Tech Gear I Am Using

I update this periodically. I have left the previous years below for historical perspective. The latest is at the top.

April 2026 Update

After six years of good use, I have retired my Intel iMac 27" system. I have been waiting for a new 27" or better iMac Pro-like system based on Apple Silicon. I have been waiting in vain.

So, I got a new Apple Mac Studio M4 Max, with 64GB of RAM and 4TB of SSD. I have a Mac mini M4, but I needed more storage. A Mac mini w/M4 Pro almosts costs as much as a Mac Studio when configured similarly, but the Mac Studio has 10-Gbit Ethernet standard, and it has an SD-card reader, and two regular USB-A ports.

I use a $280 Costco purchased LG 32" 4K monitor with the Mac Studio. Screenshots are actually 5K (5120x2880) pixels, and the pixels are larger, so I am quite pleased with it.

I got the Mac Studio in February 2026 right before everything storage-wise disappeared from stock. I ordered it from B&H because they had it in stock and Apple was giving me longer lead times. I was worried that they were going to update the Mac Studio and then I would have to run Mac OS X Tahoe. Of course my Mac Studio came with Tahoe, so I promptly ran Apple Configurator and reverted back to Sequoia by flashing an IPSW file. Whew! Sequoia is not great, but it is not the huge disappointment that Tahoe is.

I am on Mac OS X 15.7.5 Sequoia on four Macs, and Mac OS X 12.7.6 Monterey on two Macs.

I really like my iPhone 17 Pro Max. Its cameras are a big step forward, and I use it every day.
iOS 26.4 seems okay, except for the Music app, which is horrible, to wit:

Cover art is still often missing, or worse, simply wrong.
The floating UI really gets in the way, as it does on Mac OS X Tahoe.
One cannot inspect metadata properly.
There is way too much UI devoted to stars/hearts, favorites, and such.
Apple made the iPod. The iPhone should be at least as good as a 2004 iPod. It isn't.

I really like my MacBook Air 13" M4. It is so fast, light, and wonderful. Other than occasionally needing to use an SD card, it really can replace a MacBook Pro for me. (I got an inexpensive SD card reader that I keep with the Air, so this is not much of an issue now.)

I am glad I stocked up on large external Seagate drives: I have 11 drives with 164 TB of capacity.
I hope they can meet my storage needs in the next year while drives are unavailable, or outrageously priced.

I have forgotten to mention that I have been using UTM since late 2021 on my Apple Silicon Macs to run FreeBSD.
This app has QEMU under the hood, but makes using QEMU much easier. I am using version 4.7.5.
On my new Mac Studio with its 16 CPU cores, I can build all of FreeBSD-14-STABLE in 30 minutes.

I have three computers now that run FreeBSD-14x64 natively. I build FreeBSD every day or two someplace.

Apple's hardware is amazing, truly nothing comes close. Apple's software is failing, and was so much better 20 years ago.
FreeBSD's software is the best out there now. If only FreeBSD & Apple hardware could come together... oh wait. That was early Mac OS X.
Sigh.

November 2025 Update

I continue to have too many computers. I have and use everything below, but have added the following:

2024 Acer Aspire 3 i5/12GB/512GB as a new FreeBSD 14.3 machine
2024 Apple Mac mini M4/16GB/256GB, which I use with an LG 32" 4K Monitor
2025 Apple MacBook Air M4/16GB/512GB in Starlight
Nikkor AF-S DX 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3G ED VR for my D3400 - an effective 27-450mm all-in-one-lens
iPhone 17 Pro Max 512GB in Deep Blue - with 14/24/28/35/48/100/200mm equivalent lenses & 48 MP
Seagate 26TB External drive - my hard drives now total 303 TB of capacity

I have settled into using Mac OS X 12.7.6 Monterey on some of my older Macs, and 15.7.2 on my newer Macs.

The Canon EOS R still has focusing problems. The Nikon DSLR very rarely misses focus, but the viewfinder is so small compared to the EOS R. When the EOS R gets a photo right, it is beautiful, but I usually have to take a lot of photos before I get everything looking good. It never gets it right on the first shot. This is very frustrating since Canon used to make such good products. The EOS R lineup of lenses all feel quite cheap and crappy compared to the EF L lenses, with too much plastic, and many important features routinely being left out. My RF 35mm f/1.8 lens needs USM focusing, not STM or VCM. I doubt they will ever update it.

I am still quite fond of the 35mm and 300mm focal lengths. I use my new iPhone 17 on the 35mm setting, and I am quite happy with its new hi-res telephoto lenses of 100mm and 200mm. It is a great tool. However, it lacks aperture control, which still gives the edge to real cameras.

September 2023 Update

I have too many computers. I routinely use 15 different machines, running Mac OS X, Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux. I will not go into detail about them all, but will summarize the most important machines.

Computers

2020 Apple iMac 27", 5GHz Intel i9, 10 cores, 40GB of RAM, 4TB SSD.
This is a terrific machine! Beautiful display, very capable, runs Mac OS X Monterey 12.7. I am most comfortable editing and working on this Mac.
2021 Apple MacBook Pro 16", M1 Max, 10 cores, 64GB of RAM, 4TB SSD.
Another beautiful display, even faster than my iMac, this has very long battery life. I run 12.7 on it, as well as dual-booting Asahi Linux, which works very well.
2021 Apple MacBook Pro 14", M1 Pro, 10 cores, 16GB of RAM, 2TB SSD.
A wonderfully compact portable, yet with useful ports! This too runs 12.7 and Asahi Linux.
2019 Apple MacBook Pro 15", 4.8GHz Intel i9, 8 cores, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD.
This one runs MacOS X Mojave 10.14.6, and is the last Mac that runs xhyve, a great lightweight tool for running FreeBSD at full-speed in a Terminal.
2018 Dell Vostro MT 3670, 4GHz Intel i5, 6 cores, 8GB of RAM, 512GB NVMe SSD.
This $500 tower is hooked up to a 40" Vizio E40-C2 HDTV and runs Windows 10 (once every few months to just keep it up-to-date), but almost daily instead runs FreeBSD-13.2-STABLE.
2012 Acer Aspire E1-531 15", 2.2GHz Pentium, 2 cores, 4GB of RAM, 256GB SSD.
FreeBSD-13.2-STABLE is all this machine runs and builds. After a decade it is slowing down a bit, but it still is a great laptop, with a DVD-burner and Gigabit Ethernet.
2019 Apple iPhone 11 Pro, A13, 4 cores, 4GB of RAM, 256GB SSD.
I gave away my iPad Pro, but I still use an older iPhone 7 Plus at night, as it has a bigger screen. I like having portable Internet/Safari, and Notes.

If I had to pick only two devices from the list above? It would be the first two. If I had to pick only one from the list? It would be the latest M1 MacBook Pro 16" (#2).

