One of the things I expected to be a potential problem when I first switched to Mac was the software. There just wasn't as much as there was for Windows. But a lot of the things I used at the time were cross-platform, so I figured I'd probably keep using those. I actually found that in most cases, there were better and nicer apps that were Mac-only, in many cases.
The Basics
- I use 1Password as my password manager. Apple's built-in password management is getting to the point I could probably manage ok with just that now, but 1Password is really good.
Photography
- Apple Photos. Yes, I just use that. No Lightroom. All my photo management, and the vast majority of my editing, is done in Apple Photos. Yes, it's a bit limited, but it's enough for me. Most photographers don't agree.
- Affinity Photo. Just for the odd occasions I need a more advanced editor. Does most of what PhotoShop can do, for a much lower price. I have the whole Affinity suite, and it cost less than a single year of Lightroom alone.
- Photomator. Sometimes useful in between those extremes. A bit more powerful than Photos, but way easier than Affinity for anything that's not too complicated.
Dev Stuff
Just to be clear: I'm not a developer. I really can't code. But I dabble a bit, and I do sometimes do things that need developer tools.
Nova
My text editor of choice. Think VSCode, but beautifully designed for the Mac. Costs more than I really should have spent on a text editor when VSCode is there being free, but I do enjoy using it. I'm typing this in it right now.
Homebrew
If you do a lot of work in the terminal, you almost certainly need Brew. If you only use it occasionally, it still might be very nice to have. Installs with a single command. Installs other stuff with a single command. Updates things with a couple of commands. If you've used something like Debian's APT, it's very much like that, on the Mac.
To try using Astro and Starlight for making this site, I needed Node and NPM installing. In Brew, that's just...
brew install node
For a lot of terminal (or command line) stuff on the Mac, the instructions will assume you're using Homebrew, so it's very much the easy path.
Utilities
Amphetamine
In the App Store, it just stops the Mac from sleeping. Way more options than I ever use, but if I've got something downloading, exporting, etc., I can tell it to stay awake for, say, the next four hours.
Microsoft Office
No, I don't really want to use it, it's for work. I do have a 365 subscription for our own email too, but accessed through Apple Mail, which is nicer to use than Outlook. I don't like Outlook.