Pro Blogger Reveals His Favorite Apple Tools [Peter Sciretta of Slashfilm]

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Ever wondered what Apple hardware and software pro bloggers use?

Peter Sciretta is a professional blogger/journalist specializing in film and entertainment. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Slashfilm.com (stylized as /Film), which has won numerous awards and recognition from the mainstream media. Last year, Total Film named him one of the “100 Most Influential People in Movies.”

Sciretta began his career on a Windows PC, but soon thereafter saw the value of switching to the Mac. “Nowadays everything I have in my home office is Apple-based,” he says.

In this post, adapted from a recent interview, Sciretta reveals what hardware, software, and mobile apps he can’t live without — both personally and professionally.

Becoming a Mac User

The site was launched a year before I purchased my first Mac. I was intrigued by the first Intel MacBooks, and I purchased one mainly to use as a second computer, but it quickly became my one and only work station.

Main Gear

My work computer is a 27-inch iMac, connected to a 30-inch Apple Cinema Display (the older model) which houses my Twitter feed, iTunes, calendar and secondary browser running Chrome. My iMac screen is where most of my work is done.

I have the iPhone 4 and also a current generation 15-inch MacBook Pro which I take with me on the road. I travel a lot, over 100 days a year just for work alone, so having a good mobile work station is very important to me.

Web Browser

I mainly use Camino to do the brunt of my work, including posting to the site. I’ve always preferred it. It seems to run faster than Firefox and doesn’t hog the system as much in the long run, probably due to the lack of extensions. I still have Firefox on my computer and use it for extensions when needed, but day-to-day I just prefer using Camino.

When the site was designed, we checked it out in every variation of every browser possible, and we try to check it out in the major browsers if we make any major site design changes. But post-to-post I don’t worry about that much.

RSS

I don’t think I could live without David Watanabe’s NewsFire. For me, this is the best RSS application available on OS X. I have been unable to find anything as close to as fast and reliable.

Photo Editing and Management

I always have a program called ImageWell open to create the majority of the images for the site. It’s a small little program that sits in the corner of my screen, allowing me to drag and drop images from the web and save them to my computer or our FTP [server] with minimal image manipulation (crop, rotate, resize, etc).

The iPhone

I am addicted and permanently attached to my iPhone. Some of my friends say I have a problem. I’ve bought every single version of the iPhone thus far. I use my iPhone hours and hours a day. Aside from my computer, it is the single most used piece of technology in my life.

So even when they made the leap from iPhone 3G to 3Gs, the speed difference was enough to justify the purchase price. I’m more than willing to buy a new phone from Steve every year. If the upgrade in speed and features will improve my life for a year on the device I use hours a day, a couple hundred bucks is a bargain.

Apps

The Twitter app on the iPhone (along with the Boxcar push notification app) and the Twitter-owned Tweetie for Mac app on my iMac and MacBook.

I’m always checking my mail, Twitter or RSS updates through NewsRack.

I record most of my on-set interviews and junket interviews using an app called Recorder. (I had been using the Flip, but I’ve made the switch [to iPhone] since the quality of the iPhone recording has greatly improved.)

The iPad

I use my iPad mainly at night before falling asleep, mainly for reading purposes. For example catching up on the latest comic books (which may or may not become feature films) or from time to time reading unreleased screenplays on the PDF reader Good Reader.

Apple TV

I have just purchased [one] for my home theater area, but that functions more for fun than work thus far. I’m loving it so far, and hope they introduce apps into the mix sooner rather than later.

Adopting a Mac

In the corner of my home office I have have a Macintosh SE, which is purely for display purposes. The computer no longer works, and I actually found it on the street when I was living in San Francisco, but I’ve always loved the look of the design and I get a lot of comments on it.

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