But you say, wouldn't you pick your iPhone? No. It is last on the list for a reason: iPhones and iPads are still just toys, as you cannot build software on them, run command shells, or do any of the things that I do all day long.

Operating Systems

Mac OS X continues to feel the most polished of the operating systems that I use. FreeBSD is very solid, but it takes a lot of programmer effort to keep a FreeBSD system up-to-date and running correctly. FreeBSD is the only OS that makes building everything locally easy to do.

I have normally found Linux systems to have major flaws. Many distros are very out-of-date. None allow building everything easily like FreeBSD. However, Asahi Linux has been growing on me. It is a derivative of Arch Linux and these two distros stay up-to-date very nicely. I find myself using Asahi on all of my M1 Macs more and more.

Apple's hardware is very well done, but Apple's software is increasingly becoming quite poor. Asahi is a great way to skip Mac OS Ventura or Sonoma! I run Mac OS X Monterey on most of my current Macs.

Software

For software I continue to use Safari as my main browser, but I also use Waterfox on Windows, and Firefox on BSD/Linux. I use Eddie 3.5 as my main text editor, or vim otherwise. I use Terminal, or xterm, konsole, or cmd.exe for building software. I use Apple's Notes on all of my Apple devices. I use a variety of map programs, all of which are unsatisfactory. I like playing Klondike solitaire during long software builds, and I will mention Ace-Of-Penguins and KPatience as particular favorites. XRG is always running on my Macs, showing me the state of my CPUs, memory, etc. cdto allows me to click to launch Terminal in any directory.

Of greater importance to me are some very powerful command-line tools:

awk - a great small language for programming, parsing, data gathering, calculating.
rsync - the best backup solution. I run this, via scripts, almost every minute of every day that I am computing.
vim - my favorite command-line text editor, especially useful for very large text files.
wget - my favorite Internet download tool for everything other than videos.
yt-dlp - my favorite video download tool.
agrep, ai, ana, api, baud, bench, bineq, cal, calc, camera, chex, cmetrics, colors, cookies, creation, digclock, digest, dkacat, dkagrep, dkajoin, dkasort, eq, ff, filler, filter, fix, fmt, freq, gen, gmt, graph, houses, html, hwy, index, int, loc, mpg, mpsqrt, nav, nava, navp, now, numth, os, play, purge, puzzle, qcp, rand, rpn, setdesktop, sqrt, sqrt8, stan, stats, sun, topten, tt, units, url, vincenty, wh, world - my custom suite of tools written in C.

Cameras

My opinion of my Canon EOS R has improved after doing a reset - the autofocus is now much better. My primary camera outfit is:

Canon EOS R - a 30 megapixel mirrorless camera with great colors, a gorgeous large viewfinder, not the best control layout, frustrating autofocus, and very so-so battery life.
Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 IS Macro STM - a very compact and useful walkabout lens, but slow to focus and buzzy. It really should be a USM lens Canon!
Canon RF 50mm f/1.8 STM - a very basic, reasonable, but slow & buzzy standard lens. Canon needs a compact RF 50mm f/1.4 USM.
Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM - a gorgeous telephoto and portrait lens, with amazing color contrast. Someday I hope to upgrade to the amazing RF 135mm f/1.8L IS USM, its replacement.
Canon RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM - a very capable wide-to-tele zoom, a great all-arounder, this is the lens that is most likely to be on the EOS R.
Canon RF 100-400mm f/5.6-8 IS USM - a lightweight long-tele, that although quite slow, has excellent color contrast, decent value, and is a remarkably good lens.

I also have a Nikon DSLR outfit with three lenses:

Nikon D3400 - a 24 megapixel DSLR with a very small viewfinder (when compared to the EOS R), excellent autofocus (way better than the EOS R), great results, excellent battery life, and for the money it is a better camera than the EOS R. Too bad they don't make it any more.
Nikkor AF-S DX 35mm f/1.8 - a 50mm-equivalent fast standard lens.
Nikkor AF-P DX 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 VR - a 27-82mm compact zoom, it is okay but I wish there was an ED version.
Nikkor AF-S DX 55-200mm f/4-5.6 ED VR - an 82-300mm very compact telephoto zoom, excellent color contrast, a delight to use.

I hate to admit that I take more photos with my iPhone 11 Pro then these two camera outfits comabined, but that goes to show you the importance of having a camera on your person all the time. I am awaiting the iPhone 15 Pro, but will continue to hold off until they improve the telephoto capabilities.

I no longer pine for a Hasselblad.

September 2022 Update

I got in November of 2021 a new MacBook Pro 14" with the M1 Pro chip and ten cores. It has been a terrific machine. It is faster than my i9 iMac! Highly recommended. I got the 16GB/2TB version. My next MacBook Pro will be the 16" with 32GB/4TB, when an M2 Pro comes out.

I am still using my iPhone 11 Pro. It works well. I want the new 48 megapixel camera of the iPhone 14 Pro, but I do not like the shiny pro finishes. I much prefer the regular iPhone 14 colors and finishes. Since the new 48 megapixel camera really doesn't give you a long telephoto yet, I will wait another generation or two.

My Canon EOS R outfit does not really satisfy. Sure the viewfinder is large and bright, but the autofocus is poor, often not focusing at all. The lenses are very expensive. Colors are great, but macro shots with my iPhone 11 Pro almost always are sharper and better than the EOS R.

I really want the new Hasselblad X2D, but $12K is a lot for a camera and a single lens.

November 2020 Update

So only a month after my August 2020 posting (see below), I decided to ugprade my main desktop and laptop. I spent rather a lot, but these new machines have been excellent!

2020 Apple iMac 27" 10-core i9/8GB/4TB SSD for $3,929 + $144.88 (32GB more memory from B&H)
2020 Apple MacBook Pro 16" 8-core i9/32GB/4TB SSD for $4,199

I have upgraded my 2019 MacBook Pro 15" to Big Sur 11.0.1, which works great except for the fact that xhyve no longer runs. Until this gets fixed for Big Sur, I will keep the new Macs on 10.15.7 Catalina so I can run xhyve for FreeBSD emulation. If the new iPhone 12s had TouchID, I would have bought one. They really messed up in a masked Covid world by not putting TouchID back. I don't like FaceID.

August 2020 Update

As of August 2020, if I had to pick a short list of tech, I would spend $6,981 on:

2020 Apple iMac 27" 8-core i7/8GB/2TB SSD for $2,899
2020 Apple MacBook Air i7/16GB/2TB Silver for $2,249
2019 Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max 256GB Midnight Green for $1,249
2020 Seagate 14TB Expansion Desktop USB3 HD for $270
2019 Apple AirPods Pro for $249
2020 SanDisk 256GB Ultra Dual Drive Luxe USB 3.1 Flash Drive (Type A/Type C) for $40
2020 Ruggard 13" Ultra Thin Netbook Sleeve with Handles (Black/Yellow) for $16
2020 Pearstone USB 3.0 Type-C to Type-A Adapter for $9

This assumes that the iPhone is my only camera. If I wanted to add a camera, I would maybe add a Canon EOS 6D Mark II due to its built-in GPS & 26 megapixels for $1,399, and then a few lenses. The EF 17-40mm f/4L would be good for the wide end at $499, a EF 50mm f/1.2L for $1,299, and a EF 135mm f/2L for $999. The final tele zoom is a hard choice: either a Tamron SP 150-600mm f/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2 for $1,199, or a EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS for $1,349, or a EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II for $2,199.

