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If you find yourself looking for applications optimised for Macs with Apple Silicon, you're not alone. With the transition to Apple’s M series of silicon chips (M1, M2, M3 and M4) users are on the lookout for software that can fully exploit the capabilities of these machines. This article is a guide you through a curated list of the best apps, spanning various categories such as creativity, productivity, development, essential tools, and gaming. Keep reading to discover how you can elevate your Mac experience.
In this overview, I will showcase not just popular applications but also those with specific appeal to distinct user bases, ensuring that whether you are a writer, designer, developer, or simply looking to have some fun, there’s something for everyone. For further exploration of Apple’s native app ecosystem, you may refer to the official Apple App Store.
TL:DR – The transition to Apple Silicon has opened a plethora of possibilities for Mac users. In this article, we discuss top apps that leverage the full potential of Apple's M1, M2, M3 and M4 processors, neatly divided into various user-friendly categories. Explore creative suites, productivity enhancers, development tools, essential apps, and more to ensure your Mac experience is as seamless and powerful as possible.
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Read more: Maximum Mac Performance: The Best Apps for Apple Silicon
Sublime Text is cross platform
Sublime Text is a proprietary text and code editor for macOS, Windows and Linux (even ChromeOS), which is very popular among developers due to a simple, fast and distraction free interface, an ability to open all the files in a folder, support for third party plugins through a package control system, extensive language syntax highlighting, and a clickable minimap view of an entire file.
Version 4 is downloadable from the makers website, Sublime HQ. There are countless changes since Sublime Text 3. The license key now includes three years of updates, rather than being tied to a specific version. This is a good change, to encourage people to keep up to date. The licence still remains valid after this time, with the last build over the three year period continuing to work. Sublime Text has always had a generous evaluation mode with a periodic nag to purchase a licence. It does not have reduced functionality for evaluation. The licence works on all platforms.
TL:DR – The competition for editors on macOS is between Sublime and BBEdit. If you need a cross platform editor Sublime wins. For MacOS only with a swiss army knife set of tools for web publishing I think BBEdit is a better choice.
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You can install the Linux version on ChromeOS
Sublime Text is a proprietary text and code editor which is very popular among developers due to a simple, fast and distraction free interface, an ability to open all the files in a folder, support for third party plugins through a package control system, extensive language syntax highlighting, and a clickable minimap view of an entire file. Sublime Text runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows. Sublime Text is one of the best text editors around. Its licence keys can be shared across platforms. If you use lots of different operating systems it is beneficial to have the same editor.
Before you start!
Before you start, you'll need to ensure you have a Linux capable Chromebook. Most are! In Settings Type 'Linux' and if its there you are all set. If not, well you can try updating your Chromebook, and if it is still not there its time to get a new Chromebook.
TL:DR — Just take me to the link Sublime Text download page.
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Using an SSH key, you can connect and authenticate to remote git servers without supplying your username and personal access token at each visit. Inevitably, you'll end up using more than one provider, for example for public projects and for internal private one, or for a particular client who requires a particular Git repository provider be used. SSh keys are more than just a convenient reduction in admin. They are essential in a devops environment where scripts and hooks will be working with code and multiple accounts and servers.
It is surprisingly easy to set up SSH access to Git repositories, but there are important things to think through which means you need to think about what you are doing. Most providers ofhave good instructions, and you could do no better than to start by reading one, such as this page Connecting to GitHub with SSH. The principles will be the same whatever the Git repository hosting provider.
TL:DR — SSH access to multiple Git repositories is easy to set up, convenient and secure but be careful not to accidentally overwrite other existing keys.
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Read more: Connecting to multiple Git repository providers with SSH
rsync is a file transfer program for Unix systems which has been around for decades. rsync can update whole directory trees and filesystems, can optionally preserves symbolic links, hard links, file ownership, permissions, devices and times. rsync requires no special privileges to install and can use rsh, ssh or direct sockets as the transport. Sounds ideal, but if you look at the rsync examples there is clearly quite a learning curve. This can be alleviated using grsync which provides a utilitarian but very comprehensive graphical user interface to rsync.
