The last two years or so I have received this question (title) a few times. More and more people I know are switching to a Mac and more and more people don’t know the answer to this question.

Every time I answer the question i give a different answer depending on who’s asking. There is no right and wrong. It depends what you are after.

This is a short and brief breakdown to get you in the right direction.
In alphabetic order:

  • BBEdit, the grandpa of editors. For many years it had the throne.
  • Coda, the guy’s who gives us lovely Transmit have recently launched this application in an attempt to optimise the workflow.
  • SubEthaEdit, invite people on the network to do the work for you. Innovative. Fun.
  • TextMate, is my every day tool. It’s just an amazing sofware and time saver.
  • TextWrangler, the free version of BBEdit. Used this for many years. If you are after “just an editor” and don’t want to spend money or have annoying “please buy this product” messages, this is the daddy.
  • Xcode, with Apple’s developer package comes a editor. Maybe an overkill, but if you have installed the Developer Tools you already have an editor on you machine.