Hi there,
My name is Mike and I'd like to introduce myself as the newest member of TeamworkPM. I've been around Teamwork for quite a while helping out on the iOS app as necessary. However the lads decided to put a big push behind mobile apps and I've been here full time for the last two months or so.
At 38 I'm a bit older than the rest of the guys at Teamwork. So instead of an XBox I started messing around on an Oric 1 (google it). It didn't do a whole lot and died within weeks, but it did have Zap and Ping as BASIC keywords and that got me hooked. After that I was always messing with some computer or other. At one point Myself and a friend somehow managed to convince Atari to give us some pre-production Falcon030's and set about creating the World's-Greatest-Application-Framework. All written in 68K assembly. It was about as successful as the Falcon itself.
After College, I went straight to work for Apple - it was a brand new department and we were all around the same age, so not only did we learn loads but we had a ball doing it. Steve, however, didn't like having developers where he couldn't see them. The department was shut and I couldn't convince my soon-to-be wife to move to California. My tan would be forevermore restricted to two weeks a year.
After that I spent a couple of years working on localisation tools for indie developers and freelance translators. While that led to some oddities ( practically all of the open source software in Vietnam was translated using my software! ) it was no Instagram. It did however teach me the value of listening to your customers - a whole section that I added as a favour for one particular client ended up being the most popular feature overall.
Not long after that Apple brought out the iPhone and finally - finally! - my parents could understand what I did!
Outside of work, my Family take up all of my time. We have two kids and they're at that age where they're great fun but there's not a whole lot of rest to be had in our house! The highlight of the family week is when we all get together to make the homemade pizza. My daughter becomes the DJ and my son makes these mad little 1 inch wide minis. It's good fun.
Odd stuff that the Teamwork guys probably don't know: I'm not a GAA (Irish Sport) person, but at under-age level I did captain a Waterford team with both Paul Flynn and Tony Browne on it (That'll mean nothing to people outside of Waterford. And if you're outside of Ireland: Hurling is the best sport in the world : obviously!). Odd part time jobs: I was a Milk Man all through school and college, I spent some time doing Wedding and GAA Videos to help out a Friends business. I was one of the main characters in a bigish budget short movie (don't ask). And I've been lucky enough to present at WWDC twice.
Tools that I use.
Sublime Text - Multiple cursors is Pure Genius.
Alfred - I'm a recent convert from Quicksilver and I love it. Sit me down at a Mac without at least one of these installed and I feel like I'm missing some fingers.
XCode - Obviously.
git - once you start using git, you can go back to svn.
Terminal - for 90% of stuff it's simply faster and easier to use git from the terminal.
Spotify - I nearly always work with music on in the background.
Airfoil - Great for sending Spotify to the speakers connected to the AppleTV
WindowKeys - Allows me to Move and resize windows via a hotkey. It's great for moving between screens too.
HipChat - How we communicate in the office
Dash - Extremely fast and efficient documentation viewer. Great for iOS but supports Javascript, Ruby and plenty more. Very nice.
Twitter - !
Magic Trackpad - I prefer using the keyboard as much as possible ( hence Alfred ) so it's nice that the trackpad just sits there in the same place, unlike a mouse.
Of course I use my iPhone and iPad every day as well so :
Paper - makes even my scrawls look presentable.
Bamboo Stylus - I liked Paper so much I went out and bought a good stylus.
Adobe Ideas - I actually don't like the UI. But I do like its fast zooming - perfect for writing down ideas with the Bamboo..
Zite - the best thing about this app is that it pulls out great articles that I never would have found otherwise.
And finally, I don't actually use any of the UI mocking apps. I've bought nearly all of them, but I find they're usually just too clumsy. Go detailed and they're not that much better than Interface builder. Go vague and they're not as good as Paper.
I live and breath what I do. The Teamwork guys do to and that's why I came to work here. I think you'll enjoy the stuff coming down the line for TeamworkPM.