, the Thunderbird email client, SeaMonkey internet suite, and the Tor Browser.

Microsoft maintains its own proprietary EdgeHTML engine, which is the successor of its Trident engine. However, EdgeHTML is now only used for Universal Windows Platform apps, as the Edge browser has been remade with the Blink engine — and they have a mac version.

see an almost up-to-date complete list of mac browsers

Browser News

June 2018

Brave

You deserve a better Internet. So they reimagined what a browser should be. It begins with giving back power to us. Get unmatched speed, security and privacy by blocking trackers. Earn rewards by opting into their privacy-respecting ads and help give publishers back their fair share of Internet revenue.

NOTE: You can install and use Chrome Plugins and Extensions listed below in Brave. Yeah, it is a form of Chrome, but I like it.

November 1, 2019

Google Chrome

DO NOT USE ANYMORE. AVOID.

DO NOT USE CHROME

Mozilla Firefox

Add Extensions for various things (weather on the bottom, tab control)
Add themes — new buttons and colors

icab animated gif logo.

iCab

A browser I used quite often before Safari and Firefox existed. Started with 1.7 back in 1995. It is now a paid program where others are free.

1995

Microsoft Edge

I WAS NEVER A FAN OF IE, of course I have not hidden my dislike and for Microsoft in general. But they say this browser is far superior. I will give it a try.

August 30, 2020

Opera

I use Opera every now and then when I need to hack things. Firefox was my go to hacker browser, but they conformed to the higher standards to be recognized as a browser that follows.

You can add extensions to Opera from the Opera Addons page or you can install GOOGLE Extensions, but you must add the Install Chrome Extensions logo. Install Chrome Extensions first before you do so. · Developer Site

December 15, 2021

Safari

I do not use Safari often

October 22, 2019

Tor Browser

Protect yourself against tracking, surveillance, and censorship.

October 22, 2019

Browser Plugins

Email

Thunderbird

I use it for 50% of my email use since it is has more features and plugins than Apple Mail, but using Apple Mail more often now.

December 21, 2009

File Sharing

DropBox

Dropbox is a home for all your photos, docs, videos, and files. Anything you add to Dropbox will automatically show up on all your computers, phones and even the Dropbox website — so you can access your stuff from anywhere.

November 7, 2012

FTP

File Transfer Protocol: upload files to a server and vice versa.

Cyberduck

Libre FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, S3 & OpenStack Swift browser for Mac and Windows.

December 29, 2011

Filezilla

the free FTP solution OPEN SOURCE

December 29, 2011

Web Development

MAMP PRO Macintosh, Apache, Mysql, and PHP

With just a few mouse-clicks, you can install Apache, PHP and MySQL for Mac OS X!

December 22, 2009

Text Editors

Word Processors, Journals, and Screen Play writing

BBEdit logo.

BBEdit by BareBones

A great little text editor; packed with features. Finally bought it, no more demos
• Apple Education Store • $109

12.6.7 is the last update for MacOS 10.13. You need BBEdit 13 to run on Mojave (10.14) or Catalina (10.15)

September 30, 2003

12.6.7 - December 26, 2019

Final Draft

The one screenwriting app I use. I have tried the others and this one works for me. Avoid the others, they are filled with too much fluff.

May 5, 2005

Grammarly logo.

Grammarly by Grammarly

Great Writing, Simplified. Compose bold, clear, mistake-free writing with Grammarly’s AI-powered writing assistant.

From grammar and spelling to style and tone, Grammarly helps you eliminate writing errors and find the perfect words to express yourself.

October 26, 2017

MacJournal by Dan Schimpf

Back with its creator, MacJournal is a must have for me because the mind going blank, is inevitable! A MUST HAVE FOR ANYONE!!!

2.6.1 - February 16, 2005

October 31, 2019

Reunion by LeisterPro

Reunion is a genealogy software — a “family tree program” — for the Mac. Forget the others!! There is an upgrade to version 9 which is really nice.

1998

Visual Studio Code by Microsoft

Code editing. Redefined. Free. Built on open source. Runs everywhere.

May 10, 2020

Tools

In my "tools" folder as an addition to my installed tools for System, Hard Drive, and File managing

BaskUp by Peter Kaminksi

Baskup is a bash script and macOS app that are aimed at converting iMessages, which Apple stores on your local machine in non-readable iChat files, into human-readable .txt files that you can read and keep as backups on your computer. Whether it's a group message, picture, audio file, iMessage, or SMS, Baskup will back it up.

March 16, 2019

Curiota by Zengobi, Inc.

Simplified note taking and file organization.

October 26, 2019

Data Rescue 3 by Prosoft Engineering, Inc.

Used it to save Kyriè's files.

July 31, 2013

DB Browser for SQLite

Database viewer, editor by Mauricio Piacentini, Jens Miltner, Pete Morgan, René Peinthor, Martin Kleusberg, Justin Clift, and many others.

July 31, 2016

August 26, 2021

EasyFind by Devon Technologies

Another file finder with many prefs to find that one file.

July 31, 2013

December 26, 2019

Find Any File by Thomas Tempelmann

A MUST HAVE for anyone who searches their computer for files.

January 3, 2010

December 26, 2019

FreeDMG by Kelley Computing

FreeDMG is a utility which allows you to create DMGs (disk images) with very little fuss.

January 14, 2007

January 13, 2012 - still active December 26, 2019

iFunBox

the App/File Manager for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

November 1, 2020

iTerm 2 by George Nachman

A full featured terminal emulation program written for OS X using Cocoa

July 31, 2013 - still active December 26, 2019

Monolingual

Monolingual is a program for removing unnecessary language resources from Mac OS X, in order to reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space. I saved over 1.2 gig of space

December 22, 2009 - still active December 26, 2019

OnyX by Titanium Software

OnyX is a maintenance, optimization, and personalization utility for Mac OS X.

August 22, 2021

Techtool Pro by Micro Mat

Use TechTool Pro to keep your Macintosh running smoothly.

January 2010

The Unarchiver by Dag Âgren

The Unarchiver is a much more capable replacement for "Archive Utility.app" — the built-in archive unpacker program on Mac OS X — and is designed to handle many more formats and to better fit in with the design of the Finder.

December 29, 2011

February 8, 2019