There is no doubt about it, most offices and jobs that use Macs are startups. The smaller work environment means less employees, less employees mean Macs are more affordable for the whole office, than purchasing Macs for a larger office. However, more and more larger offices are looking into using Macs for their employees. As of now, a little over 20% of jobs use Apple for their office employees. With more users jumping on to use Macs, this means that it is more important than ever to find great applications you can make use of in your office. Today, we will list nine of our favorite office applications for Mac.
Note Taking
Soho Notes 9
Soho Notes is the Mac application that not only helps organize your written notes, but also PDF notes and documents, and other multimedia. This is the perfect Mac application for organizing documents floating around the office. Its well organized folder system allows you to make a place for everything. Have a receipt or document you have to scan? Soho Notes allows you to take your scanned notes and have them added to the application as well. Soho is integrated in many parts of your Mac, so you don’t even have to have Soho notes active to make use of it.
WriteRoom
As a writer, I find myself quite distracted sometimes. Even with a quiet office, my desktop around me can be a chaotic with many open applications and windows. WriteRoom gives me that clean slate to make my writing magic. With the use of keyboard commands, you can make many of the same commands as your desktop word processor. Once done, you can add your writing into your publishing software to make appropriate additions and multimedia. You can also use custom papers, backgrounds, and more for a personalized experience.
Caboodle Express
You find yourself sent online all the time to gather research and more. Caboodle allows you to keep all of this research together in one place. All entries are easy to find through visually appealing labels. Unlike Soho Notes, Caboodle is more for the text oriented organizers. If you have multimedia or text that is related to each other, then instead of making a folder, you have a chain of other related entries for easier retrieval. When Caboodle is running and you want to take a look at a file, simply drag the file out of the app to view.
Suites and Packages
The iWork Suite
Looking for a more official option? Then the iWork suite might be for you. iWork consists of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Pages is the writing application that allows you to make documents and text based flyers. Numbers is the more graphics based application that allows you to make charts and tables for presentations. Keynote is to iWork as PowerPoint is to Microsoft Office. Keynote allows you to add animations to slides, as well as photos and notes. iWork applications all work together. You can use Numbers presentations in your Keynotes powerpoint. You can add Numbers graphs in your Pages documents.
Adobe Creative Suite
The Adobe Creative Suite is for the more artistic and visually based needs of your office and company. The Adobe Creative Suite 5 includes many applications including Photoshop, and a video editing software called Premiere Pro. Other applications include Adobe Story and After Effects. Adobe Creative Suite is a little more expensive and advanced than Apple iWork suite and Mac Microsoft Office. However, if your company is lower on funds, Adobe offers many great money saving options. This includes subscription based payments where you can purchase components by the month or at a lower price for a whole year (paid monthly).
Microsoft Office for Mac
Microsoft Office is a very well known word processing suite. Aside from the Mac based Apple iWork suite and the more expensive Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office is more affordable and available for both Windows and Mac. Microsoft Office for Mac includes Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Entourage. Microsoft Word is the word processing application. Excel is the Microsoft Office application that deals with spreadsheets. The Microsoft Powerpoint application allows you to make beautiful slideshow presentations, and Entourage is Microsoft Office’s mail application. You can create great flyers, cards, and more with Microsoft Project Gallery that comes with Microsoft Office.
Getting Things Done (To-Do)
The Hit List
The Hit List is a very visually appealing to-do application for Mac. The application allows you to see what needs to get done, based on two tabs. The first tab is for things to get done today, the other tab for future tasks. Folders on the left keep all of your to do tasks in order. Aside from the two tabs already out of the box, The Hit List allows you to also add more tabs that keep things personalized. Hit List is linked with iCal, meaning I can still make sure of my iCloud and iCal hook up too.
OmniFocus for Mac
OmniFocus is one of my favorite to do applications for Mac. OmniFocus takes all of your tasks and organizes them into a list for you. OmniFocus acts as your virtual assistant. You help OmniFocus with telling what you need to get done by providing a list of to dos. They don’t have to be organized just yet, just a random list of what needs to get done. The application organizes this into an action list. You action lists and to do tasks are all organized into referable folders. OmniFocus is even able to be linked with its iPhone app component.
Things for Mac
Things is a powerful but simple application that I have been using since it became public. The application allows you to see what you have to do based on the selected tab. You have tabs for home, as well as custom made tasks. The application is synced with your iCal, along with the ability to use the iPhone app available in the App Store. Things is linked with various other parts of your Mac, including the Spotlight search feature on your Mac. If there are certain tasks for your workers to assign, Things allows you to assign these tasks within the application.
Ari Simon has been a writer with Make Tech Easier since August 2011. Ari loves anything related to technology and social media. When Ari isn’t working, he enjoys traveling and trying out the latest tech gadget.
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