August 2020 Hardware

My primary desktop is an Apple 2015 iMac 27". It has an Intel 4.0-4.2GHz i7 quad core CPU, with Hyperthreading. It has 32GB of 1866MHz memory, and a 3TB Fusion Drive. It is an excellent daily driver, with large display and great I/O. It sadly runs macOS 10.15.6 Catalina.
My primary laptop is a 2020 Apple MacBook Air. It has an Intel 1.2-3.8GHz i7 4-core CPU, with Hyperthreading. It has 16GB of 3733MHz memory, and a 2TB SSD. It is light, fast, has a great keyboard, with a Retina display that could be a little brighter. It sadly runs macOS 10.15.6 Catalina.
My secondary laptop is a 2019 Apple MacBook Pro 15". It has an Intel 2.3-4.8GHz i9 8-core CPU, with Hyperthreading. It has 16GB of 2400MHz memory, and a 512GB SSD. It is extemely fast, a gorgeous bright 500-nit display, but I should have put a bigger SSD in it. I am testing macOS 10.16 Big Sur beta 5 on it.
My tertiary laptop is a 2015 Apple MacBook Pro 13". It has an Intel 3.1-3.4GHz i7 dual core CPU, with Hyperthreading. It has 16GB of 1866MHz memory, and a 512GB SSD. It is well built, compact, and great for travel, although it feels so much heavier than my new 2020 Air. It is running Mojave.
My secondary desktop is an 2009 Apple iMac 24". It has an Intel 2.9GHz Core 2 Duo CPU. It has 4GB of 1066MHz memory, and a 1TB hard disk. It has Gigabit Ethernet and a DVD burner. It runs Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and is still a nice machine.
My router is an Apple Airport Extreme with 802.11ac WiFi. It has been excellent, but it is now discontinued. Not sure what to buy someday to replace it, perhaps Ubiquiti?

I use a few other machines on occasion:

My FreeBSD desktop is a 2018 Dell Vostro MT 3670 tower. It has an Intel 2.4-4.0GHz i5 6-core CPU. It has 8GB of 2666MHz memory, and a 7200 rpm 1TB hard disk. It has Gigabit Ethernet, pathetic WiFi, and a DVD burner. I use a 40" Vizio E40-C2 HDTV with it, along with a Logitech Wireless Keyboard with a built-in trackpad. I can use it from across the room! I put an WD 500GB NVMe drive in it and installed FreeBSD 12-STABLE on it. What a machine this ended up being! I can build Firefox in 45 minutes, or all of FreeBSD in 45 minutes. The 1TB hard disk has Windows 10 2004 on it, but I rarely use it as a Windows machine. FreeBSD on NVMe is so much better!
My FreeBSD laptop is a 2012 Acer Aspire E1-531 15". It has an Intel 2.2GHz Pentium dual-core CPU. It has 4GB of 1333MHz memory, and a 256GB SSD. It has Gigabit Ethernet and a DVD burner. It has a meager display but otherwise has been a terrific machine given the price of 399 Euros. It is the only computer that I have ever purchased with a wad of cash and physically walked home with. I bought it from Media Markt when we lived in Munich.
My Xubuntu laptop is a 2013 Dell Latitude E7440 14". It has an Intel 1.9-2.9GHz i5 dual-core CPU, with Hyperthreading. It has 8GB of 1600MHz memory, and a 512GB SSD. It has a touchscreen and overall is a very nice machine. I wish FreeBSD supported the touchscreen.
My Windows 10 laptop is a 2018 Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 13". It has a Intel i5 1.6-3.4GHz i5 quad core CPU, with Hyperthreading, It has 8GB of 1866MHz memory, and a 256GB SSD. It is made of magnesium and has a very solid, wonderful feel: absolutely top-notch. It has a touchscreen and a fast CPU, but the I/O is pathetic over USB or WiFi, making it much less wonderful. If you copy big files over WiFi or via USB, this is not for you, and since I do these all the time, I rarely use it. I would not recommend a Surface Laptop 2.

Other tech that I use a lot:

Mercedes S 350 BlueTEC 4MATIC - after driving my 2006 E 320 CDI for 241K miles, I got this 2013 diesel. It has air suspension, a phenomenal 600W Harmon Karden audio system with 15 speakers & 5.1 Dolby Surround audio, GPS, heated/cooled/massaging seats, and a cruising range of over 800 miles. What a fabulous vehicle! After 114K miles I still like it.
Apple iPhone 11 Pro, Black, 256GB - bright display, a trio of cameras; I wish it had a headphone jack and TouchID. FaceID is no bueno.
Apple iPad Pro 10.5", Space Gray, 256GB - fast bright iPad, the best and last ever made with a headphone jack.
Apple AirPods Pro - they stay in my ears, offer noise cancelling, & connect to all my Apple devices nicely. Well done.
Nikon D3400 DSLR with AF-S 35mm f/1.8DX, AF-P 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6VR, & AF-S 55-200mm f/4-5.6 ED VR lenses and 24 megapixels of goodness.
Nikon Coolpix W300 with 24-120mm f/2.8-4.9 equivalent lens, GPS, time-lapses, and 16 megapixels. It is waterproof, yellow, and compact.
SanDisk Extreme 1TB portable SSD for fast backups.
2.5" portable hard drives: 1 Hitachi 1TB 7200 RPM, 1 Seagate 2TB, 1 Seagate 4TB, 1 Seagate 5TB, 1 Toshiba 1TB, 1 Toshiba 4TB, 3 Western Digital 2TB.
3.5" external hard drives: 1 Hitachi 4TB, 1 Seagate 4TB, 2 Seagate 8TB, 1 Seagate Barracuda 8TB 7200 RPM, 1 Seagate Exos 12TB 7200 RPM, 1 Seagate 14TB, 1 Toshiba 5TB.

August 2020 Software

Here are the applications that I use, sorted from the most to the least, with their current versions as of August 28th, 2020.

Terminal 2.10 - Terminal continues to be the most important app that I use. It has excellent customization, is fast, and reliable. Indispensable.

Eddie 3.4.4 b773 - The program I am using right now to edit this file; its author Pavel Cisler recently added full Awk support for me! Fast, customizable, wonderful. Indispensable.

