Back in February, MediaStorm upgraded its Mac Pro towers for the fiery new models. Here’s a complete list of the applications I installed on my new machine.

Backup and File Management

ChronoSync ($40) – Handy tool when you need to mirror a group of folders between hard drives.
Dropbox (free, paid upgrade for more storage) – We’ve moved away from FTP for file transfers. Dropbox is far easier and much simpler.
Hazel ($28) – Automatically organize and copy files according to user rules. (MediaStorm Guide)
Space Gremlin ($3.99) – A graphical representation of every file on your hard drive. Great for finding space hogs.
SuperDuper! ($27.95) – Industrial-strength backup. Backs up one drive to another. (MediaStorm Guide)
Transmit ($33.99) – For those rare occasions when I still need to transfer files via FTP.

Editing

After Effects – I’m like a teenager with a learner’s permit when it comes to motion graphics. Still, I like to have it handy if I need to make something simple.
Aperture ($79.99) – For picture editing and management, although we have begun flirting with Lightroom (MediaStorm Guide).
Final Cut 7 (no longer produced) – For editing legacy projects.
Photoshop – I rarely use photoshop, but it’s good to have around for enhancing images.
Premiere Pro – My editing workshorse. This is where I spend 80% of my time.

Editing Utilities

Flip Player (free)- A Quicktime plugin for viewing Window’s WMV files.
Handbreak (free) – For ripping DVDs.
iShowU HD ($29.95) – For recording the computer screen when we produce online training. I use ScreenFlow ($99) for blog posts.
iZotope ($349) – For audio repair and sweetening.
Keyboard Maestro ($36) A macros tool to speed up logging. Can’t live without it. (MediaStorm Guide)
Piezo ($14.99) – Record audio from any application on your Mac.
Plural Eyes ($199) – Great for syncing multiple cameras and audio before building multi-camera sequences. (MediaStorm Guide)
Transcrivia ($29.99) – The only way to transcribe.
VLC (free, donations accepted) – A great video player for files QuickTime can’t open.

Utilities

1 Password ($49.99) – The ultimate password manager.
Alfred (free, paid upgrade) – Like your Mac’s search bar but much, much better.
Bartender ($15) – Put menu bar icons on a hidden shelf. Keeps the top of your mac clean.
Fantastical ($9.99) – a menubar calendar application that understands natural language when creating events, i.e., just type “Thursday at 8” and you’re good to go.
MenuMate ($4.99) – Shows all of your menu options right at your cursor, one click away.
Privacy Scan ($14.99) – Sometimes you just need to take a bottle of bleach to your browser’s history and cache.
Twitter (free) – Keep up with the latest cat trends, and also @Mediastorm.

Writing

Byword (free) – A clean, minimal writing environment. I write blog posts with Byword and then copy them to Google Drive for team editing.
Chrome (free) – I use Safari as my default browser but for some reason it has problems copying and pasting in Google Drive.
JustNotes ($9.99) – Simple storage for note-taking.
Keynote ($19.99) – For methodology and fthef presentations.
Glui ($6.99) – For marking up screenshots that I use in blog posts.
Text Expander ($34.99) – Create snippets, or shortcuts, of frequently used text.
Text Wrangler (free) – For the odd occasion when I need to format text in HTML.

Have a great tool I didn’t mention? Let us know in the comments.