In our “Ten OS X Command Line utilities you might not know about” article, we briefly mentioned FinkCommander, a GUI frontend to the ‘fink’ command line utility. It is the easiest way we know of to explore the wonderful world of free Unix software on the Mac. We think it is such a useful app … Read More
If you’re a sucker for system stats and monitoring widgets, then CoreDuoTemp is for you. This little app stays quietly put in your menu bar displaying some useful stats including CPU usage, the current operating speed of your processor, and the current temperature of your Intel CPU. Of course this means you have to have … Read More
Ok, I admit, I’m easily distracted while on my Mac. I’ll intend to do something productive, but then my favorite webpage will refresh or an instant message will pop up and I’ll get sidetracked reading an article or chatting. It happens to the best of us. If you are worried about desktop distractions, you can … Read More
Here is a great little app that works exactly as advertised, creating icons instantly with just a matter of dragging and dropping an image file on the program. Whether you want to create icons for personal usage, desktop customization, or you’re a developer and you need an icon for the latest shiny cocoa software you … Read More
MozoDojo is a simple and fun Mac OS X app that creates those nice photo mosaics you see every now and again in advertising. Using your iTunes library, iPhoto library, or even your Pictures folder, MozoDojo will render an attractive and accurate representation of the original file into a fancy and colorful mosaic made up … Read More
All of us have likely admired the results of a nice time-lapsed sequence, perhaps of a flower opening or the sun setting, the effect of time lapse video can be simply gorgeous. So, wouldn’t it be cool to do these on your own with little effort? With a Mac and the front-facing FaceTime / iSight … Read More
Backups. A dreaded word because it is tedious and boring. You say it and people go fleeing in all directions plugging their ears. So what do you do? Have no fear Mac users, Carbon Copy Cloner is here for you to make Mac backups easy. Say hello to your newest friend, Carbon Copy Cloner. Carbon … Read More
This is a fun little program that quickly gives you information on when and where your Mac and iPod were built (it claims to check any Apple products based on serial number, but we couldn’t test this feature). There’s also an ability that allows you to check your serial number against a database to see … Read More
Remember the old days, where we’d all be peering at little 10″ fisheyed black screens with green or amber text? Well you can relive the computing 70’s and 80’s with this funky app that emulates the appearance of an old terminal. Complete with display curviture, shoddy colors, and even settings for simulated baudrate lag, you’ll … Read More
Think of this program like a Mac encyclopedia. Mactracker provides detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made, including vitals such as processor speed, memory, optical drives, graphic cards, supported Mac OS versions, and expansion options. Also included is extensive information on Apple mice, keyboards, displays, printers, scanners, digital cameras, iPod, AirPort Base Stations, … Read More
On tuesday, Blizzard released its infamous 2.0 patch to its hit online role playing game, World of Warcraft. This patch is significant as it is the first main stream game to support multi-threaded OpenGL on the Macintosh. Support for multi-threaded OpenGL is limited to Intel users, and if you are a lucky owner of such … Read More
Gizmo is a cross platform (Linux, Windows and Mac) VoIP client. I’ve enjoyed Gizmo for the six months that I have had it, and suggest you give it a try over at www.gizmoproject.com. Gizmo is free computer to computer, and offers rates as low as one cent a minute to virtually anywhere on the planet. … 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
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
