Daniel Jalkut is a core part of the indie Apple developer community. He shares sharp insights online, he blogs smartly, and of course he publishes some excellent apps under the Red Sweater Software umbrella.
MarsEdit exists because you really, really shouldn’t compose important text in a web browser. Me, I’m an Internet dope, and rolled my own solution for Lex On Tech, so I can’t use MarsEdit — at least not until I add in a MetaWeblog integration. (I’m composing this post in BBEdit at this moment.) But if you publish your site with WordPress, Micro.blog, Tumblr, TypePad, or others of that ilk, MarsEdit lets you compose posts and preview them live, all without relying on your web browser.
There are approximately zero writers who publish online who haven’t lost a brilliant piece at least once while composing in a web browser. Lost writing is a tragedy. MarsEdit is the answer.
Black Ink 2 is an app for solving crossword puzzles. It’s available for both the Mac and iOS. (Disclosure: It includes my daily Lex.Games Mini crosswords for free, and Lex.Games subscribers can solve my daily full-size crosswords in Black Ink as well.)
Frankly, when I implemented crossword solving in the Lex.Games app, I considered Black Ink the gold standard in how such interfaces should work. Black Ink just works the way you want it to, and it can even load in crosswords from The New York Times.
Black Ink also lets you print puzzles, if you actually want to solve in, you know, black ink (but not in Black Ink, I guess).
FastScripts is for Mac automation, letting you enhance the Apple Script menu, leverage custom global keyboard shortcuts to trigger your scripts, and plenty more.
FlexTime lets you set repeating timers so that your Mac can remind you — with both on-screen displays and custom sounds — about taking breaks, following a recipe, or progressing through a workout.
Finally, Clarion’s an app for musicians looking to master note intervals. It’s cleverly done, and if you want to get more accurate at recognizing fourths vs. fifths vs. sixths, the app is worth a look.
The best compliment I can pay Daniel is simply this: I love when apps work the way I expect them to. That’s the unifying magic of Red Sweater Software: It’s not just that the apps are intuitive to use. They’re confidence-boosting, because they work the way my brain expects them to.