About two years ago, I wrote a short list of 10 apps that I found essential. It’s 2 years later and things have changed a good bit. Here are 10 apps that I can’t do without today.

1. Mail - Okay, so this hasn’t changed. I’ve seen a lot of promising email clients come and go but nothing beats Mail.app. It’s pretty good and free.

2. MarsEdit - Every post to this blog still goes through MarsEdit. Sure, ownership of the app has changed hands but it’s also gone 2.0 and is still great. I don’t use the Flickr integration or a lot of its other features but I still more than get my money’s worth out of it.

3. TextMate - So, I used to use TextWrangler but times have changed. I now use TextMate for nearly every bit of text editing. Being able to write my own bundles with Python or shell scripting simply makes my life a lot easier.

4. Python - Python is my current favorite scripting language. It’s replaced Perl (which, frankly, I was glad to replace) and I prefer it to Ruby.

5. Nu - Nu is my newest hobby. Ever since it was publicly released, I’ve been working with it and using it. I do most of my new application prototyping in it and use it as a plug-in and glue language wherever I can.

6. git - I blame Tim Burks (the creator of Nu) for making me use git. I was perfectly happy with subversion but Burks uses git to host Nu. There’s a bit of a learning curve with any new source control system but once I learned git well enough to use it, I quickly preferred it. It just seems less trouble to make new branches and whatnot.

7. github - This is truly a webapp that sets the tone for future webapps. I love it. If you use git, you should check it out.

8. VirtualBox - Sure, there’s some good competition in the emulator department, but VB is free and works great. It is invaluable whenever I’m doing web development work. Also, I hate Internet Explorer.

9. Billable - In the last 6 months, I’ve been doing a lot more contract work than previously. I needed to find a simple and easy way to keep track of invoicing information. Billable works as expected, produces high quality invoices, and makes me look more professional. I couldn’t ask for more.

10. Quicksilver - Quicksilver hasn’t been updated in a while. It’s starting to feel a bit past its prime but it still works for me. I really only use it as an app launcher but I also make use of its calculator and shelf. I guess I’ll need to find a replacement by next year.

So what happened to OS X, Safari, SuperDuper!, and Adium? Well, OS X is still great but doesn’t really excite. I still use Safari as my primary browser but Firefox has so many great plugins and extensions. It’s hard to choose between them since I no longer favor Safari so much. I still use Adium but only to speak to a handful of people. In honesty, I’d like to leave chatting behind. Finally, SuperDuper! isn’t working with Leopard so I haven’t used it in a while. I still use SiteTagger and Paperclip but I didn’t want to pad the list with my own apps.