My favourite replacement apps, part 1

As I did a fresh install of Mountain Lion the day it was released, I’ve been slowly installing the tools I usually need as I’ve needed them. I thought it’d be interesting for the like-minded geeks to se how I roll. I’m planning to release this information as a series of posts, this being the first one.

iTerm 2, the Terminal replacement #

I tried the default Terminal on 10.8 but as I’ve grown so accustomed to iTerm 2, I downloaded and installed it instead. It’s a great Terminal replacement with nice features such as split panes. And page up/page down work straight away with irssi, with zero configuration.

Oh-my-zsh, the Bash replacement #

Oh-my-zsh brings zshell with awesome default configuration. I’m sure Bash can be configured to act & look similar, but this thing just makes sense out-of-the-box, so why not? From the top of my head, some nice features:

• Case insensitive autocomplete (where multiple hits of the tab key go though the alternatives)
• Git integration
• Fancy themes (yes, really) featuring colours in e.g. file listings
• Handy aliases, such as .. instead of cd .., - instead of cd -

Chrome, the Safari replacement #

I don’t fancy Safari. Even though I’ve bee flirting with Safari 6 that comes with 10.8 (unified location & search box! crazy fast and smooth scrolling! no Flash!) it still has some things that drive me next to crazy. For instance, Safari has a lot to learn about tab handling from Chrome. Tab duplication is nowhere to be found (except as a flaky plugin).

And Chrome just happens to be the least bad option. There are some things that I don’t like with Chrome, but it’s mostly good.

Adium, the Messages replacement #

Well, Messages is the mess of ages.

I’ll be back with more apps in part two. Stay tuned, and as always, for comments & feedback you can reach me on Twitter as @anttti.