Here’s a comprehensive list of budgeting software for Mac, I originally created this list for a family member who is a recent switcher and was looking for some personal budgeting software for their new Mac, and I figured it was useful enough to share with everyone else.

Quicken – $69.99 – almost everyone has heard of Quicken, it’s basically the industry standard for consumer budgeting software. It works very well as long as you’re willing to keep the data recent, and it’ll hook up to some online bank accounts (or you can import data). It’s cross-platform compatible which is also a bonus if you’re a recent switcher.

iBank – $59.99 – iBank is very much a Mac app, it’s very attractive, easy to use, has an intuitive interface, and, well, it just plain looks good. You can easily import banking and finance data to help create a budget and track your finances and has a pretty cool feature that lets you visit online bank accounts through the app to import any data that otherwise wouldn’t be accessible. As an added bonus, it syncs with your iPhone so you can see all your budgets and finances on the road. From appearances alone, this app takes the cake (the screenshot above is iBank) and it’s also pretty feature rich. The main downside that I see is that it’s not really cross-platform compatible since it’s Mac only.

MoneyWell – $49.99 – MoneyWell is a lot like iBank, it’s feature rich and looks very attractive, it’s just a bit less well known. The ‘envelope budgeting’ feature looks pretty nice and would certainly be useful. Priced a bit cheaper than iBank, it’s definitely a good alternative, but again it’s Mac only.

Budget – $39.95 – I have smart friends that swear by Budget, so apparently it’s a great app. It’s certainly feature rich and full of stellar reviews, competitively priced, and has been around a while, but at a risk of sounding shallow, I just don’t think it LOOKS that good, especially compared to the some of the alternatives. If you can put the appearance aside, then Budget could be a great software option for managing your finances.

Squirrel – €14.99 – Free beta test – Squirrel won an Apple Design Award in 2008 for the best Mac OS X Leopard Student Product, which is no small feat. If it has Apple’s stamp of approval, it’s probably a pretty great app although I have yet to test it myself. It’s currently in development but looks pretty stable and has a lot of personal budgeting features, you can also try it before you buy it with a free download, so definitely check this one out. There’s also an iPhone version available for free! And yes that’s €14.99 – Euro’s not Dollars, which is about $22 at current exchange rates.

ChaChing – Free beta – Since it’s in Beta it’s hard to know much about this app, but it looks like it’s developing into a promising contender. It has an iPhone version that it syncs with too so that you can budget on the go. It has been recommended rather highly by friends that use it, and you can’t beat the free beta either, but nonetheless it is still beta software, so YMMV.

Best Budgeting Software for Mac is…

Mint – Free – Enter all your accounts into Mint and it’ll pull as much financial data as it can, back more years than you remembered, creating a pretty comprehensive list of personal financing trends and budgeting information. Completely web-based means it’s fully cross platform compatible and easily accessible from virtually anywhere with internet access, there’s also a pretty great iPhone app, and it’s all for free? Put all this together, and this takes the cake for the best Mac budgeting software.

A study from NPD tells us some interesting facts about Mac owners in the USA, highlights include:

* 85% of Mac owners also own a PC
* 72% of Mac owners use a notebook / laptop
* 66% of Mac owners own three or more computers
* 63% of Mac owners own an iPod
* 49% of Mac owners own a navigation device (GPS, but is iPhone included?)
* 36% of Mac owning households report incomes over $100,000
* 32% of Mac owners have a Digital SLR camera
* 28% of Mac owners have an iPod Touch
* 20% of Mac owners have a Flash-Memory Camcorder
* 18% of Mac owners have a 50″ or greater LCD TV
* Average Mac owners have 48 consumer electronic devices, vs 24 for the average Windows PC user
* Mac ownership/marketshare is up to 12% in the USA, from 8% last year

NPD goes on to surmise that the purchasing decisions of Apple / Mac owners are a significant indicator of trending popular products and adoption trends.

NPD via TheAppleBlog.com

You may remember the Oreo MacBook mod from a while back, this is pretty similar except that they swapped out the external case for a black enclosure, and then installed the black MacBook keyboard onto a white MacBook internal case. Looks awesome!

