Good Solution For Mac
As a.NET developer, I’ve spent most of my time coding on Windows machines. It’s only logical: Visual Studio is the richest development experience for building C# and VB.NET applications, and it only runs on Windowsright? When I joined Stormpath to work on our, I was handed a MacBook Pro and given an interesting challenge: can a Mac be an awesome.NET development platform?
The acronym world is a crazy one. If MDM, MCM, MAM, MIAM and MEM aren’t enough, there are also SDKs and app containers. And, while we all know most enterprise mobility management (EMM) solutions treat Android, iOS, Blackberry and Windows the same – they shouldn’t.
To my surprise, the answer is yes! I’ll share how I turned a MacBook Pro into the ultimate Visual Studio development machine. How to Run Visual Studio on a Mac Visual Studio doesn’t run natively on OS X, so my first step was to get Windows running on my MacBook Pro. (If you want an editor that does run natively, or might fit the bill). There are multiple options for running Windows on a Mac. Every Mac comes with Apple’s Boot Camp software, which helps you install Windows into a separate partition. To switch between OSes, you need to restart.
Is a different animal: it runs Windows (or another guest OS) inside a virtual machine. This is convenient because you don’t have to restart your computer to switch over to Windows. Instead, Windows runs in an OS X application window. I found that a combination of both worked best for me. I installed Windows into a Boot Camp partition first, and then turned that partition into an active Parallels virtual machine. This way, I have the option of using Windows in the virtual machine, or restarting to run Windows natively at full speed.
I was initially skeptical of the performance of a heavy application like Visual Studio running in a virtual machine. The option to restart to Windows via Boot Camp gave me a fallback in case Visual Studio was sluggish.
There are some minor disadvantages to this method: you can’t pause the virtual machine or save it to a snapshot. A non-Boot Camp virtual machine doesn’t have these limitations.
This guide will work regardless of what type of virtual machine you create. After three months of serious use, and some tweaks, I’ve been very impressed with Parallels’ performance. I haven’t needed to boot directly to Windows at all. (For comparison, my host machine is a 15” mid-2015 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB flash drive.) In the remainder of this guide, I’ll detail the steps I took to optimize both Parallels and Visual Studio to run at peak performance. Installing Windows With Boot Camp and Parallels This part’s easy. I followed to install Windows in a separate partition.
Then, I installed Parallels and followed the to create a new virtual machine from the existing Boot Camp partition. Tweaking Parallels for Performance and Usability The Parallels team publishes on how to maximize the performance of your virtual machine. Here’s what I adopted: Virtual machine settings:. 2 virtual CPUs. 4096MB system memory.
256MB graphics memory Parallels options:. Optimization: Faster virtual machine, Adaptive hypervisor, Tune Windows for speed all turned on. Sharing: Shared cloud, SmartMount, and Access Windows folders from Mac turned off, as I didn’t need these for my workflow. I experimented with both of Parallels’ presentation modes, Coherence and Full Screen. While it was cool to see my Windows apps side-by-side with OS X in Coherence mode, I found that the UI responsiveness (especially opening and closing windows and dialogs) felt sluggish. Because of this, I use Full Screen exclusively now.
I have Windows full-screen on my external Thunderbolt display, and OS X on my laptop. If I need to use OS X on my large monitor, I can swipe the Magic Mouse to switch desktops. Adjusting OS X and Windows Features I fixed a few annoyances and performance drains right off the bat:. Function keys.
If you’re using the Mac keyboard, you’ll want to change the function key behavior so the F1-F12 keys work correctly in Visual Studio. From System Preferences – Keyboard, make sure Use all F1, F2, etc. Keys as standard function keys is checked. With this turned on, hold Fn to use the Mac functions (brightness, volume, etc.) on F1-F12. With an external non-Mac keyboard, this isn’t an issue. Start menu. I’m using Windows 8, and the removal of the Start menu annoyed me.
I clung to my old ways and installed to restore it. Disable Windows visual effects. I turned off most of the Windows desktop manager visual effects by going to Control Panel – System and Security – Advanced system settings – Advanced – Performance – Settings – Visual Effects and choosing Adjust for best performance. However, I left Smooth edges of screen fonts checked because it improves text rendering on my monitor. Installing Visual Studio and Helpful Extensions Installing Visual Studio is a piece of cake once the virtual machine is set up. I simply downloaded the latest release from MSDN and let the installer run.