XRG 2.8.2 - This awesome utility is always running on my Macs. It shows CPU, memory, disk, & net activity, as well as machine temperatures, and the weather. The perfect dashboard.

cdto 2.6 - This awesome utility app allows me to click in the toolbar of any Finder window & voila - I am in a Terminal session with the directory set to that folder. Very handy.

Safari 13.1.2 - Still the best web browser around: fast, great bookmark & history support, and with iCloud, syncs to all my Macs and iOS devices.

Notes 4.7 - I use this more & more due to the ease of storing pictures, thoughts, notes with full syncing to iCloud. Fast.

Preview 11.0 - Almost all of my photo and PDF viewing is done with Preview. Quick to launch, and I do some photo editing in it as well. UI pretty good.

Tweetbot 2.5.8 - Mac Twitter client; another version is on my iOS devices. Pretty good link to what's happening. Good keyboard support. Hasn't been updated in awhile, but works great!

TextEdit 1.15 - A good rich text editor, Mac only. I wish it did two-column text like MS Word.

Dictionary 2.3.0 - An excellent and very useful tool, Mac only. Many languages to choose from, and Wikipedia! Very well done. A hidden gem in macOS. I wish I had this on other platforms.

VLC 3.0.11.1 - My main video viewer, supports many formats, UI needs work; I use it on macOS, iOS, Windows, Linux, & FreeBSD.

HandBrake 1.3.3 - My main video ripper, supports many formats, very well done; I use it on macOS, Windows, & FreeBSD. Only downside is you must setup your own libdvdcss in order to rip most commercial DVDs.

Free42 2.0.21 - A nice HP calculator emulator used daily; newer versions treat 0^0 wrong, so I am sticking with this one; I use it on macOS, iOS, Windows, Linux, & FreeBSD.

Bing bing.com - I have been using Bing for a year now instead of Google for general searches. Bing has a better UI and at least as good of results, occasionally better. Google has gone way downhill for a decade now, removing features like Image Search, and emasculating products like Google Finance. Google Docs are horrible compared to MS Office.

Google Mail gmail.com - Very reliable, this is the best of the free mail apps.

Google Maps - google.com/maps - The best online map, but Bing Maps is getting close. I had hoped that Apple Maps would become the clear winner, but Apple Maps is still horribly inaccurate, with a very substandard database of waypoints that are out-of-date, and many places are simply missing; Google Maps also has errors, just not as many as Apple Maps. Garmin has the best POI database that you can put on your computer.

Google Earth Pro 7.3 - fantastic for armchair exploring the world; insidious daemons always installed by the app lessens my opinion of it. In fact, Google has become evil, contrary to their own mantra, but there is nothing like Google Earth from anyone else that I am aware of.

Garmin Base Camp 4.8.8 - best points of interest database, better than Google. You must own a Garmin GPS in order to copy the maps to your Mac. The great thing about Garmin is that it does not require the internet! All of the data is local. Everything is better local.

Garmin Express 7.0 - Mac updater for GPS firmware as well as twice yearly map updates. Works well.

LibreOffice 7.0.0 - I occasionally use this on macOS; it is my main spreadsheet at present. Font sizes always seem off. Not a favorite, but better than Numbers. Excel is still the best, but I no longer use it because the fees are too expensive. I want to be able to put Excel on at least 3 Macs and 2 PCs for one fee. I only use one machine at a time, but I do not want to rent Office 365. So, I use Libre.

Firefox 80.0.0 - My 2nd favorite web browser on Mac, it is my favorite browser on FreeBSD & on the rare occasions I use Windows. Syncs bookmarks between all instances of Firefox. Cool.

LockRattler 4.26 - macOS app to stay current on Mac Gatekeeper and other little-known system security files.

Music 1.0.6 - The replacement for iTunes, still getting worse with each iteration. I play music using a command line tool more and more and use this less and less. Not recommended.

Mail 13.4 - this Mac mail program has been my favorite & has worked well until this Catalina version, which has bugs. Not happy about this. Worse than previous version. Thunderbird works better on FreeBSD.

Books 2.4 - I use this on iOS a lot as my PDF reader, but hardly ever on Mac. I had such high hopes for it, but it is one of Apple's worst apps: UI riddled with bugs and the inability to do basic things. Cannot edit metadata of several files at once. Metadata used to get mixed up in editing, but that has improved a bit.

Numbers 10.1 - Apple's attempt at Excel still pales by comparison; macOS & iOS. Needs to read/write Excel files rather than forcing everything to be imported and exported. Only spreadsheet I use on iOS, it is hard to use on a phone, but not too bad on an iPad.

Calender 11.0 - decent UI on Mac, iCloud syncing works well. Also use this on iOS, where the UI is horrible.

Contacts 12.0 - horrible UI on Mac, I only use this because the iCloud syncing is handy. However, UI on iOS is better.

Reminders 7.0 - handy, iCloud syncing nice; this Catalina version always wants to upgrade the format, which I don't want to do because I use this across many versions of macOS & iOS, so worse that the previous release.

Stickies 10.2 - Catalina screwed up the file format on this well done tool, and Notes organizes stuff better, so I don't use this much any more.

Geekbench 5.2.3 - Benchmarking app for macOS, iOS, Windows.

Cygwin 3.1.6 - the single most important app on Windows! My life is spent here when I must be on Windows. This gives me basic Unix tools, such as tcsh and vim. I can build my suite of tools here. I'd rather be on macOS though. It needs to support env -S.

TextPad 4.7.3 - on Windows, this app from 2004 still works in Windows 10, and is my programming editor of choice. Win32 is durable!

Visual Studio Community 2019 16.7.2 - intuitive IDE, jumpy text editor, good tools, still with good docs; for Windows 10 dev, this is it. Still pretty good, and it is the best benefit of using Windows.

Visual Studio Code 1.48.2 - better than Xcode, but getting huge. Not too bad of an editor. I use it on Mac once in a while, but Eddie is better, faster, cleaner. I do not use VS Code on Windows because there I have the real, full blown Visual Studio IDE.

Xcode 11.6 - 17GB and for that you get no decent docs anymore, a horrible UI, a very bad text editor, and overcomplication. It does have high quality dev tools under the hood (clang, Perl), so I use the Command Line Tools. I rarely install Xcode.app any more due to its huge size and underwhelming everything. Terminal is sooo much better. Xcode is Mac's Achilles heel. (Window's Achilles' heel is the whole Explorer UI.)