TL:DR — Grsync is an active project, built with GTK, which runs well on Ubuntu 21.04. It builds upon rsync which is part of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. It makes rsync easier to use for ad hoc tasks. It is licenced under the GNU General Public Licence. It is much easier to use than the rsync command line. It uses rsync of course and you can see the output from rsync if you wish.
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I have relied upon Apples wireless routers since the very first Airport Base Station was released twenty years ago. I still feel that they can continue to play a decent part in my home/office network. The Airport Time Capsule ought to be ideal for cross platform file sharing between Ubuntu Linux and macOS. Lets find out if it can be made to work instead of buying a new expensive network connected drive. I ought to be able to do it, after all, I've been working on cross platform network products since the first one, 'TOPS for Mac' which connected Macs to each other and to DOS based PC's and Unix based Sun workstations in the 80's. I found a screenshot from back then of my Mac looking at connecting to my IBM PS/2 or one of several Sun workstations.
What could the next Apple Airport WiFi stations look like?
Maybe, just maybe, Apple is coming back into this business. If so What could the next Apple Airport WiFi stations look like?
Apple AirPort Time Capsule surprise 2019 firmware update
Apple's Airport Time Capsule with 802.11ac was discontinued in 2018 but unusually a Firmware Update was released for it at the end of May 2019, keeping it pretty well up to date. Firmware update 7.9.1 was a security update addressing some obscure but nevertheless important issues. You can read the details over at About the security content of AirPort Base Station Firmware Update 7.9.1. Now, a firmware update for an obscure Apple product with a security issue is hardly big news, but to me it was a very welcome update as it meant that someone at Apple thought it was important enough to do and that it was still a supported device.
AirPort Time Capsule's cost £55 (2TB) or £75 (3TB) second hand from CeX (December 2024)
Apple's Airport Time Capsule with 802.11ac was expensive to buy new, at £249 (2TB) or £349 (3TB) (because it was decently specified with either a 2TB or 3TB hard drive installed. This was useful originally for over the network Time Machine backups. Nowadays all my Macs have an external Time Machine drive so this is effectively surplus. New in box Airport Time Capsules are around but expensive. You can find second hand Apple AirPort Time Capsule's at Computer Exchange (highly recommended, avoids ebay nonsense) for around £60 (2TB) and £80 (3TB) in December 2023
TL:DR Apple's A1470 Airport Time Capsule with 802.11ac was great when it was launched and is still great now, provided you have a Mac or an iOS device with Airport Utility which is required to configure and manage it. Shared Hard Drive access over the network is fast and convenient for home/office networking use for macOS based computers which use AFP sharing protocols. Some limitations in security mean that although it is usable with Linux, SMB 1.0/CIFS should not be enabled on Windows based computers.
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Read more: Airport Time Capsule shared Drive for Mac and Linux
Installing Flutter 2.2 on macOS Big Sur 11.3.1
Runnning a flutter 2.2 based 'Hello, world' app on macOS.
Flutter 2.0 can now create macOS Big Sur desktop apps, This is the hello world example app.
TL:DR— Getting this running took around a dozen commands, and a bit of default question answering in both Flutter and Android Studio, which you have to launch once it has been installed. It assumes you already have Xcode installed and its command line toole. It took about 15 minutes to set it up. I use a folder called 'Projects' in my home directory but you can choose whatever name makes sense for you.
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Read more: Flutter on macOS, and your first app, in about 15 minutes
- Are Costly Add-Ons Draining Your Microsoft 365 Budget?
- Apple Music Spatial Audio, Dolby Atmos, Lossless audio
- XLD - A lossless audio and CD ripper for macOS
- XRG - A system monitor for macOS
- Replacing Adobe Creative Cloud on Apple Mac computers
- macOS Stationery Pad for Document Templates
- Flutter at Google I/O 2021
- Wiring for Category 6 cable (UTP)
- Installing Android Studio for Mac
- Create an app in Flutter on Ubuntu in about 15 min
- Screenshots in Firefox 88 have been moved, annoyingly!
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