If you use an Apple Magic Mouse (as I do), Visual Studio tends to be overly eager to zoom the text size in and out as you swipe your finger over the mouse. The add-on fixes this annoyance. Improving Visual Studio for Performance I was impressed with how well Visual Studio performed under emulation. With a large multi-project solution open, though, I saw some slowdowns. Through trial and error, I found a number of things that could be disabled to improve performance. You may not want to make all of the changes I did, so pick and choose your own list of tweaks:. Disable hardware-accelerated rendering.
Unchecking Automatically adjust visual experience based on client performance, Enable rich client visual experience, and Use hardware graphics acceleration if available via Options – Environment made the UI feel much more responsive on my machine. Start up to an empty environment.
Starting up Visual Studio for the first time feels a lot snappier if you skip the default news page on startup. Select Empty environment under Options – Environment – Startup – At startup. Remove unused extensions. Visual Studio ships with a number of extensions that you may not need.
From Tools – Extensions and Updates – Installed, remove any extensions you aren’t actively using (you can always reinstall them later). I got rid of six extensions I didn’t need. Disable extra debugging features.
I turned off both Enable Diagnostic Tools while debugging and Show elapsed time PerfTip while debugging in Options – Debugging – General. I wasn’t using these debugging features, and debugging felt snappier after I disabled them. Turn off the Navigation Bar. I found the code editor Navigation Bar to be unnecessary if the Solution Explorer is open.
I disabled it via Options – Text Editor – All Languages – Navigation Bar. Disable CodeLens. CodeLens is a cool feature for collaboration, but it’s not part of my current workflow. I got rid of the CPU overhead by turning it off via Options – Text Editor – All Languages – CodeLens – Enable CodeLens. Turn off Track Changes. When a file is open in the code editor, Visual Studio will represent recent changes by displaying small regions of green or yellow on the scroll bar.
If you can live without this, turn off Track changes via Options – Text Editor – General for a small performance boost. Turn off Track Active Item. Squeeze out a little bit more UI performance out by ensuring Track Active Item in Solution Explorer is unchecked under Options – Projects and Solutions – General. Visual Studio on a Mac: The Best of Both Worlds With these tweaks, I’ve come to love using Visual Studio on a Mac.
The performance is good, and by running Windows in a virtual machine, I get the best of both OS worlds. Want to see what I’m building with this setup? Check out our on Github. Do you have any other tricks you’ve used to improve Visual Studio performance? Any must-have add-ons that boost your productivity? Leave me a comment below!
One of the key features of today’s best project management software solutions is that the system can be accessed from different devices. Even in the instance that you prefer to use a Mac-specific system for your projects, the options are wide open.
There are two ways to go around this though. One is get a with a Mac app and do a local install; or, two, go for SaaS and access the system from a browser. Which means you need to decide, too, if you want.
Some users prefer an app because they tire of opening plenty of browser tabs. It is easier to find the project management app in the desktop taskbar, after all, than guess where among the twenty Safari tabs you’ve opened is the system on.
Mindful of these users, we have listed the first five apps for having a Mac app, while the rest are cloud-hosted that’s accessible to Mac users from a browser. Be aware though that choosing a Mac app shouldn’t be around the trivial reason that you simply just want to use your new MacBook. Installing an app, you may lose the: flexibility, accessibility and scalability.
Likewise, using a Mac with a team of PC-based members may pose compatibility issues. Past these worries, you should do just fine choosing any of these best project management software for Mac.
Wrike Did you know that, a popular cloud-hosted project management solution, is available as a desktop app? Cloud solutions have plenty of benefits, foremost accessibility and flexibility, but if you feel more comfortable with a desktop platform, or simply want to break free from the browser, you can still enjoy this software. The installed version works for Mac OS Mavericks (version 10.9 or later) and Windows 7 and up. It has a number of practical tools for desktop dynamics, including creating quick links to tasks and enabling multiple tabs in the app. The vendor regularly updates the desktop app; hence, it’s recommended to set for auto updates (you can disable this).
The Mac app is free, so to start enjoying it you can easily. Wrike won our Best Project Management Software Award for 2018 The Mac app has all the essentials of cloud-hosted Wrike: 3-Pane visibility; multiple workflows and methodologies; cross-industry uses; scalable features; and intuitive navigation. As with the cloud platform, the app helps you break goals into manageable tasks using various project management tools like Gantt Chart, kanban board and waterfall schematic. It also integrates key features that many project management software leave out, such as time tracking, resource management and document versioning.
