For Mac beginners, you’ll be glad to know that OS X has a lot of really nice built in features. My personal favorite is Spotlight. I highly recommend you browse through the official Mac Basics guides if you haven’t already; you might find an even better feature that you weren’t aware of.

For seasoned Mac users, hopefully you’ll discover a new gem from my short list!

Unlike other lists online that have 20, 50 sometimes 100 Mac apps, many of which you must pay for, I’ve really boiled things down to apps that I think beginners and long time users can appreciate. Paid apps can be great but, my hope is that, like me, you find these free apps help you start to become more productive with OS X and let you enjoy using your Mac even more than before.

So, first off is RescueTime. It’s a free app with a free service tier that will enlighten you on how you use your Mac. It’s a great way to see how much time you spend reading, writing, watching, listening, playing games, etc. You can see breakdowns by app and app category (which you can customize). RescueTime isn’t just for tracking “work” although it’s really good for that too.

★★★★★

Next up, Cheatsheet. “If you ain’t cheatin’ you ain’t tryin'” You should know, “a keyboard shortcut is a combination of keys that, when pressed simultaneously, perform some task that ordinarily requires use of a mouse or other input device and may take longer to do”. With Cheatsheet, as their website says, “Just hold the ⌘-Key a bit longer to get a list of all active short cuts of the current application. It’s as simple as that.” Keyboard shortcuts can be big time savers but often there are so many to choose from and multiple menus to pick from; it can be difficult to find what you’re looking for. Just Cheat with Cheatsheet!

★★★★★

My next recommendation, Spectacle, takes advantage of keyboard shortcuts to make the apps on your screen fit neatly together side-by-side. So, if you like having 2 apps view-able at the same time, perhaps your browser and word processor, you can neatly organize them without needing to clumsily drag and stretch them across your screen. You can even go wild, maybe you want 4 separate apps open at the same time; heck maybe 9! Whatever works for you; that’s the point.

★★★★★

Finally, as much as we love using our Macs, sometimes we over-do it. We stay up too late on our Macs and mess up our sleep schedule. There’s nothing good about not getting proper sleep. Check out f.lux and have sweet dreams.

★★★★★

Again, I hope you found at least 1 gem here to make you Mac experience even better than it was before. Adios.

Without further ado, here’s how to copy files and folders in Google Drive and create symlinks (symbolic links).

[UPDATED 03/07/2016]

1. Click to highlight the file(s) and folder(s) you want to copy
2. Press Shift-Z to open a dialog with the “Add here” button
3. Navigate to the destination folder
4. Press “Add here”

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For about 15 years we’ve heard of all the failed startups and all the current ones struggling to make grocery delivery a viable service. So, what’s the big holdup? Why must I still go into the grocery store on a regular basis, when I enjoy it so rarely? Why hasn’t anybody solved this for me?!

During the September 2013 Austin Lean Startup Machine workshop, at Capital Factory, a few of us grouped around the very common idea that grocery shopping needs to be fixed. Along with applying Lean Startup principles to ‘some’ idea, I was also intrigued by diving head first into this huge opportunity that is seemingly impossible to resolve.

It almost goes without saying, I highly recommend The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries. When you’re ready to test Lean Startup theory, look for a Lean Startup Machine workshop, you’l really learn a lot and meet some awesome people.

Validation comes easy, for some things. It was extremely clear that a lot of people don’t want to go into a grocery store and shop. There were a lot of folks who do, don’t get me wrong, some people enjoy the experience. However, you can be certain that there is a massive market for those who don’t. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of those who don’t want to go into a grocery store are willing to pay for such a luxury.

Some ideas are simply invalid. People want it and they’ll pay for it, so what’s the problem? The problem, as we discovered, was the value customers price the service at. It seemed reasonable, and substantial that the general consensus of a 10% “delivery” fee was acceptable. Hold up. We really felt that we needed at least an 18% premium to break even. We had hoped that 20% would be acceptable and we’d have a little extra cheese to work with. Nope. Sorry. Not gonna happen. Our data showed pretty clearly that very few people, all affluent, would even begin to entertain the idea of paying that much of a premium. I’m guessing this is were all those failed and failing grocery delivery startups arrive. They must figure out how to deliver at an impossible margin or convince unwilling customers to pay more.

The Resolution: Don’t Deliver. Umm, OK, but that hasn’t solved anything, or has it? We felt pretty deep down the rabbit hole. How could we turn our backs on a service we want, a service so many others want and simply say it just won’t work. So, we concentrated on why it’s more expensive to “deliver” the goods than what people will gladly pay. We thought about the overhead costs. Paying somebody, minimum wage, to actually “deliver” the groceries plus transportation expenses is greater than 10% of the typical bill of groceries.

We validated that the premium they would pay was for the benefit of not having to park, and actually shop in the store, “delivery” is not a show-stopper, whereas needing to go into the store is. So, our solution was to build a service that allows consumers to shop online or call it in, but then actually arrive at a pick-up center to receive their groceries. This way, the customers incur the transportation costs and a 10% service fee might allow for a viable business.

Amazon’s Resolution: Drone Delivery. Two months after our LSM workshop Bezos, on 60 Minutes, announced that Amazon would someday deliver groceries by drone. Aha; it seems that Amazon’s R&D must have concluded similar findings, namely:

Paying somebody, minimum wage, to actually “deliver” the groceries plus transportation expenses is greater than 10% of the typical bill of groceries.

I just want to say, with some time and continuous updates I can see Google Plus replacing my WordPress blog. Especially since I don’t blog very often anymore Seriously though, if I could CNAME over to my G+ and customize the theme and CSS I’d be in business. In the meantime I’m sticking with the awesome WP, but hear me now.. G+ isn’t an FB killer, but perhaps it’s the WordPress killer!