Here are the software tools that I use from a command prompt and in scripts. All of these I build myself regularly, and I use these more than the apps above. I use them on macOS, Windows via cygwin, FreeBSD, and Linux. I would use them on iOS but iOS sadly has no command-line world. These tools are listed alphabetically.

agrep 2.04 - 49 KB fuzzy search tool, still useful even though it dates from 1992!
awk 20121220 - 144 KB simple, powerful language used for everything. FreeBSD fixes added. Absolutely essential. Thank you Brian Kernighan! Indispensable.
cpdf 2.3 - a handy PDF tool for merging PDFs and other tasks.
curl 7.72.0 - a download tool that supports SSL and many protocols. I prefer wget.
exiftool 12.00 - a Perl tool that can set and get metadata in many different file formats, especially JPEGs and PDFs; used dozens of times every day. Indispensable.
ffmpeg 4.3 - an audio & video transcoding tool. Used by youtube-dl.
ghostscript 9.52 - a tool for dealing with PostScript and PDF files.
gnugrep 3.4 - the GNU find tool. Fastest text search tool around.
gnuplot 5.2.8 - a handy chart plotting tool, the resulting data plots are better than Excel.
graphviz 2.44 - a handy directed or undirected graph plotting tool for dependency graphs.
iperf 3.81 - calculates internet download performance; requires another copy of iperf to be running at the other end.
lame 3.100 - an MP3 encoder, used by ffmpeg.
lzip 1.21 - file compression using LZMA with an emphasis on data recovery.
lynx 2.8.9 - a just text terminal web browser, good for reading news and not being distracted by ads, photos, videos, etc.
openssl 1.1.1g - a crypto toolkit for encoding, decoding, and much more.
perl 5.32.- - extremely flexible and useful programming language used for a million tasks. If awk can't do it, perl can. Indispensable.
mupdf 1.16.1 - a PDF viewer that on macOS sometimes works better than Preview; my primary PDF viewer on Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD.
rsync 3.1.3 - the best backup tool in the world! My custom macOS build maintains creation dates & resource forks; 400 KB. Absolutely essential. Indispensable.
sqlite3 3.33.0 - a 786 KB full SQL database. Fast, amazing, robust, and the most popular database in the world.
units 1.88 - the GNU unit conversion tool.
wget 1.20.3 - another download tool for grabbing web content; my own macOS build has its own built-in copy of openssl. Indispensable.
youtube-dl 2020.07.28 - downloads videos from YouTube and other sites - without ads! I use this daily. Very well done. Works best in conjunction with ffmpeg. Indispensable.
xearth 1.2 - this shows the world in motion with custom labels & grids; my default desktop in FreeBSD where it automatically updates all day long. Also on macOS.
xhyve 20181202 - 249 KB, fast lightweight virtualization tool for macOS that I use to run FreeBSD; 100X faster than qemu. Does not work in macOS 10.16 Big Sur.
xz 5.2.5 - file compression using LZMA, with higher compression rates than other tools.

Finally, I have my own suite of tools written in C, some of which are described in my book. I have worked on these since 1982!
They build on Mac OS X (now macOS) using clang or gcc, MacOS 9 using MPW, Cygwin on Windows, Windows using Visual Studio, FreeBSD using clang or gcc, and Linux using gcc. They are:

ai	ana	api	baud	bench	bineq	cal	calc	cmetrics	colors
cookies	creation	digest	dkacat	dkagrep	dkajoin	dkasort	eq	ff	filler
filter	fix	fmt	freq	gen	gmt	graph	houses	html	hwy
index	loc	mpg	nav	nava	navp	now	numth	os	play
purge	puzzle	qcp	rand	rpn	sqrt	sqrt8	stan	stats	sun
topten	tt	url	world

July 2019

Software

Here are the software applications that I use, sorted from the most to the least, with their current versions as of July 1st, 2019.

Terminal 2.9.5 - the single most important app on macOS! My life is spent here. Until iOS gets its own Terminal, iOS is an absolute toy & largely useless to me.
Safari 12.1.1 - favorite web browser, not as good of UI as 5 years ago, but still 1st choice.
Firefox 67.0.4 - 2nd favorite web browser, and my main browser on Windows.
Preview 10.1 - fast and decent PDF and photo viewer on macOS; much of my basic photo editing is done here as well.
Tweetbot 2.5.8 - Mac Twitter client; another version is on my iOS devices. Pretty good link to what's happening.
Eddie 3.4.1 - great Mac text editor, opens large files fast, most of my involved programming done here; great tech support too!
Notes 4.6 - excellent app on the Mac and iOS! More and more of my life is in here due to iCloud sync, support for photos & other attachments, cool photo features of scanning business cards and other files even when photographed at angles; handy drawing tools.
TextEdit 1.14 - very good rich text editor, so good that I rarely need MS Word any more. Mac only.
Free42 2.0.21 - great HP calculator used daily; newer versions treat 0^0 wrong, so I am sticking with this one; I use it on macOS, iOS, Windows, Linux, & FreeBSD.
Excel 12.3.6 - this part of Microsoft Mac Office from 2008 barely runs, but is still the best UI & user experience for spreadsheets.
Numbers 6.1 - Apple's attempt at Excel still pales by comparison; macOS & iOS.
LibreOffice 6.2.4 - I occasionally use this on macOS; it is my main spreadsheet on Windows at present. Font sizes always seem off. Not a favorite.
iTunes 12.9.5 - the last iTunes, much better UI back in 2012 in version 10.7; I use my own cmd line play tool more and more and iTunes less and less.
VLC 3.0.7.1 - main video viewer, supports many formats, UI clunky; I use it on macOS, iOS, Windows, Linux, & FreeBSD.
HandBrake 1.2.2 - main video ripper, supports many formats, very well done; I use it on macOS, Windows, & FreeBSD.
Mail 12.4 - this Mac mail program is my favorite & works well.
Calender 11.0 - pretty decent calendar, iCloud syncing great.
Contacts 12.0 - horrible UI, I only use this because the iCloud syncing is handy.
Reminders 6.0 - handy, iCloud syncing nice; they are redoing it for Catalina, which will probably end up ruining the app.
Stickies 10.2 - One of the few truly old MacOSX apps still around, I use it occasionally.
Books 1.19 - one of Apple's worst apps, rarely use it, but had such high hopes for it; UI riddled with bugs and inability to do basic things.
Cygwin 3.0.7 - the single most important app on Windows! My life is spent here when I must be on Windows. This gives basic Unix tools. I'd rather be on macOS though.
Visual Studio Community 2019 16.1.4 - intuitive IDE, jumpy text editor, good tools; for Windows 10 dev, this is it. Still pretty good, and it is the best benefit of using Windows.
Visual Studio Code 1.35.1 - better than Xcode, but getting huge, not too bad of an editor. I use it on Mac, but not on Windows because there I have the real, full blown VS.
Xcode 10.2.1 - bad UI, a crappy text editor, but high quality dev tools under the hood; I try and use this as little as possible. Terminal is sooo much better. Xcode is Mac's Achilles heel. (Window's Achilles' heel is the whole UI.)
Google Earth Pro 7.3 - fantastic for armchair exploring the world; insidious daemons always installed by the app lessens my opinion of it.
Google Maps - best online map database, although I hope that Apple beats them at their own game eventually. (Apple Maps is still horribly inaccurate with a very substandard database of waypoints that are out-of-date, and many waypoints are missing. Garmin has the best maps that you can put on your computer.)
Geekbench 4.3.4 - Benchmarking app for macOS, iOS, Windows.
LockRattler 4.18 - macOS app to stay current on Mac Gatekeeper and other little-known system security files.
Reunion 12.0 - a great app for doing family history and geneology work, supports GEDCOM format. Mac only.
Waterfox 56.2.11 - 3rd favorite web browser and a derivative of Firefox, could eventually replace Firefox but still new to me.