Good Solution For Mac Download
Wrike pricing: Starting price for Wrike is $9.80 per user/month, which includes full project planning and collaboration. A freemium is available for five users, but it only covers task listing. Monday.com also features a Mac app. The solution is another popular project management software, specifically for its clean dashboard where you can monitor all team activities and tasks. The desktop app comes free when you. Monday.com is ideal for large teams where tracking tasks and identifying accountability on each of them can turn complex. A cross-functional team, for example, needs visibility on what other departments are doing that may impact on its deliverables.
This said, Monday.com’s single board keeps everyone in the loop. You can add tasks, projects, goals and to-dos on a single board. Then add task owners and track their progress from the same location. The intuitiveness of this single-dashboard design helps you plan your workload and spot potential bottlenecks ahead. A small team, on the other hand, will find the solution ideal to invite third-party users like clients and stakeholders. A board can be shared and permission set for external users. Just a note though, if you’re using the Mac app, you may be losing out on real-time accessibility over the internet, which deters remote team collaboration.
It’s still best to use a cloud-hosted plan, which works just as fine with Safari anyway. Monday.com pricing: Monday.com starts at $25 per user/month for five users, which includes unlimited boards, 5 GB storage and iOS and Android apps. Basecamp Basecamp is popular as a cloud collaboration tool, but it’s also available as a downloadable Mac app.
That, on top of its Android and iOS apps, plus accessibility via popular browsers, makes Basecamp one of the most ideal tools for remote collaboration. It is, arguably, a popular choice among outsourced projects: handy, easy to set up across devices, highly integrated with popular email clients and has got an all-in pricing. A novice project leader will have no problem using its features from the get-go. Having argued for its simplicity, Basecamp is evidently for small to medium teams. The tools are rudimentary and the interface tends to create a confusing, compartmentalized messages for more complex projects.
Weighing these, you can get a tool that helps you keep tab of tasks, a basic message board to keep everyone in the loop and a chat room. Basecamp pricing: Pricing is universal at $99 per month and includes all features. It allows unlimited users, unlimited projects and 500 GB storage.
Merlin Project Merlin Project, now on version 5, is an obvious choice for Mac project management software, the one platform designed exclusively for macOS and iOS. So, why isn’t it on top of our list? Its on premise-only setup and license fees make it a tad less appealing than its SaaS-based Mac-accessible competitors and tend to dilute the many. For teams with a tech backup, Merlin Project is a logical choice. It’s easy to organize individual activities and groups in procedural structures. You can also set duration and fixed milestones for control.
Budgets and costs can easily be adjusted to time-plan changes and you get to pick your preferred template for workflow charts and reports. You can even store repeat structure templates in its Library for future standard projects. Plus Merlin Project version 5 now features kanban boards, groupings, resource pool and new style editor. Merlin Project pricing: Merlin Project 5 starts at $149 per user/year 5.
Trello The is known for its boards, lists and cards. It is perhaps a top choice if you swear by kanban, although that’s about all you’ll get. It cannot match the flexibility of our first four choices for Mac, especially adapting to a variety of project management methodologies like waterfall, Gantt Charts and other structured hierarchies. But for agile, Trello is cool. The use of boards, lists and cards is proven in organizing task priorities and keeping all team members accountable. There’s also a fun element moving cards from to-dos to done, lending to the project a sort of race-to-the-finish-line excitement.
The Trello dashboard is also one of the neatest, perhaps done only by Asana in intuitiveness. Trello is more of a tactical tool than a strategic planning platform. It does deliver the goods for small to medium projects.
You can even use this alongside fully featured but rather complex project management solutions like Smartsheet. Trello pricing: You can get Trello for free for personal projects. It’s got unlimited boards, lists and cards and 10 MB storage. For more advanced features, pricing starts at $9.99 per user/month, which, among others, lets you integrate with important apps like Jira, Bitbucket, Mailchimp, Salesforce, Google Drive and Dropbox. (The next project management tools are purely cloud-hosted and accessible via browser from a variety of devices including MacBooks and iMacs.) 6. Smartsheet Smartsheet is fully functional on Mac via browser, it lacks for a desktop app. This isn’t a bad thing as we’ve pointed out above; the goal is simply to ensure your project management software works on your MacBook or iMac.
The take after the familiar Excel spreadsheet interface. The idea is to wean users from cumbersome spreadsheets and let them experience the more powerful features of a cloud-hosted solution.
