One of the programs on macOS that I felt was missing on Windows was an alternative for Hazel. I spent ages looking around for an alternative, and the best I could find for a while was DropIt! The only issue with this is that DropIt is a bit more of a manual process in comparison to Hazel, as you have to drag and drop files into the program for them to be sorted1.
One thing that had stuck with me from reading Coding Horror, is that you can increase the speed of your website with free bandwidth. In fairness, it’s not free bandwidth, it’s reducing the file size of the files that you’re hosting, so it’s faster to download. The Zopfli article above is the more recent one - the first was regarding pngout (article).
Both pngout and zopfli can reduce the size of files - specifically in this case, PNG files.
Microsoft are making use of their purchase of Github to host the source for their ongoing work in to Powertoys.
PowerToys is a collection of applications that perform a range of different tasks that users may need to undertake regularly. There’s an Image Resizer that hooks in to the right click menu, there’s fancy zones, which expands upon Windows snap, by adding zones to snap to.
However, the big draw for me is PowerToys Run.
I work in engineering - one of the main formats that gets shared around a lot is the humble PDF. It often means that you can view exactly what the other person sees without the hassle of sharing additional items - I’m thinking CAD files here, where an architect may include a lot of references to external files within the CAD file that matches what the architect uses on the system, but won’t be installed in the same location or at all, on the clients machine.
Inspire Writer I’d been tossing up about purchasing a subscription to Ulysses on the Mac or not this year. In the end, I did and I’ve been using it for the last couple of blog posts that I’ve written. However, I’m not always on the Mac - I’m often on Windows and I miss using it when I am using Windows.
I’d been looking around for ages to find something that replicated it.
One of the few programs I really miss from macOS is nValt. I used that (rather than Notational Velocity) for a number of years for storing notes and stored everything in it from blog posts, to research notes and paper reviews. It worked well and I preferred it to Evernote.
Since then however, I’ve discovered Zim Wiki and I use that for storing my data that where I may need images, as at the end of the day, it saves data as a text file still, so I’ll be able to access it at a later date wherever.