Apps I’ve installed on my SSD

My favorite Mac apps

A picture speaks a thousand words, so what better way to share the apps I use on a regular basis than with a screenshot?

Living off of a 40GB SSD on my Mac Pro, I’ve had to be pretty conservative on selecting the applications that need to live on it. As of now, I have 8.4GB left on my OWC SSD drive, and I hope it stays that way for a while. All of my data resides on a separate internal 1 terabyte SATA hard drive.

My favorite, regularly used productivity apps that have made the transition over to the SSD drive are:

  • Sparrow (review coming soon)
  • Google Chrome (ridiculously fast browser)
  • Divvy (window size / location management)
  • Witch (window selection management)
  • Path Finder (an excellent Finder replacement)
  • Typinator (text expanding of frequently used text)
  • Blast (easy retrieval of recently created / modified data)
  • LaunchBar (quick access app launcher and more)
  • HyperDock (Windows 7-type thumbnail previews via the Dock)

Each are worth its full weight in gold. You can find the complete list of software I use on a regular basis, in case you’re curious.

Got any of your own Mac app recommendations? Post ’em in the comments below!

-Krishna

These beautiful and intelligent people wrote

  • MarkReply
    February 19, 2011 at 3:25 pm

    I was more curious as to why you have show file extensions turned on… Looking forward to your review of Sparrow by the way, astonishingly excellent email app in my opinion.

    • KrishnaReply
      February 19, 2011 at 4:35 pm

      I frequently pass data between Mac and Windows platforms, which is why I have file extensions turned on.

  • RufusReply
    February 20, 2011 at 8:27 am

    Krishna has a valid point: it’s wise to show full filenames (especially in the Windows world, as they’re turned off by default), as I’d hate to accidently double-click on a file, thinking it’s something else but rather it executes/opens to install a disguised trojan/virus.

    I do have a question or two, but not on Mac app recommendations but rather on SSD drives – Krishna or anyone else can answer:

    With these drives, can you, either using Disk Utility or another 3rd party application, isolate bad areas in the memory like you can if you have bad sectors on an IDE/SCSI/SATA drive? What happens if your SSD drive has flaky areas of memory?

  • OWC GrantReply
    February 21, 2011 at 11:13 am

    Hey Rufus…very good question and why we only use SandForce processors for our SSDs. 7% of drive space is allocated for RAISE – which provides real time data redundancy, ECC Error Correction, and reserve cell space.

    So, an OWC Extreme Pro SSD that’s 240GB in size with 7% over-provisioning is actually a 256GB drive with 7% allocated for data management and to maintain the drive’s high-performance level.

    That’s why our drives don’t have any speed degradation…and in fact, can get faster over time…in this case after 10 months of heavy use:

    http://blog.macsales.com/8924-not-all-ssds-are-created-equal-buyer-beware#more-8924

    If there is a bad cell or data write, the drive handles it effortlessly and without any slow down….you just don’t notice it.

  • RufusReply
    February 22, 2011 at 10:31 am

    Thank you OWC Grant for that answer.

    The reason why I asked that question is because I haven’t seen anyone ask anything similar, to what I asked, and have it answered even though the technology is (somewhat) new.

    Now, from reading your response, anyone can argue that it’s a commercialistic, legal-authored response, and that’s not a problem with me – but as I gave my query to be answered in a general way, can you (or anyone in the field) suggest that the situation will be somewhat similar across all drives, irrespectively of make/design?

    Again, don’t have it personal against you OWC Grant, or your company, but I really just wanted it to be a general answer as I do like the thought of the technology, but just wanted simple questions answered.

Tell me what you think!

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