The vendor offers a comprehensive free trial to get you up to speed with the features. Smartsheet won our Expert's Choice Award for 2017 If you’re happy working with spreadsheets yet want more features, Smartsheet can be that bridge. It offers multiple views such as Gantt Charts, team availability, calendar, card view and timelines. Likewise, it allows deep automation beyond a spreadsheet’s capability, namely, set alerts, email reminders and process web forms. Arguably, Smartsheet is more complex than most cloud project management dashboards, but if you’re familiar with spreadsheets this is a non issue. Besides, the solution has plenty of templates for a variety of project types. Smartsheet pricing: Smartsheet starts at $14 per user/month for individual users.
The pacakge includes 10 sheets, reports, multiple views and forms. An enterprise version is available by quote. Clarizen is another top-performing project management solution that works well across platforms. It’s 100% SaaS compatible with Safari, Chrome and Firefox. That means there’s no need to shift to a PC; your MacBook will handle the solution just as fine. Even more, Clarizen’s got an iOS app (and Android), so you can shift from laptop to your iPhone with ease. The vendor has an appealing free trial where you can tinker with the features at no cost. The software is notable for its advanced tools.
It is mostly liked for its comprehensive project and work management platform, which is quick to set up and easy to navigate. You also get a chat app for faster communication. You have a choice between custom and template workflows. You can also expect standard PM tools such as multiple views, reports and email integration. What you may find unique though are its variety of timesheet and expense approval systems and cross-project visibility.
These are ingredients to handling project management portfolio, Clarizen staying true to its intended audience: the enterprise. Clarizen pricing: Pricing is by quote given the variety of modules the platform provides. The vendor will customize a plan based on your requirements. ProjectManager The run entirely via browser, meaning, you can use it on your Mac via Safari. Moreover, ProjectManager has Android and iOS apps, affording you more flexibility when on location.
Good Solution For Macbook Pro
Interestingly, ProjectManager can delight Mac users in another way: it helps you run Microsoft Project (a 100% Windows-based app, understandably) on Mac. The are quite simple and the integration smooth. If you want to investigate the features closely you can easily do so when you.
The project management software is typical of a cloud-hosted platform, it scales to the needs of a small business and enterprise. It covers the entire range of managing projects, from planning to tracking to reporting. You can plan in sprints, waterfall or interactive Gantt Charts, for example. Drag-and-drop makes schedule adjustment easy, too. Teams can also collaborate on tasks and attach files. The solution adapts to various project types, such as I.T. Development, construction, manufacturing, marketing and enterprise.
ProjectManager pricing: It is available from $15 per user/month for five users. The plan includes free file storage and guest logins and unlimited projects. Scoro works well with a Mac.
It is that small box that packs in a bang, a solution for small and medium-sized businesses complete with modules, not just for project management, but other core business processes. These include work management, financial management and CRM. You can check the solution closely when you. The advantage with this setup is you achieve seamless processes across operations and across teams. This setup is common in large enterprises, seldom in mid-sized companies and hardly in a small business. Scoro, in short, brings enterprise power to your growing business.
Among the notable features to mind are: sub-tasks and deadlines, real-time KPI dashboard, shared team calendar, contact management, time tracking and billing, reports and quoting-to-invoicing templates. Scoro pricing: Plans start at $22 per user/month for five users minimum. It includes dashboard, calendar and task management and CRM. Note, there is an onboarding fee from $899. Zoho Projects are accessible via browser.
You can even use its mobile apps for iOS or Android for more flexibility. The project management app is as good as it gets for small business teams. It has the essential collaboration and communication tools, and the project management space allows you to plan, track and assess outcomes easily. You can easily and get to know the features firsthand at no cost and without commitment. One of its key feature is in integration. As part of the Zoho suite, the project management app natively integrates with over forty business and productivity apps, including CRM, billing, help desk and I.T. Beyond its own infrastructure, Zoho Projects integrates with important apps like Google Apps, Google Docs, Gmail, MS Outlook, MS Office, QuickBooks, MailChimp and Twitter/Facebook. These are useful small business tools, thus, a small team using Zoho Projects can work with the efficiency of larger organizations.
An impressive offer, it’s one of the few remaining apps that offer a free version for an unlimited period, a catch for small business in a budget tightrope. Zoho Projects pricing: Paid plans start at $20 per month for up to 15 users, 10 projects. It includes all the basics, such as five templates, time tracking, file attachment up to 5 GB, subtasks, task dependency and CRM integration. Zoho Sprints The is the Zoho variation for agile projects.
