Every craftsperson has a toolbox that they rely upon to help them get their job done to the best of their ability.  If you’re a carpenter, you have sharp saws, chisels, hammers, screwdrivers in multiple sizes, an excellent tool belt, and a box to carry it all.  When you arrive at a job site, you are ready to go, ready to provide your best effort to the problem at hand.  You can judge a craftsperson by the quality of their tools.

My toolbox consists of my computer, phone, and an internet connection.  With these 3 items, I can talk with people and design, build, deploy and maintain high quality websites.  I can consult, share ideas, help discover insights that can transform lives.  I love my job, and having excellent tools is truly something to be grateful for.

I like my Apple products so much that I’ve even invested in AAPL.  I currently own 8 shares and hope to acquire more, as long as they continue making excellent tools.

HARDWARE

These provide utility and delight for me every day:

• 15″ MacBook Pro with Retina screen — this is a game changer.  So FAST, so BEAUTIFUL, I love it.
• iPhone 4S – A lovely phone, it is really a computer you carry in your pocket all the time.  A magical device.  The new iOS 6 Maps does occasionally provide some interesting and humorous results.  They can and will fix this, I know.  It may take 10 years and self-driving cars to get there, but it’s too important to leave it as a failure.  I just upgraded to be able to use my phone in tethering mode, which means I can now work from anywhere I have cell data coverage.  Pretty rad.
• 2TB Time Capsule — automatic, wireless backups of everything every hour.  What’s not to love?

SOFTWARE

As you probably know, I love using WordPress to build websites for my clients.  It remains the easiest to use solution, and the plugins and themes available are wonderful.  It keeps on getting better all the time, and is a core asset that I rely on to get things accomplished that would take much longer any other way.

• WordPress
• TextMate 2
• VMWare
• Adobe CS 6 – it is very nice using the newest version of Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.  I had been stuck using an old copy of CS (1).
• Transmit (excellent FTP client)
• Safari, Chrome
• Address Book
• Gmail
• Microsoft Office
• Sequel (excellent MySQL client)
• Stickies
• Calculator
• I could list a lot more that I’m grateful for!

What are your favorite tools to use?