Since the Air is a little light on hard drive space I’ve been a little bit picky about what I install on it. It’s a good way to figure out what your “must have” apps are – this is what made the cut for me:

• LaunchBar – this is the very first thing I installed. I’m hopelessly dependent on it.
• Firefox – I’d like to give Safari another try, but I need someone to build a PwdHash extension for it before I can really use it. Besides, I still believe Gecko is the best engine to develop on.
• BBEdit – still my #1 text editor.
• TextMate – I’m now using this for CodeIgniter development.
• YouControl Desktops – If I could turn off transitions altogether in Spaces, I might not need this.
• Path Finder – a much better Finder.
• MailTemplateEditor – I use this 3-5 times a day on average.
• Twitteriffic – gotta get my fix.
• NetNewsWire – an app that deserves more run time than I’ve been giving it
• Skype – for the times when I need it
• Skitch – haven’t used it much lately but it’s great for marking up design comps
• Pukka – I blame Ethan for this one, he got me hooked on Pukka a while back. It’s a nice lean del.icio.us posting client.
• LeanCalc – I use this all the time for quick calculations
• iWork (copied over, it wasn’t too happy about that and complains every time I launch it, but still works)
• SubEthaEdit – often used to take notes as a team on conf. calls
• PwdHash – I’ve talked about this at length
• Adium – the best IM client out there
• MsgFiler – I can’t use Mail.app without it
• Adobe CS3 – runs surprisingly well
• iStat Menus – the calendar widget is awesome
• shadowClipboard – totally reliant on this as well
• Vienna – for private feeds

It’s interesting trying to wittle things down to the essentials. I keep letting little things leak in, but in general I’ve tried to keep it fairly tight.

What makes your “must-have” list?