Mac apps that offer cheap thrills (and help hone skills)
When I hear the phrase “cheap thrills,” I think of the best album ever by Big Brother and the Holding Company (featuring Janis Joplin).
That’s not what today’s column is about.
Instead, allow me to introduce you to not one, not two, but three awesome inexpensive or free Mac apps I use every day to be more productive.
I prefer using two monitors, but doing so creates a minor issue: My dual displays measure nearly
4,000 pixels across — 1,440 for the MacBook Pro and 2,540 for my main 27-inch display— so the mouse pointer can be far, far away from the menu bar…
That’s why I love MenuMate ($4.99 in the App Store) by Alice Dev Team. It’s a one-trick pony, but its one cool trick: MenuMate summons the whole menu bar of the active application with a keyboard shortcut, placing it directly beneath the mouse pointer anywhere onscreen.
And because my Logitech MX Master mouse offers programmable buttons, I’ve assigned one to MenuMate’s keyboard shortcut, so I can I press that button and the menu bar appears under my cursor instantly.
MenuMate saves me time and effort every day. If instant access to the menu bar anywhere on the screen(s) sounds like a good thing to you, believe me, it is, and well worth the five bucks.
Zonebox by Median Tech, which is free in the App Store, helps me do two things I do all day, every day: maintain a checklist of tasks and set a timer for 25-minute work sessions, known as the Pomodoro technique. I love it because it’s not only a great Pomodoro timer, it is also where I keep my daily task list. And I especially love the way it displays the time remaining in a session with both a progress bar and a numerical display. I’ve used dozens of different timers — physical devices as well as Mac and iPhone apps — for my Pomodoro sessions, and Zonebox is still my favorite. And, for what it's worth, it wasn’t free when I got it. I paid either 99 cents or $4.99 for it and thought it was a bargain.
Finally, because I truly believe in the power of positive thought, I like to read inspiring quotes during the course of the day. So, I love Desktop Quote by South Pole Software (99 cents in the App Store) and run it on all my Macs.
It’s another great onetrick pony: to display an inspirational quote on top of your desktop wallpaper in your choice of color, style, font and size. And, of course, it can change the quote as frequently or infrequently as you specify.
It includes its own quotes, but I’ve been clipping inspirational quotes for years, so I followed the easy instructions and made my own featuring 50 fantastic (at least in my opinion) quotes that inspire me.
I call the collection Quotable Quotes for Productive People; you can download it for free. You can email me at the address below for the URL.