Help Me Out: Who’s Your Favorite Mac Developer?

To start off the new year I’m going to do a couple of awards list. Best Mac developers and best Mac applications. Not included in the list will be Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, or Macromedia. Who’s your favorite developer and why? Here’s a few from my favorites list.

First, the big guys will be in their own special categories. All four of the major Mac publishers develop excellent products. Apple’s Mac OS X and the iLife suite are unparalleled. Ditto with Final Cut Pro, Logic and friends.

As much as the world may not like Microsoft, their Mac Business Unit produced Microsoft Office, which is notably better than the Windows counterpart. Of course, MSIE is dead, and many other Windows apps will never see Mac code…

Adobe gets somewhere around 30% of revenue from Mac sales and produces some excellent applications: Photoshop, Illustrator, and others.

The same holds true with Macromedia and their Studio MX 2004 suite of Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, and friends.

All four are major application developers for the Mac platform. However, there are hundreds more who produce some of the best software available. In some cases, the developer provide just one or two very good applications.

James Thompson’s Drag Thing comes to mind. Mac life wouldn’t be as good without it. Other Mac developers have been at it a long time, too, and have a whole team dedicated to a series of products.

I’ve also fallen in love with the Omni Group’s Mac products. OmniWeb is arguably the best browser. Period. OmniGraffle is just a pleasure to use.

There’s also a superb suite of Mac products from Econ Technologies. I have and use most of them.

There are many, many more Mac developers out there who produce quality, useful, attractive, and valuable applications. Scan through your Applications folder on Mac OS X. What’s there that you particularly appreciate?

Here’s a few more.

Notebook from CircusPonies is high on my list. There’s nothing quite like that on Windows.

There’s Button Builder and Rapidweaver from RealMac Software. We love both for producing quick and easy web sites.

Around here, El Gato’s EyeTV gets lots of use, as does Nisus Software’s Nisus Writer Express.

I almost forgot Toast. A great Mac application but I don’t know who owns the product now. Things have changed over in Roxio land.

These are all quality developers who’ve carved out a niche with an excellent product or suite of products for the Mac user.

So, who’s on your list of favorite Mac developers? I’ll compose a list from your entries and publish a more comprehensive look at Mac developers.

To share your favorite Mac developers, click on the Comments link below. Otherwise, click on Feedback below for an anonymous submission.

Tell us the name of the developer/publisher and their Mac application, and a short blurb on why the application is so great. We’ll do the rest.

Check out the daily list of our 9 Word mini-Reviews at NoodleMac, and Kate's daily in-depth Mac software reviews at PixoBebo.