ShrinkIt is a handy little app that greatly reduces the file size of Illustrator generated PDF’s. Created as an internal tool, the developers over at Panic realized that PDF files saved from Adobe Illustrator were loaded with loads of extra nonsense metadata, even patterns, preview bitmaps, swatches, creating enormous PDF file sizes when they should be much smaller. The solution? Process the Adobe bloatfile through Apple’s PDF processor. You can do this yourself through Preview, but it’s a pain to open and re-save tons of PDF files, thus the creation of ShrinkIt. Now you can drag and drop your Illustrator PDF’s into ShrinkIt and you’ll save a whole lot of space (the original file is always kept, just renamed).

ShrinkIt is for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard only.

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Blizzard has just announced via Twitter that the official StarCraft 2 Beta client for Mac is now available. At the moment, the beta is only available for testing on North American servers but that is expected to expand soon.

Many game stores are offering free StarCraft 2 Beta keys with the pre-order of StarCraft 2, including GameStop.com and Amazon.com. Both Amazon and GameStop will email you the beta key within 5 days of your pre-order purchase.

Apple’s WorldWide Developer Conference is set for June 7-11 this year, and many desktop Mac developers are shaking their heads wondering where the love is. The tagline for this years WWDC conference is “The center of the app universe” and Apple’s Design Awards are curiously lacking a Mac OS X category, instead favoring iPhone and iPad apps from the App Store. The Mac development community was quick to notice this and have been voicing their opinions, as TUAW gathers a few poignant quotes from frustrated developers:

“Eliminating the Apple Design Awards for desktop applications in 2010 is premature and an insult to the thousands of programmers who devote their days to making the Mac desktop a fun and productive environment.” – Aaron Hillegass of Big Nerd Ranch

“…the lack of a Mac ADA when there is still great Mac software being made is a bit of a slap in the face. Whether it’s intentional or not, Apple is saying that the Mac is not an important platform compared to the iPhone and iPad.” – Justin Williams of Second Gear Software

Perhaps there is a lack of Mac attention because Mac OS X 10.7 has been delayed due to Apple’s focus on iPhone OS? Maybe there is some truth to the rumors of a desktop Mac App Store? Or is Apple planning a major announcement regarding the future of Mac OS at WWDC? With no clear answers, the Mac community is left to speculate. Whatever the reasons, many loyal Mac users and developers remain disappointed as this years event takes a clear turn away from the Mac desktop and into the mobile world.

If you’re a Mac user who is into gaming, you’ll probably be thrilled to know that Steam is available on the Mac OS ecosystem. But before you go jumping for joy for Steam on the Mac, you might want to make sure the Mac you have supports Steam.

Here’s what we know about the basic minimum system requirements for the Mac Steam client:

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Ping is an essential utility for network administrators, but it’s also pretty handy to check if websites are online, how your internet connection is working, if you are experiencing lag or packet loss on a network connection, or to determine if a network resource is available.

Mac users can access and use ping to target any domain or IP address.

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Apple’s first tablet of sorts, the Newton, was introduced 17 years ago in 1993 but didn’t catch on. People weren’t ready for it, and the technology wasn’t as fancy or awe inspiring as when you fast-forward the iPad of today. Interesting how they’re so similar though, isn’t it? CheerfulSW summarizes the two devices as so:

1998: A revolutionary, lovable Apple PDA with little squareish icons, on-screen keyboard, common icons across the bottom, single-tasking, and the best compact keyboard of the decade, complete with an ungainly but functional fold-out case. The Newton.

2010: A revolutionary, lovable Apple PDA with little squareish icons, on-screen keyboard, common icons across the bottom, single-tasking, and the best compact keyboard of the decade, complete with an ungainly but functional fold-out case. The iPad.

When I see things like this I can’t help but wonder where the Mac, iPad, and iPhone are going to be years from now, as Apple continues to refine the user experience. Will the two platforms eventually merge?

If you’re interested in the iPad, the Newton, usability, and design, check out CheerfulSW’s enjoyable read on the iPad being a “work of obvious”.

If you are running a dual-display setup, you can easily adjust the primary display monitor in Mac OS X. When would you want to do this? For example, if you have a MacBook Pro 13″ hooked up to a larger external display, and you want the external display with it’s higher resolution to become the primary display, and your MacBook Pro with it’s smaller resolution to become the secondary display. This is just a matter of settings adjustments and it only takes a minute to configure, though it’s not particularly obvious at first glance.

Let’s walk through how to set the primary screens on a multi-display Mac setup.

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NTFS Mounter is a simple utility that sits in your menubar and lets you select NTFS volumes to mount and write to. Interestingly enough, Mac OS X has been able to mount NTFS volumes with read and write support as of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, although this is not officially supported or sanctioned by Apple. The app is just a simple interface to Mac OS X’s now built-in ability to do this. And yes, that means NTFS Mounter is Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard only.

I tried out NTFS Mounter and it worked as advertised, making it a total cinch to mount Windows NTFS volumes and write to them. The app itself is really easy to use, although it’s a bit quirky with the cat icons, cat sitting in your menubar, and cat interface (and yes the above cat image is the apps official logo). Beyond that I do wonder about the functionality itself. Since Apple doesn’t officially support the ability to write to NTFS, is there some inherent trouble or instability with doing so from Mac OS X? If it’s a feature why not brag about it, right? Nonetheless, the app works fine and I didn’t have any problems.

NTFS Mounter is a free download, so check it out if you’re interested.

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Every Mac has a variety of optional boot functions that can be used to intervene during the Mac OS X system startup. These are typically in the form of a single keys held down, or a press of keystrokes and hotkeys, used to issue a command and thereby adjust the booting behavior of Mac OS X. The effects of holding the different keys on boot are varied, and each can be desirable for a wide variety of applications.

The booting keys available to Macs upon Mac OS X system start are listed below.

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“I use Visio frequently at work in an all Windows environment, but I really don’t want to have to install Parallels or Boot Camp on my new MacBook just to run Visio. