Mac OS

Spotlight is one of my favorite features of Mac OS X, I probably use it more than even the Dock. Being able to hit command-space to quickly locate documents, emails, and launch Applications is endlessly useful. For some of us, it’s necessary to be in the terminal, and wouldn’t it be cool to have this … Read More

Virtually every kid in the late 1980’s and early 90’s has fond memories of horsing around on a Mac LC in some schools computer lab with Kid Pix, the super friendly and incredibly entertaining paint program for children. The inventor of Kid Pix, Craig Hickman, is now developing a similar program called Beautiful Dorena. Beautiful … Read More

System Maintenance is probably everyones least favorite part of owning a computer. It’s one of those necessary chores to keep everything running smoothly, but it tends to be such a pain in the butt that we often put it off. Enter MainMenu, a great little app that adds an item to your menubar that allows … Read More

Max is a tool that simply no iPod user should be with out. This program can generate audio in over twenty compressed and uncompressed formats. Whether it be FLAC, OggVorbis, MP3 or AAC, just drop the file onto the Max icon and away you go. Max can also handle ripping your personal audio cds to … Read More

Have you ever thought it’d be cool to use a screensaver as your desktop background? Freshly Squeezed Software thought it would be, so they made a super easy to use application to render any Mac OS X screensaver as your background. BackLight provides a menu to easily select a screensaver and turn the desktop effect … Read More

Something that has long bothered me about Apple’s Terminal.app is its lack of the ever so common “tabbed” navigation option. We see it in Safari, why not also benefit from this space saving technology when using the terminal? Behold, iTerm, a GPL’d (open source) free alternative to the Terminal.app. iTerm’s features matches what Apple’s Terminal.app … Read More

It’s December, the Christmas season is in full force, and it’s time to celebrate on your Mac desktop. Last week’s article on “Five Holiday Apps to Spread Cheer to your Desktop” is a great place to start decorating your Mac for the holidays, but we forgot one crucial part of Christmas – the tree! And … Read More

Anytime I find myself doing a repetitive task, it is crucial that I discover small tricks and workarounds to make my daily routine as efficient as possible. I have long been a Linux user, so naturally I lean towards opening up the Terminal and using the familiar bash shell environment that I have mastered on … Read More

Want to manually adjust the backlighting on your MacBook Pro keyboard? You can do that easier than you might think. With the push of a few buttons, you can turn the brightness of the keyboard backlighting up, or you can turn the brightness of the keyboard backlighting down (or even off). The secret is simply … Read More

Mac users may find it helpful to automatically launch an application upon system start of Mac OS X. Basically this means as soon as the Mac is done booting, the approved auto-launch apps will open themselves once the user has logged into the Mac and the Mac OS desktop has displayed. You can add as … Read More

Does your Mac not support Front Row? Have you been drooling green in envy as your friends flip through their media collections? Drool no more, there is a solution to get Front Row running on your Mac! Front Row Enabler is a simple app that patches Mac OS X and allows the installation of Front … Read More

Ever wished you could have multiple Mac OS X Docks at the same time? Maybe you want one at the left and right and bottom of your screen? Then DockFun is for you for those of you who’ve wished you could have more than one Dock in Mac OS X. The other day I became … Read More

Time to visit the Apple menu and fire up Software Update. Apple has released a new Security Update, recommended for all Mac users. Owners of the eMac, iBook, iMac, PowerBook G3, PowerBook G4, and Power Mac G4 affected by the airport vulnerability should pay extra attention to this update. It fixes the Airport driver exploit, … Read More

Handbrake is a no frills easy to use open source video conversion utility, which used to be known as Instant HandBrake. HandBrake makes taking any DVD you own and placing it on your Mac/iPod/iPhone/iPad easier and more instant than ever before. And of course, I should mention that Handbrake can also convert your DVD Videos … Read More

Here’s a very useful key combination that allows you to instantly summon a dictionary from the web browsers in Mac OS X. If you’re in Safari (and many other Mac OS X apps and browsers), hit control-command-D keystroke together while you hover over a word, a dictionary will pop up with that words definition!

If you’re anything like the rest of us Mac geeks, we’re dying for the Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 release and its snazzy new features. Thankfully, we can have the technology of Spaces right now, one of Leopards coolest features, with a program called VirtueDesktops. VirtueDesktops is a virtual desktop manager that has some great … Read More

If you own a Mac laptop, you’ll want this great app. CoconutBattery provides the usual current battery charge information, but that’s not what makes it cool. Anyone that has owned a device operated by rechargeable batteries can tell you that over time the capacity diminishes. That is what makes CoconutBattery so unique, it provides detailed … Read More

If you’re a blogger, web developer, programmer, graphic artist, or general Mac geek, you probably regularly encounter and use PNG files. While PNG is a great format, it can be a little bloated – this is why you need the Ping app. Ping works by optimizing a variety of aspects of the PNG format (palette, … Read More