Like with Zoho products, this one is 100% online, accessible for almost all devices including Macs. It follows the in PM, the bible of agile PM leaders. Where Zoho Project is designed more for projects with a standardized approach like construction and design teams, Zoho Sprints adapt to flexible planning and implementation. It breaks down projects into Backlog, Plan, Iteration and Product Update, the building blocks of agile. If you want to know more about the features you can easily. The noted features here, as they differ from its cousin, are customizable Scrum boards, a backlog tab and stories that run alongside estimation points. A priority rating is also thrown in to help agile managers work on tasks from the most urgent to the least.
Zoho Sprints pricing: Zoho Sprints is also available for free for up to five users and five projects. Paid subscription starts from $8.30 for ten users and unlimited projects.
All features are included in paid plans. Asana A has such an intuitive feature set that to leave it out of our list seems unthinkable. The software doesn’t have a native Mac app, so you’ll also access it from Safari or other browsers. There’s a clamor from the Asana community — one of the more active ones in project management — for a Mac app, which is largely ignored by the vendor. It may sound irrational to wish for a powerful cloud app to be installed as a desktop app, but some users are fed up with multiple browser tabs opened when using a cloud solution. A native app for Asana would have allowed them to have it sit in the bottom tray. Beyond this issue, Asana is still one of the premier tools to manage projects.
It is especially useful for small and medium-sized teams and a fit for remote collaboration. The interface is well designed (colors and navigation make a difference) and there’s harmony between drilling down to details and getting the big picture. For example, you can see all tasks and their progress from a project dashboard, or click on a team member and see what are on his or her plate. Key features include an activity feed, real-time inbox updates, filter search, task dependencies and project hierarchy.
Asana pricing: Asana starts at $9.99 per user/month. The plan includes timeline, unlimited members, unlimited dashboards, advanced search, custom fields, task dependencies, private projects and priority support. A freemium is available for teams up to fifteen members, featuring basic dashboards and search. Nutcache show that it is compatible with Mac via browser, too. It adapts to agile approaches like kanban and Scrum. It can be set to adjust to your workflow or other methods that suit a new project.
Plus it has built-in financial tools to help you monitor budget and costs. On the other hand, as a Scrum-enabled platform, it focuses on planning, committing and delivering sprints and track, measure and control overall progress. We can sort Nutcache features in nine categories: backlog management; sprint management; project management; teams and roles; kanban boards; analysis tools; story and task management; email notification; and agile planner. With all these, agile leaders can put their management skills in full practice. Nutcache pricing: Plans start with a flat fee of $10 per month plus fees based in no.
Of user tranches. For example, teams with 7 to 24 users are charged $5 per user/month, while teams with 25 to 34 users are charged $4 per user/month.
Mavenlink reveals that it combines project management software with resource planning, making for a single platform for project-based events. These include project accounting, business intelligence and resource management, on top of core project management. All these cloud-hosted modules are available to Mac users via browser. The fully featured platform fits enterprise projects, but that also means it may be quite expensive for small business. It is robust, got an open API and excellent permission levels. Then again it lacks for a chat app or mobile apps. If you can walk past these limitations, Mavenlink is powerful and can aid project leaders handling multiple tasks at once.
The solution suits a variety of project types such as I.T. Services, consulting and professional services. Mavenlink pricing: Plans start with collaboration and task management modules for $19 per month for five users. A more robust plan that includes core project management features is pegged at $39 per user/month.
Workfront Workfront is another enterprise project management solution that is cloud-hosted and, thus, accessible to Mac users. The platform also includes work management and rich customization to help you manage tasks, track project progress, monitor budget and approve works.
It is notably more complex than the other solutions on this list and understandably so: it’s designed for high-level projects. It can take weeks just to set it up, custom fit to your workflows. You’ll appreciate the complexity if you have the need for capacity planning, request management, resource management and other sophisticated functionalities for handling projects. A notable feature, its proofing process for uploading, reviewing and approving files is non existent in many project management software.: Pricing is by quote and available in four plans: Team, Pro, Business and Enterprise.
The basic plan includes basic project and work management. Why is FinancesOnline free? FinancesOnline is available for free for all our business professionals interested in an efficient way to find top-notch SaaS solutions.
We are able to keep our service free of charge thanks to cooperation with some of the vendors, who are willing to pay us for traffic and sales opportunities provided by our website. Please note, that FinancesOnline lists all vendors, we’re not limited only to the ones that pay us, and all software providers have an equal opportunity to get featured in our rankings and comparisons, win awards, gather user reviews, all in our effort to give you reliable advice that will enable you to make well-informed purchase decisions. Back to top Page last modified 2018-12-17.