There are a few small applications that I’ve come to rely on in my daily workflow–apps that help me maneuver around the necessary distractions that pull me away from designing and programming throughout the day. After upgrading to OSX 10.6 and living without it for a month now, a day hasn’t passed without longing for a Snow Leopard compatible version of Bronson Beta’s Mail Appetizer. If you’ve never had the pleasure, it’s a plugin for Apple’s Mail that brings up a HUD style summary window of incoming mail as it arrives. I use it to quickly triage emails and keep that dreaded red badge of the unread away without feeling the need to consciously switch back to Mail and access the situation.

So it was with great joy that I discovered the developer behind Bronson Beta has not only announced a Snow Leopard compatible version is in development, with updates via his twitter account, but right now–I kid you not–you can download a development snapshot and get it running on your own machine. He’ll be the first to tell you that it’s not especially stable at the moment, in fact right after installing it I had to disable it altogether due to the HUD refusing to close, but knowledge that Mail Appetizer will make the transition with me to 10.6 makes me happy.