agrep 2.04 - 49 KB fuzzy search tool, still useful.
awk 20121220 - 144 KB simple, powerful language used for everything. FreeBSD fixes added. Absolutely essential. Thank you Brian Kernighan!
cpdf 2.3 - a handy PDF tool for merging PDFs and other tasks.
curl 7.65.1 - a download tool that supports SSL and many protocols.
exiftool 11.50 - a Perl tool that can set and get metadata in many different file formats, especially JPEGs and PDFs.
ffmpeg 4.1 - an audio & video transcoding tool.
gcc 9.1.1 - the GNU C compiler. Used to build everything here.
gnugrep 3.1 - the GNU find tool. Fastest text search tool around.
lynx 2.8.9 - a just text terminal web browser, good for reading news and not being distracted by ads, photos, videos, etc.
perl 5.28.2 - extremely flexible and useful programming language used for a million tasks. If awk can't do it, perl can.
ghostscript 9.25 - a tool for dealing with PostScript and PDF files.
mupdf 1.15 - a PDF viewer that on macOS sometimes works better than Preview; my primary PDF viewer on Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD.
rsync 3.1.3 - the best backup tool in the world! My custom macOS build maintains creation dates & resource forks; 400 KB. Absolutely essential.
sqlite3 3.28.0 - a 731 KB full SQL database. Fast, amazing, robust, and the most popular database in the world.
units 1.88 - the GNU unit conversion tool.
wget 1.20.3 - another download tool for grabbing web content; my own macOS build has its own built-in copy of openssl.
youtube-dl 2019.06.27 - downloads videos from YouTube and other sites -- without ads.
xearth 1.2 - this shows the world in motion with custom labels & grids; my default desktop in FreeBSD where it automatically updates all day long. Also on macOS.
xhyve 20181202 - 249 KB, fast lightweight virtualization tool for macOS that I use to run FreeBSD; 100X faster than qemu.
xz 5.2.2 - file compression using LZMA, with higher compression rates than other tools.

ai	ana	api	baud	bench	bineq	cal	calc	cmetrics	colors
cookies	creation	digest	dkacat	dkagrep	dkajoin	dkasort	eq	ff	filler
filter	fix	fmt	freq	gen	gmt	graph	houses	html	hwy
index	loc	mpg	mpsqrt	nav	nava	navp	now	numth	os
play	purge	puzzle	qcp	rand	rpn	sqrt	sqrt8	stan	stats
sun	topten	tt	url	world

June 2019

Hardware

My primary desktop is an Apple 2015 iMac 27". It has an Intel 4.0-4.2GHz i7 quad core CPU, with Hyperthreading. It has 16GB of 1866MHz memory, and a 3TB Fusion Drive. It is an excellent daily driver, with large display and great I/O.
My primary laptop is a 2019 Apple MacBook Pro 15". It has an Intel 2.3-4.8GHz i9 8-core CPU, with Hyperthreading. It has 16GB of 2400MHz memory, and a 512GB SSD. It is extemely fast, with a gorgeous bright 500-nit display.
My secondary laptop is a 2015 Apple MacBook Pro 13". It has an Intel 3.1-3.4GHz i7 dual core CPU, with Hyperthreading. It has 16GB of 1866MHz memory, and a 512GB SSD. It is filled with many useful ports, is compact, and great for travel.
My tertiary laptop is a 2012 Apple MacBook Pro 15". It has an Intel 2.7-3.7GHz i7 quad core CPU, with Hyperthreading. It has 16GB of 1600MHz memory, and a 1TB SSD. It has Gigabit Ethernet and a DVD burner. This is the last complete Apple laptop with all essential accessories built-in.
My secondary desktop is an 2009 Apple iMac 24". It has an Intel 2.9GHz Core 2 Duo CPU. It has 4GB of 1066MHz memory, and a 1TB hard disk. It has Gigabit Ethernet and a DVD burner. It runs Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and is still a nice machine.
My router is an Apple Airport Extreme with 802.11ac WiFi. It has been excellent, but it is now discontinued. Not sure what to buy someday to replace it, perhaps Ubiquiti?

Most of these Macs run macOS 10.14 Mojave. I use Eddie and TextPad for most text editing. I use Excel and Numbers for spreadsheets, Free42 for calculations, iTunes for music, Maps, Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Reminders, and Notes, but I use Terminal the most of any app for building software, running scripts, doing backups, etc.

I use a few other machines on occasion:

My FreeBSD laptop is a 2012 Acer Aspire E1-531 15". It has an Intel 2.2GHz Pentium dual-core CPU. It has 4GB of 1333MHz memory, and a 256GB SSD. It has Gigabit Ethernet and a DVD burner. It has a meager display but otherwise has been a terrific machine given the price of 399 Euros. It is the only computer that I have ever purchased with a wad of cash and walked home with. I bought it from Media Markt when we lived in Munich.
My Xubuntu laptop is a 2013 Dell Latitude E7440 14". It has an Intel 1.9-2.9GHz i5 dual-core CPU, with Hyperthreading. It has 8GB of 1600MHz memory, and a 512GB SSD. It has a touchscreen and overall is a very nice machine. I wish FreeBSD supported the touchscreen.
My Windows 10 desktop is a 2018 Dell Vostro MT 3670 tower. It has an Intel 2.4-4.0GHz i5 6-core CPU. It has 8GB of 2666MHz memory, and a 7200 rpm 1TB hard disk. It has Gigabit Ethernet, pathetic WiFi, and a DVD burner. I use a 40" Vizio E40-C2 HDTV with it, along with a Logitech Wireless Keyboard with a built-in trackpad. I can use it from across the room! It really needs an SSD.
My Windows 10 laptop is a 2018 Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 13". It has a Intel i5 1.6-3.4GHz i5 quad core CPU, with Hyperthreading, It has 8GB of 1866MHz memory, and a 256GB SSD. It is made of magnesium and has a very solid, wonderful feel: absolutely top-notch. It has a touchscreen and a fast CPU, but the I/O is pathetic over USB or WiFi, making it much less wonderful. It is just for Windows development.

