Apps I Use on my Macbook
Explaining why each app is on my Macbook Pro
As mentioned before, I use my Macbook Pro as my main and only laptop for university, since 2017. It is the 2017 one with the touch bar. So today I will be discussing each ‘app’ on it, and why it is there. Each ‘app’ is basically the application shown in the app section.
Page 1
So let’s get started. This is the only full page for some reason. But most of these apps are defaults, such as Safari, Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, Notes, Facetime, Messages, Maps, Find My, Photo Booth, Photos, Preview, Music, Podcasts, Apple TV, Voice Memos, GarageBand, iMovie, Numbers, Keynote, Pages, News, Stocks, etc basically everything except for Google Chrome is pre-installed by default, and most of them do not take up too much storage so I just kept it. Most of them are pretty useful anyways. Garageband and iMovie is there since I do a lot of content creating such as music and Youtube, and these applications are the lightest go-to ones. Xcode is there since I did some iOS/MacOS programming in the past which was pretty cool, and some C++ messing around. It takes up a lot of memory unfortunately, but it is still justified to keep for the time being.
Google Chrome is here since it is my main web browser; I am hooked onto the Google ecosystem, so a lot of my pages and favorites and preferences are saved onto Chrome. Though I still use Safari a bit.
The ‘Other’ folder contains random apps and utility tools, so I will just leave it as is.
Page 2
Page 2 starts with Google Keep. I have zero idea why it is there. It is probably there because of Chrome, or I used to use Google Keep a lot in the past when I used an android device. But I use Notes now since everything is tightly knit in iOS. Evernote is another note taking app. I use it for more complex activities, since Evernote has a lot more functionality compared to regular notes, with a nicely built interface, and lots of cool features. I use like writing screenplays and songs with this app. I do not use it too often, but it is pretty useful.
IntelliJ is used for a school course for user interfaces Java course I took earlier this year. I really want to uninstall it, since it uses a lot of resources and storage, and I do not really program in Java, but I think this app is still good to have. Visual Studio Code is one of my main programming text editors. Very customizable, a lot of themes and nice plugins. Cool interface. HP Print is for the printer, zoom.us is forced on me since online school projects and stuff, I somehow installed Python in the past (though it should be automatically on the new Macs now?) so IDLE and stuff is here. Might want to find a way to get rid of this in the future.
The Microsoft suite was free and provided by the school so it is all there; not the best for cloud editing, but still very nice applications to use for my own. Though Outlook and Teams have not really been used so I will consider uninstalling in the future. Spotify used to be my main music player, I still have it here since I manage Troy Williams, so having a Spotify perspective will be useful as well. A very nice app overall though.
The android file transfer was nice for transferring videos I took on my other phone. Jalview and PyMOL and Tablet were used for computational biology/genomics courses. They were alright, but a bit waste, so I might uninstall these after the courses are done. The tools were pretty cool to use and generates a lot of cool visualizations and will be awesome to use for researching and other biology stuff that is relevant today, but I am very lazy, so nah. Finally, Messenger was only installed because the web app had an error for a few days in a row and many group projects and calls were done on here, so I needed a phone alternative.
Page 3
A bunch of DrRacket tools are here since I used this programming tool language a lot in first year. It is still here cause nostalgia and might be useful in the future, though I do not think so? As you can tell so far, there are a lot of apps that I want to uninstall and I should, but I am too lazy. Unfortunate. Alfred 3 is here since my math professor in first year recommended it to me; basically it is the spotlight search on steroids I think, and it is super customizable. The paid version is even nicer and does a lot more cool things. Although I only used it for a few days, it barely took up any memory, and it can be super cool and productive to use in the future, hence, it is still here.
Anaconda-Navigator was randomly installed because I installed anaconda in first year or something when I wanted to do some random AI/ML projects, and it was this tool thing to install python packages easily. Not that useful since. I do not like this laptop that much since I installed a bunch of random programming junk in the past that might still be here, even though I rarely program or anything too intensive these days (such as a bunch of NodeJS/React things that take up a lot of memory and stuff).
Dropbox is a very useful tool especially since it snyced a lot of my screenshots in the past, though it also helps sync a lot of different things these days and is a very convenient cloud storage tool, since it is on the top bar. Though i barely use it these days. Sublime text is a very very light and simple text editor that is useful sometimes and nice to use. Cool simple interface. RStudio and R was installed for some bioinformatics online tutorial and statistics course, but I barely use it these days. Seems like cool for data, but unfortunately, I am not too interested. No idea what Pingedo thing is for. The Docker thing is not supposed to be there since I uninstalled docker a few months ago; docker used to be another one of those random programming things that took up a lot of resources on the computer that I hated having. So I got rid of it. Maybe useful for nice container projects, but I do not like it overall.
Postman is nice for some projects, since it sends API calls and stuff. Rarely use it anymore though. Discord is a very nice app. I used it more in the past for calls and other stuff. I used Audacity for some random audio clips and music stuff, though I am super lazy and do not use it anymore. I should uninstall it. VLC is used to play random video formats I think; no idea why I still have it there. Also the AlphaAlerter App was my very first MacOS app that involves back posture and all. I grinded a bit on this since it was a steep learning curve.
Page 4
Finally, the final page. The first Syphon thing I have no idea what it does, though I think it is used by OBS. OBS is a super super duper really cool streaming app. It is mostly used for recording different screens and voiceover and streaming and it is super customizable for a lot of different content creation tasks. I love using it! Credit Card Encrypter was a random app for trolling that had me try API calls across different platforms and programming languages, and this one involved sending data with textbox which was troll, but kind of a scam but it was just for personal texting. I thought I uninstalled all the adobe apps a while ago, since I do not anticipate myself subscribing anytime soon again or getting a good deal on it. I guess I still have some things to uninstall.
I also have another Postman, which I think one is for chrome app and one is standalone but one got discontinued? I am not too sure, but I think I was too lazy to uninstall in the past. Finally, I installed GIPHY capture last year, which seems to be a very useful tool on the computer to capture GIFs. I only used it once, but it seems like a very nice tool and quality-made so it is here. Nice tool to have just in case.
Overall here are basically the installed apps that I have on the Macbook. A solid amount, but not too many overall. Most of them are not used too much, as they are just nice useful tools that might be used in niche situations. But some are cools apps. Hopefully I can get a laptop with better storage in the future so I can install even more cool apps (though I still have a lot left, I am always cautious!).