Both of these programs are fast, effective, powerful enough for anything short of a "pro" workflow, and most of all, because they don't have all of the pro features, cheap. Both also use automator scripting to do repetitive or batch processing.
Pixelmator looks and feels more like photoshop, with floating palettes for tools, color selection, etc.. Acorn tries to get it all done in one tools window with options that change based on the current tool in use. Acorn also lets you do some very basic editing with a restricted feature set after the trial is over.
The choice is more a matter of personal style, but both are solid products I can highly recommend.
]]>Yes, free. And it runs on a Mac, on Windows, and in Linux.
Will you get a big career in 3D animation using Blender? Probably not, even if it was used for animatics in Spiderman2. What it will let you do, though, is learn the basics of building models, creating surfaces and textures, and animating your creations without spending thousands of dollars for Modo, Lightwave, 3DSMax, or Maya. I think the "free" price tag (compared to the thousands Lightwave cost when I bought it) and its inherent capabilities combines with the opportunity learn the thought process of 3D modeling more than make up for the learning curve of a new set of tools once you decide that you wish to pursue it further.
]]>Update: The company was bought out by Evernote. It's now available for free from the Mac App store.
]]>But what does this mean?
It means that you get a folder on your computer that acts like any other folder. You can move or copy files in and out just like any other folder. And because it is a local folder, it's just as fast as any other folder on your local hard drive. But this folder has the magical property of being backed up, to the internet, in the background, and that backup is updated every time you make a change.
And that backup is tied to a user account and login. Add another computer to the account, and anything you move into the dropbox on one computer ends up on the other computer. Or it's now visible via the dropbox app on your iPad or mobile phone.
Or in a pinch, at a friends house, you can log in via the web and download the files that way.
The fact that it does this transparently in the background is awesome enough, but that's not all! Every time you make a change, it keeps the previous versions for the last 30 days - so you can go back and recover that file you deleted or overwrote while on the road.
And that's still not all. You can share any folder in your dropbox with other dropbox users that you specify. Now, anything you move into that subfolder shows up on their computer.
But, you ask, what if they're not on dropbox? Or if I don't want to share a folder with them? Well, there's also a "public" folder. Move or copy a file in there, and right click on it, and select "Copy Public Link". Now send them the link, and they can download the file directly from Dropbox. No need to fiddle around with yousendit, etc. for those occasions something's too big to email.
Dropbox starts free at 2GB of storage, and you can pay for more. You can also refer your friends to get extra free storage for everyone who signs up a new account using your referral link.
And joking aside, it is an outstanding product that they constantly improve to make it faster, smaller, and more reliable than it already is. I evangelize it every day, and I keep all of my "current project" files within my dropbox folder. If I lose my laptop away from home, I'll be able to recover all my current stuff up to my last internet connection, and anything older is archived to other backups anyway.
]]>TextWrangler is the free little brother to BBEdit and replaced BBEdit Lite. It is so powerful that it’s almost hard to justify paying for a full-blown editor until you are heavily involved in coding on a regular basis and really need some of the power-user features like code block folding, macros, and snippets that BBEdit and TextMate provide. File comparisons and graceful handling of large files also make the Bare Bones editors hands down winners compared to TextMate.
I've used TextWrangler for years, but use BBEdit now. I own TextMate, really like it, and used it as my primary editor for a couple years, but it chokes on large files and hasn't had any significant work done on it in a while to cover some of the odder quirks or oversights in an otherwise beautiful 1.0 release. Textmate 2 has been "coming someday" for quite some time now.
That said, TextMate is also much cheaper than BBEdit, and with TextWrangler to handle a prettier GUI-based file comparison when needed, can handle almost anything most people will throw at it. It's more a matter of taste and style - much like the war between the also free and extremely powerful Vim and Emacs editors (also available in Linux) which I don't use because at this point in my life, I don't want to learn all the commands of yet another text editor until I have to.
Play with all of the free ones, and even try the trials on the paid ones. Then settle in and really learn and get comfortable in one and stick with it as much as possible unless something truly new comes around. You'll end up having to learn other editors and development environments (Xcode, Eclipse, etc.) often enough as it is, there's no point in deliberately making your life more difficult.
]]>Give it a shot. If you like the minimalist writing approach without the research and filing features, then also check out Writeroom.
]]>While I still prefer to use Safari on the Mac due to the bookmark synching and a slight aesthetic preference - I often turn to Chrome.
Chrome is available from google at: www.google.com/chrome
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