Other tech that I use a lot:

Mercedes S 350 BlueTEC 4MATIC - after driving my 2006 E 320 CDI for 241K miles, I got this 2013 diesel. It has air suspension, a phenomenal 600W Harmon Karden audio system with 15 speakers & 5.1 Dolby Surround audio, GPS, heated/cooled/massaging seats, and a cruising range of over 800 miles. What a fabulous vehicle!
Apple iPhone 7 Plus, Space Gray, 128GB - bright display, dual cameras; it would be perfect if it had a headphone jack.
Apple iPad Pro 10.5", Space Gray, 256GB - fast bright iPad, the best ever made with a headphone jack.
Nikon D3400 DSLR with AF-P 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6VR and AF-S 55-200mm f/4-5.6 ED VR lenses and 24 megapixels of goodness.
Nikon Coolpix W300 with 24-120mm f/2.8-4.9 equivalent lens, GPS, time-lapses, and 16 megapixels. It is waterproof, yellow, and compact.
SanDisk Extreme 1TB portable SSD for fast backups.
2.5" portable hard drives: 1 Hitachi 1TB 7200 RPM, 1 Seagate 2TB, 1 Seagate 4TB, 1 Seagate 5TB, 1 Toshiba 1TB, 1 Toshiba 4TB, 3 Western Digital 2TB.
3.5" external hard drives: 1 Hitachi 4TB, 1 Seagate 4TB, 1 Seagate Barracuda 8TB 7200 RPM, 1 Toshiba 5TB.

At this point in time, if I had to pick a short list of tech, I would pick:

2019 Apple iMac 27" 8-core i9/16GB/3TB Fusion for $2999
2019 Apple MacBook Pro 15" 8-core i9/16GB/512GB Silver for $2799
2016 Apple iPhone 7 Plus 128GB Black for $669, used as my main camera, my iPad, and my portable internet.

17 May 2018

Hardware

C40

My main computer ("C40") is a late-2015 27" iMac 27" with Retina Display (5120 x 2880 pixels). It has a 4 GHz Intel Core i7 with quad cores and Hyperthreading, 16 GB of 1867 MHz DDR3 memory, a 3 TB Fusion drive, and AMD Radeon R9 graphics, specifically the M395 card with 2 GB of VRAM. I have been using the included Apple Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse, but I dislike both of them. They do both charge via a Lightning cable, which is cool.

The computer is on the whole excellent. I have a short USB extension cord that I can plug in hard drives, iPods, and an Apple external USB CD/DVD burner with. I leave a Lightning dock for my Apple iPhone 7 Plus 128GB to charge on plugged in, and I primarily use the built-in Gigabit Ethernet connection to my Apple AirPort Extreme router. Only occasionally do I use the 802.11ac WiFi.

I have a Sabrent USB 3.5" drive case always plugged in, currently with a Seagate 7200 rpm 8TB Barracuda hard disk ("B8") as my primary back-up drive via rsync. I also rsync to a 7200 rpm 1 TB 2.5" red Hitachi drive ("H1"), to a black 2 TB WD drive ("W2U"), and a black 2 TB WD drive ("W2A") that I store in my Mercedes center console.

C31

My secondary desktop computer ("C31") is a late-2013 iMac 21.5" with 1920 x 1080 pixels. It has a 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7 with quad cores and Hyperthreading, 16 GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 memory, 1 TB Fusion drive, and Nvidia GeFore GT 750M graphics with 1 GB of VRAM. It's Apple Bluetooth Keyboard is better than the one that came with the 27" iMac. This keyboard and mouse use AA batteries. I use its 802.11ac WiFi as its primary connection to the network.

I have an HGST 4 TB external hard drive ("H4") for Time Machine backups of C31, as well as for rsync backups.

M31

My primary laptop is a late-2015 MacBook Pro 13" with a Retina display that can go up to 3360 x 2100 pixels. It has a 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7 with dual cores and Hyperthreading, 16 GB of 1867 MHz DDR3 memory, a 512 GB SSD, Intel Iris graphics, and 802.11ac WiFi.

I use a gold metal Western Digital 2 TB 2.5" hard drive ("W2S") as its primary rsync target.

SRT

My secondary Mac laptop is a 2012 MacBook Pro 15" with a 1680 x 1050 display. It has a 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7 quad core with Hyperthreading CPU, 16 GB of 1600 MHz RAM, a 1 TB Micron SSD, a DVD+DL burner, Nvidia GT 650 graphics with 1 GB, built-in Gigabit, and 802.11n WiFi. This is the most recent "complete" Mac in my collection. I wish I could get a new fast CPU version of this, with a 4K display, but still with Gigabit Ethernet, and a DVD drive.

I use this, running macOS 10.13.6, as my iPad & iPhone sync machine. I maintain an older version of iTunes, 12.6.3, that is the last version of iTunes to have the iOS App Store in it.

C17

My tertiary Mac laptop is a 2009 MacBook Pro 17", with a 1920 x 1200 pixel display. It has a 2.8 GHz Core 2 Dual Core CPU, 4 GB of 1067 MHz RAM, a 750 GB hybrid drive, a DVD+DL drive, an Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics ship with 256 MB of VRAM, Gigabit Ethernet, and 802.11n WiFi.

This machine runs Mac OS X Mavericks Server.

A53

My primary FreeBSD machine is a 2012 Acer E1-531 laptop, with a 2.2 GHz Pentium B960 dual core chip w/2 MB of L3 cache, 4 GB of 1333 MHz RAM, a 250 GB Samsung SSD, a DVD burner, Intel HD graphics, and a 14" 1366 x 768 display. It has 802.11n WiFi, but I almost exclusively use its built-in Gigabit Ethernet. A53 runs FreeBSD-11-STABLE. I backup to a pair of Seagate 1 TB 2.5" hard drives formatted UFS, alternating between them.

I purchased this machine on 20 Nov 2012 by walking from Mühlbaurstrasse 2 to Einsteinstrasse 130 in München, and by paying &Euro;399 cash for it, and walking it home. It has a German keyboard and I am quite sentimental about it. The display isn't great, but FreeBSD runs nicely on it.

My primary Linux machine is a 2013 Dell Latitude E7440 with an Intel Core i5-4300U at 1.9 GHz with dual cores and Hyperthreading, 8 GB of RAM, a Samsung 512 GB mSATA SSD, a 14" 1920 x 1080 HD touch display, Intel Pro Gigabit Ethernet, and Intel 802.11ac AC7260 WiFi. I use the WiFi mainly.

This machine runs Xubuntu 18.04, with Firefox 59.0.2 as the primary browser, and Thunderbird for email. I have awk, curl, ffmpeg, grep, perl, wget, youtube-dl and other common tools via apt install.

iPad Air 2

I have a nice 64 GB iPad Air 2 in Space Gray that in 2015 replaced my original iPad. I am running iOS 11.3.1 on it. It is a great machine for browsing the web and buying things on Amazon. It is not good for my main software development or analysis workflows, as there are no programming languages on it.

iPhone 7 Plus

I recently upgraded to an iPhone 7 Plus 128 GB in Space Gray for the bigger display and better battery life. I abhor the lack of a 3.5 mm audio jack. Everything else is excellent! This runs iOS 11.3.1.

iPhone 6

My iPhone 6 128 GB in Space Gray was an exceptionally good phone. It is now a backup device, more like an iPod Touch. It runs iOS 11.3.1.

