As any self-respecting digital craftsman I have a set of preferred tools. For no other reason than I love to read about other professionals’ preferred tools, I’ve concocted my own.

Hardware

Macbook Air. A 13″ i7 1.8GHz 256GB variant. An awesome little trooper. Gets the job done without a hickup. Apart from a smallish HD and a weak GPU I have no complaints about this apple.

Apple Cinema Display 23″ – It doesn’t make sense to work on graphical stuff on anything smaller. It’s classic, modern and understated – love it.

Bose Companion 2 Series II speakers – Not hi-end, but works surprisingly well for their size and price.

Sennheiser HD555 headphones – I’ve used Sennheiser over-ear headphones for ages, and they’re always a delight. Works well for the all-night coding session.

Software

Photoshop CS5 – This piece of software is the bulkiest, piece of legacy ware I own. Yet, it’s also my go-to piece for any kind of design, mockup, editing and what have you. It’s a sort of love-hate relationship. Have used Fireworks and Illustrator in obvious cases, but after 10 min. I’m frustrated to the point where I want to beat my desk with my head. The inconsistency in tool behavior and hotkeys is just a no go for me.

TextMate – A bit long in the tooth but still performs excellently for all my coding work. I’ve tried other offers like Coda, Espresso, Chocolat, BBEdit, Smultron – but none of them seemed right.

Transmit – It’s fast, works great, and has a lot of polish and personality. The guys from Panic never disappoint.

Terminal – I still giggle a little when I use the sudo command.

Safari/Chrome –  My primary browser is Safari running without Flash. I like the stability and Developer Tools. Chrome is wicked fast and runs Flash as an instance inside the browser.

1Password – I can’t stress how many hours of frustration this little program has saved me. It let’s you access your encrypted passwords on all browsers, your iPhone or via Dropbox. It’s simply brilliant.

iA Writer - The newest addition to the tool belt. iA is surprisingly honest in their marketing – it really does make you work more focused. And the blue curser is such as nice interface-branding touch. I’m actually using iA’s excellent WordPress theme for this blog. It’s well-crafted, minimal, and has a strong focus on typography.

I use a lot of different software besides the ones listed, like Dropbox, Billings, LittleSnapper, MAMP, and VirtualBox. But the ones above are my primary work horses. Spending 10+ hours a day in this environment the tools you use matters.