The creators of this MacBook mod apparently pieced the machine together from two half-working MacBooks, creating a rather attractive frankenstein in the process:

This basically involved grafting the white inside with the black outside, and then popping off each white key on the keyboard and replacing them with black keys.

If it was me I would have swapped on the black bezel as well, but either way it’s a great mod.

A much anticipated feature of Mac OS X Snow Leopard for corporate users is Microsoft Exchange support being built-in, and a coworker just asked me how to setup Microsoft Exchange to work on their new iMac sporting 10.6. I was about to write up a how-to guide when I came across a nice and easy to follow one on MakeMacWork.com, complete with tons of screenshots. If you need to setup Microsoft Exchange on your Mac in Snow Leopard, I highly recommend checking out this guide:

MakeMacWork: Configure Exchange Email

iPhoney is a nice iPhone Simulator that works to replicate the web browsing experience of iPhone users. This is very helpful to web developers that need to test if a web site or application works on the iPhone, and also how the user experiences the site. It’s not a traditional iPhone Simulator in the sense that it emulates the entire iPhone user experience, instead it just simulates the web as seen through the iPhone browser. It’s also got a handy feature that gives you the ability to change the user-agent to whatever you want.

My only complaint about the iPhoney app is that it won’t quit normally, I have to force-quit the application whenever I’m done with it (this is on Mac OS X Snow Leopard, could be a 10.6 specific bug). If you can work with that minor annoyance, then I don’t know of a more simple and free iPhone web simulator for the Mac.

Download now
Developer home

If you’re serious about iPhone Development it’s probably best to get the Apple iPhone Development Kit which also includes an iPhone simulator, but will set you back $99 for an Apple Development Center Membership.

Safari is really settling it’s spot as my preferred web browser. Sure, I miss the plugins in Firefox, but it just can’t beat the speed of Safari. You can make your Safari web browsing experience even better by using Command-Option-F to jump to the Search box, nice!

[ via Twitter: AppleSpotlight ]

There are several different ways to rip dvd’s on your Mac, we’ll cover ripping DVD’s with HandBrake and with VLC here.

HandBrake is probably the best choice for ripping a DVD in Mac OS, and it makes DVD rips very easy to create in a variety of file formats. Basically the steps are this easy:

• Insert a DVD into your drive
• Launch HandBrake
• Handbrake will then scan the DVD disk and read all the chapters and titles. Tip: be sure to select the proper title because if there’s any special features or extras on the DVD you could inadvertently rip that instead of the actual movie.
• If HandBrake doesn’t automatically find the DVD just click on File > Open Source and manually select the DVD
• Select the file format you want to export to and the destination (default is mp4 to desktop), and rip!

It will take a while to rip the DVD depending on the speed of your Mac but the ripped DVD will appear on your Desktop when it’s done.

You can pick up Handbrake for Mac at the Developer home

Another option is VLC. VLC includes a simple DVD ripper, it’s not ideal simply because there are better ones out there (think handbrake) but if you’re in a bind VLC works. Here’s how to rip a DVD with VLC on your Mac: with a DVD in the drive, launch VLC, go to the File menu and select “Open Disc”, from there you can select “Convert” and adjust the starting positions to the right chapter, click ‘save’ and wait a while for it to rip! You can also get VLC from the Developer home.

Note that some versions of Handbrake require VLC to preview the rip, so download both of them!

Have you ever received a movie or video file where the audio and video isn’t synced correctly? This is most obvious when you’re watching people talk, where the lip movements don’t match up with the audio track.

Thanks to a handy capability in VLC, you can quickly sync audio to video in VLC by using key presses. This is incredibly useful to offset the audio on a video or movie if you find the audio and video tracks are not aligned correctly.

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Following the CPU usage on my Mac is a mild obsession, and I usually use the Mac terminal command ‘top’ to do this but I noticed that top itself takes up a fair amount of CPU usage (5% or more). I made this complaint to a friend of mine and they told me to try this variation of the top command instead, which actually causes the top command to use less CPU, making it a bit more helpful and less of an impact on the overall system. This is great if you run top all the time like me.