Software

macOS 10.13.6

My Macs are running macOS 10.13.6. The main bug that bothers me is that when on an APFS volume like my laptops are now using, Microsoft Office 2008 apps like Excel no longer maintain file create dates on saving a file. This problem does not occur on HFS+ volumes that my desktops have.

I use Mail, Messages, Safari, Notes, Reminders, Calendar, and Contacts via iCloud all the time, across my Macs and iOS devices. Occasionally I use Firefox 59.0.2. I use Quartz 2.7.11 for X Windows occasionally.

I use Tweetbot 2.5.4 for social media. On non-Mac platforms, I am forced to use the Twitter website via Firefox.

I am not using iTunes 12.7.4 as much for music, as it becomes worse with each release since it peaked at version 10.7 back in 2012. I am instead using my own command line scripts and tools more and more: play, playx.

Eddie 3.3.3 v692 is my main text editor. I rarely use Microsoft Word. I primarily use Apple's TextEdit for most things (such as this document). I still love Excel over Numbers, and I never use PowerPoint or Keynote.

I use Apple's Preview probably more than any other app on my Mac, because I am always reading PDFs and cropping photos. It is quite fast and nice. Rarely I will downshift to my own build of mupdf if Preview chokes on a PDF.

I use Google Maps over Apple Maps most of the time, Google Earth Pro occasionally, and iBooks very rarely. It is horrible and should be put back into iTunes.

I use Free 42 2.0.16 all the time on my Macs, as well as on Ubuntu and FreeBSD, and iOS. It is my favorite calculator. I also use emu48 here and there.

Oh, Terminal is probably my single most used app on the Mac, as it is the gateway to all of my command line tools. Xcode 9.4.1 is on the system, but I only use it to pretty-print code to PDFs. That's it. Everything development-wise is done in Terminal using the Xcode 9.4.1 command-line tools. This is my happy place.

I also use XRG 2.5 as my main system dashboard of how much memory is being used, what the CPUs are doing, etc. This is an absolute must have up all the time.

Rsync

My single most important piece of software is my custom rsync tool. My version of rsync copies Macintosh resource forks (not so important any more), and file creation dates (very important to me). I have been using a build of rsync 3.0.4 that I made in 8 Sep 2008 for nearly a decade (3504 days). On April 13th, 2018, I finally moved forward to a new custom rsync based on rsync 3.1.3, but it continues to support Mac extended attributes. It also is now a 64-bit executable, so it is ready for a 64-bit only world that will most likely be here soon. It was build with Xcode 9.3 tools.

Agrep

I have my own 64-bit build of agrep 2.04 from March of 1992! I had to clean up the K&R style the other day to get it to build with clang, but this tool continues to be useful.

Awk

I have my own 64-bit build of awk version 20121220, in 64-bit. It is my most common scripting language of choice. If things are very complicated then I move to Perl.

Curl

I have my own 64-bit build of curl 7.59.0. I don't use it as much as wget, but occasionally it works where wget doesn't.

FFmpeg

I use a 64-bit version of ffmpeg 3.4 that I built with Xcode 9.2 tools. I extract MP3s from videos or convert video formats with it.

Grep

I use a 64-bit version of GNU grep 3.1 that I built with Xcode 9.4 tools. It does not work on Mavericks due to using an API that is soft-linked. Arggh.

Mupdf

I have my own 64-bit build of mupdf 1.10a. I don't use it much but it is nice to have a 2nd PDF reader on the system.

Perl

I have my own 64-bit build of perl 5.26.2. I rely heavily on Image-ExifTool (v 10.80) for setting create and mod dates on PDFs via its exiftool. I built this with Xcode 9.3.

Qemu

I have my own 64-bit build of qemu version 1.2. I use this to run virtual instances of FreeBSD on the Mac, currently the FreeBSD 11.1-STABLE-20180329 snapshot, with xorg, icewm, Firefox, etc. Occasionally I will run OpenBSD, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, or other OSes. It is a great way to sample them without reformatting drives. My build is from 12 Sep 2012, but there are too many new dependencies to make me want to upgrade it.

Sqlite3

I have my own 64-bit build of SQLite version 3.23.1.

Wget

I do more and more downloading of things with wget, currently a 64-bit version of 1.19.4. It supports openssl 1.0.2n. I built this with Xcode 9.2. It needs a wgetrc file with "check-certificate = quiet" in it, which is a pain.

Youtube-dl

I am downloading more and more videos via this handy tool. It is updated often. 2018.05.01 is the current version. (In fact it was updated while I was writing this document!) I downloaded about 200 GB of iJustine videos in one day with this awesome tool. I watch all YouTube content offline via this tool. If I like it, I archive it, otherwise I delete it. My favorite YouTube channels are iJustine and her sister Jenna, Hoovies Garage, Strange Parts, Marques Brownlee, Casey Neistat, Survival Lilly, My Self Reliance, Sailing Nova Scotia, Sailing SV Delos, and Sailing Doodles.

Music

I wanted to mention Ewan Cunningham (ewanjohncovers on YouTube). His covers of Pink Floyd Echoes and other pieces have been terrific to listen to in past months. Nick Mason, the Pink Floyd drummer even Tweeted about him!

I also have really been enjoying the music of J.S. Bach (working my way through 157 CDs with 3,234 tracks of his music!), Sheryl Crow, Sarah Evans, Jewel, Jean-Luc Ponty, Ashlee Simpson, and Pink Floyd.

Back to Dan Allen's home page.

Created:  15 Apr 2018
Modified:  6 Apr 2026

Tech Gear I Am Using

April 2026 Update

Apple's hardware is amazing, truly nothing comes close. Apple's software is failing, and was so much better 20 years ago. FreeBSD's software is the best out there now. If only FreeBSD & Apple hardware could come together... oh wait. That was early Mac OS X. Sigh.

November 2025 Update

September 2023 Update

Computers

Operating Systems

Software

Cameras

September 2022 Update

November 2020 Update

August 2020 Update

August 2020 Hardware

August 2020 Software

July 2019

Software

June 2019

Hardware

17 May 2018

Hardware

Software

Back to Dan Allen's home page. Created: 15 Apr 2018 Modified: 6 Apr 2026

Apple's hardware is amazing, truly nothing comes close. Apple's software is failing, and was so much better 20 years ago.
FreeBSD's software is the best out there now. If only FreeBSD & Apple hardware could come together... oh wait. That was early Mac OS X.
Sigh.

Back to Dan Allen's home page.
Created: 15 Apr 2018 Modified: 6 Apr 2026