Moving to a new Mac Part 1: Essential Apps in my Workflow

It’s not my Mac unless it has my apps and data on it. Earlier this week, I took possession of a new retina Macbook Pro 13″ model. Having had a few days to finally put it into operation, I spent some time this weekend weeding through the apps on my old Macbook Pro to see which ones I really needed to bring over to the new machine.

Despite the fact that my new Mac has double the data storage (256GB SSD vs 128GB SSD), I wanted to maintain a conservative approach. As a result, many apps didn’t make the cut.

Here are the apps that did:

Manga Studio 5
Sketchbook Pro 7
Photoshop CC
Illustrator CC
Flash CC
After Effects CC
Alfred
OmniFocus 2
AirMail
Firefox
1password
Teleport
Coda2
Copy
Dropbox
Fantastical
Pages
Numbers
Keynote
Typinator
Evernote
TextWrangler
PDF Pen 6

Older apps that didn’t make the cut include:

Acrobat Pro
Desktop Blurrifier
Bartender
Bjango utilities
ColorSnapper
Chrome
Opera
ColorPicker
SleepTime
DragonDrop
Divvy
Hazel
Wunderlist
Tweetbot
WhatSize
Witch
CleanMyMac2

Of course, as with all things, just because an app didn’t make the cut doesn’t mean I won’t install it at a later date, should I find a need for using it. I’m sure Hazel, CleanMyMac2, and DragonDrop will all make it back on the list sooner rather than later. But for now, an app will only go back on my new Mac if I have an immediate need for using it.

Installing apps from the Mac App Store made the process much more bearable (and convenient), as opposed to the old way of having to hunt down serial numbers for every single app I’ve registered. Though, to be fair, there was a little bit of that happening as well.

So… that’s my list. What about you? What are your must-have apps on your Mac? How often do you prune the list? What tools do you use to uninstall apps you no longer need / use? Share your comments below.

-Krishna