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DeSmuME is the best Nintendo DS Emulator for Mac OS X that I have found, it’s pretty full featured with save states, touchscreen emulation, movie creation, and more. My only complaint is the layout of the emulator being vertical, which is true to the DS, but it makes playing games sort of obnoxious particularly when you increase the screen size. If they enabled side-by-side screens for this DS emulator so I could play it fullscreen, I’d be even more enthralled with an already good app. If you’re looking for a Nintendo DS Emulator for your Mac, look no further.

Download now
Developer home

Finally, a Facebook Notifier for Mac! I have long been a fan of Google Notifier for Mac, which sits in the menubar and notifies you if you get any incoming mail. Naturally I was excited to hear about Facebook Desktop Notifications, a new app that basically does the same thing but for Facebook. With this Facebook Notifier, items posted to your wall and messages sent directly to you will be published by Growl notifications to your Mac desktop.

For me, Facebook can be a huge distraction and time waster, anytime I log into the site it’s easy to let 30 minutes pass just keeping up to date with all your friends statuses and picture uploads. Facebook Desktop Notifications cuts down on this wasted time by notifying me of incoming messages and notifications, so basically I can waste less time on the actual site by logging into it less often!

Anything that helps me stay in touch and be more productive is a win-win in my book, so I’m pleased to have the Desktop Notification app installed. The app is beta but so far seems promising and I haven’t had any problems with it, you can download it from Facebook if you are interested.

Above image from TechCrunch, where I also learned of this little utility. There have been a few updates to the app and each one seems to be better and better.

You can see a visual preview of a folders contents by enabling a hidden Quick Look feature. This is a rather nice eye candy improvement but I’m not sure that it’s use goes much further beyond that, see the above screenshot and try it out yourself to judge. To enable the Quick Look X-Ray folders, launch the Terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1

You may need to kill the Finder for the changes to take affect, although in Mac OS X 10.6 the next time I used Quick Look the feature was enabled.

to disable the Quick Look X-Ray folders, type this:

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 0

[ via MacOSXHints ]

Looking for a PS2 Emulator for Mac OS X? Look no further then PCSX2, a full blown PS2 emulator for Mac OS X that works surprisingly well. I say surprising because it seems development work is a little infrequent and there are some features left to be desired, but it certainly works and the frame rate is pretty high on my MacBook. Finally, I can play all my favorite PS2 RPG’s right in Mac OS X! You can download it for free at the Developer home or just jump to Download now. You may want to check to see if newer versions are available, but as I mentioned, development is seemingly sparse. Enjoy!

Have an iPhone 3gs that you want to jailbreak? You’re in luck! iPhone 3GS owners should be happy now that they can easily jailbreak the 3GS with the new PwnageTool, but… according to the iPhone Dev Team:

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Blackberry owners can finally sync their Blackberry handhelds with their Mac using official software, apparently it’s fast and easy to use, so if you have a Blackberry, sync it to your Mac and check this out!
Download here

You can use QuickLook from inside ‘Open File’ dialogue boxes in any application! Try it out yourself, go to File -> Open File and hit the Spacebar (or whatever hot-key you assigned QuickLook) on an image or text file, and like magic QuickLook opens the file in preview mode so that you can be sure you are opening the correct file! As far as I know this is new to Snow Leopard, but what a cool feature!

Are you a traveler and flying on an airplane with your iPhone? Then this tip is for you!

You can selectively enable WiFi access while your iPhone is in Airplane Mode, meaning you can use a flights wireless internet service without the cell phone itself being turned on.

This is really handy since many flights are starting to have inflight wireless access, but in much of the world cellular use on airplanes is banned. That’s where this tip comes in, you can turn off your iPhone cellular modem but enable wi-fi, thereby allowing you to use the airplane flight wi-fi service but without using the cellular capability of the iPhone. Sound good? If you’re a traveler, of course it does!

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OK this is a little random, but I came across one of those cute animals sites today that featured of all things… Dogs with Macs! If you don’t like dogs, well, just ignore this post, but dogs love Macs too!

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