Professional Software I Pay For

Panorama view of snow-covered mountains in the distance past a green valley underneath a mostly cloudy sky. Photo taken from the Wildspitz, the highest mountain in canton Zug. What does this have to do with paid software? Nothing. I just like mountains. And walking up them (walking back down again, less so).

This month I set up a new work laptop for the first time in two and a half years, and that got me thinking about the professional software I pay for (because I had to download and activate licenses for most of them).

In no particular order:

  • xScope. I love xScope. I last had to pay for this in 2014, but I use it regularly. Initially I used it to check the pixel perfection of my work, but lately I use it more to sample colors to check for accessibility. Even better now that retina screens are a thing and you probably can’t distinguish individual pixels with your naked eye. The worse my eyesight deteriorates, the more I rely on xScope.
  • Tower. GUI git client. Chances are you have to use git for work. I can’t even remember the last client/employer I had that didn’t use git for work (I do remember Visual SourceSafe…). Maybe the only subscription model work app I currently pay for. Yes, I could just use the CLI, but mostly I use Tower.
  • Kaleidoscope. File diff and merge tool. v4 uses the subscription model, but I’m still on the paid-up-front v3 for now.
  • Gifox. I use this to make gif’s out of screen recordings (mostly of the iOS Simulator) to post in tickets and pull requests. Great for documenting app behavior and more convenient than using Quick Time and dealing with video files.
  • Acorn Image editing. I’ve owned so many versions of Acorn. I mostly use this for cropping and resizing screenshots for use in tickets and pull requests.
  • Retrobatch Visual batch processor for images. I don’t use Retrobatch very often, but when I do it’s a super time/sanity-saver. Need to crop/resize/whatever 50 screenshots identically? Why do it manually when you can automate the work? I haven’t upgraded to the newly released v2 yet, but I am looking forward to it.
  • Marked 2. Markdown previewer. Preview the README’s for your repo’s and any other markdown documentation you have (or your cv).
  • Tot. Simple note app that lives in your menu bar. The Mac client is free but I’ve purchased the iOS app.

I own licenses to additional productivity apps, but these are the ones I needed to install on my work laptop right away.