/uses
This is the most important tools I use on a regular basis. Inspired by wesbos/awesome-uses.
Workstation
14" MacBook Pro, M1 Max, 32GB RAM (2021). My only computer except for an very old Mac Mini media server. My favourite MacBook so far. The 14" display is the perfect size for travel. At my office I have it connected to a proper monitor.
LG UltraFine 5K 30". Very happy with this display. Bought my first one in 2018. The display port got broken last year. I immediately bought a new one. (I was able to fix the connector by replacing the main board, so I was able to resell it.)
Apple Extended Keyboard II. I got a mint condition AEKII with Norwegian layout for a very good price a few years back. Last year I bought the ADB2USB adapter so I now I can use it with my MacBook Pro, including all the media keys. It has great mechanical keys and gives me an awesome typing experience.
Development
Neovim. I recently moved from Panic's Nova editor to Neovim. I've used vim on and off for many years, but never really been able to fully make it my main editor. But last year I gave it a try once more and I finally felt I was comfortable and productive enough to stick with it. Now I'm really comfortable and LOVE it. It will require a lot to make me switch. Don't like to use to many external apps, so I use it with vanilla Terminal.app and tmux for window management.
Rapid API. When working with external API's or testing my own I use this app. They have a native mac app and it does what it need to do, and do it very well. But I preferred the previous incarnation as Paw.app.
Simulator.app. It's great for testing websites on mobile devices. You have access to all types of devices, and it includes all the bugs and quirks of iOS, which you responsive design preview in your editor does not. And it runs your localhost urls.
Design
Sketch. I prefer Sketch over Figma. It looks better and is a much better macOS citizen. But 99.9 % of other designers use Figma, so when I collaborate that is what we use. But all my own stuff is designed in Sketch.
Productivity
I have a philosophy where I try to use the native software bundled with my mac as far as possible. To really give the software a change and extract all functionality before I go for a third party software. There are many reasons for this. First of all I like the simplicity. I don't need to pay for an extra service, I don't need to register with another service. I don't need to install any software when setting up my system. The native software all integrates with each other quite well (not perfect), and all applications exists on all of Apple's platforms. And as soon as Apple introduces a new device or a new API, these apps will be present and integrated from day one. One last "feature" is that these apps often are more limited in how much they can be configured and tweaked. If you have a personality that easily gets distracted and can spend too much time on getting it "just right", this is a great productivity feature.
Reminders. The app I use for all my task management, both privately and for work. To organise projects, areas and tasks I use GTD together with PARA for a consistent folder structure.
Notes. All my notes are stored here and synced with iCloud. Here I aslo use PARA so that it's easy to navigate between projects across Notes and Reminders. I also do my blog writing, daily notes and have a Zettelkasten here.
Freeform. I use Freeform when I need to work more freely and creatively. For instance to create moodboards for the house we are building, this software works great. Really nice to use on iPad with the pencil as well.
BibDesk. For my Zettelkasten all notes have proper citations. To manage all my citations I use BibDesk. This lets me have a central database of all my sources, where I can generate a proper citation I can paste into each note.
LaTeX. At uni I used LaTeX for most of my homework. I recently started using it again to write documents. For instance all proposals and estimates I create for my company I now write with LaTeX. Since it's a turing complete language there is no limit to what can be automated, calculated and generated automatically. It also produces great typography and consistent layouts.
Paper
Leuchtturm1917 Notebook Dotted, A5 Softcover. I like to plan my month, week and day using pen and paper. Most days are timeblocked using this notebook. The dotted grid makes it very easy to draw blocks.
Delfonics Rollbahn Notepad A5, Lined. Love this notepad. It's just beautiful! I use this for more random notes I need to write down during a meeting, debugging something etc.
A7 Index Cards. I use vanilla index cards to create Hipster PDAs that I attach to each book that I read (that I intend to take notes from). When one index card is full I can just toss it in my GTD inbox for later processing. I've also made a wooden holder for my index cards.
