About this time last year, I wrote a list of software that I found indispensable to my regular computing life. This year, I’m rather surprised at what has changed and what hasn’t so I’m putting up my 10 most necessary apps for the past year again. Perhaps I’ll remember to do this every year. 1. Mail.app - Yes, a perennial favorite. I’ve tried other email clients. Really, I have. But I keep returning to Mail. I’d complain that I’ve got so much information tied up in it that it’s scary, but it also has so many nice features. I love clicking a date in order to add it to iCal. Perhaps I should graduate Mail to an honorary category.

1. TextMate - TextMate is solid and stable. I’m fairly happy with the bundles and it’s really worked into my daily habit. I’m feeling rather attached to TextMate, and yet I keep an eye open for the next great text editor that will change my life. Still, TM could be another perennial favorite.

2. Nu - Nu has been around long enough that it no longer feels like a hobby to me. I’m able to be rather productive with it and I find myself trying out ideas in Nu before implementing them into a project. I used to keep a sandbox project with every framework linked in so that I could just mess around with code before moving it into an application. Now, I just launch TextMate and try things out in Nu. It also makes a great plugin language and lets me do things that I’d normally do with another scripting language with Cocoa’s excellent frameworks.

3. ExpanDrive - ExpanDrive is brilliant for guys like me. I do a decent amount of web work, both for myself and on contract. I still use Transmit and recommend it wholeheartedly over any other FTP client, but ExpanDrive just makes FTP work the way it ought to on OS X. It blurs that line. If I had to pick one, I’d go with Transmit in a heartbeat since it’s more robust and tends to work with more FTP servers (although I’ve only had a few servers that ExpanDrive couldn’t work with). But since I don’t have to pick, I find that ExpanDrive improves my standard of living when I’m working on websites. I promise, there’s room for two FTP applications on your hard drive and in your workflow.

4. FastScripts - I really should have given a shout out to FastScripts before. It replaced Apple’s Script Menu Item on my Mac a long time ago. Now it’s even better and free for most (light) users. I can’t imagine I’d be as happy without all my scripts being so readily available.

5. Spotlight - This is a surprise entry and a recent one. For years, I was a dedicated LaunchBar user. Then I moved to (at the time superior) Quicksilver. Unfortunately, Quicksilver was always a little buggy and crash-prone. I didn’t care. I kept using it. Finally, a few weeks ago, I gave up on it. I started using Spotlight and find that it’s good enough for my uses. It isn’t the promise and power that Quicksilver held or the polish of LaunchBar, but it feels more responsive and never crashes. On Leopard, it’s good enough for my basic needs and is available on nearly every Mac that I come across.

6. Sequel Pro - As part of my continued contracting work, I have become rather familiar with several forms of SQL databases. Sequel Pro makes working with the MySQL databases that I confront relatively painless. Sure, there are other options out there, but Sequel Pro is free and does everything that I need it to do.

7. Dropbox - I’ve tried all manner of different ways of transferring files between computers. I have to say that I find Dropbox to be one of the most convenient when I need to quickly and easily transfer between two computers. It’s like iDisk but without all of the other MobilMe overhead. It also seems to sync a good bit more quickly. I keep a flash drive with my computer when quick and dirty file transfers need to be done, but if I’m working between two or more computers repeatedly, I download and configure Dropbox because it’s so much more convenient.

8. Safari - Safari missed last year’s list because it was just my slightly preferred browser. Since then, Safari has gotten a lot better and I’ve found a loving appreciation of its debugging features. On top of this, Firefox has started to get that bloated feel that Netscape Navigator had (and Firefox was supposed to fix). Safari has won me back.

9. Reddit - Last year, I put Github on my list of necessary apps. I still love Github but its novelty has worn off a bit (note that I also didn’t put git on here). I still use it frequently, but I read Reddit every day. It’s a part of my daily life and I’d be remiss to acknowledge that.

Honorable mentions

The above is a list of things that I’ve been using every day (or nearly so) recently. My workflow changes as my work does so my necessary apps could change next month. That said, I left off a lot of great software that I wanted to give props to simply because I like them and still use them with some frequency.

MarsEdit is still the only way that I post to this site. It’d easily make my top ten list if only I had the time (and inclination) to post more.

Git and Github are still part of my natural workflow. Everything that I do now goes into a version control repository and git is now my preferred SCM (although I’ve heard good things about mercurial and bazaar).

Tweetie has replaced Twitterrific, although I’ve been banned from Twitter for some reason. I’m still trying to get that fixed but their support staff hasn’t responded to my queries yet.

At some point (perhaps the last MacHeist, I picked up LittleSnapper. I like it for taking screenshots since it provides lots of additional controls for annotating my pictures right inside the application.

Finally, I have to say that I really enjoy playing Strategery on my iPod Touch. When I have a few minutes to kill, I often turn to Strategery to entertain me.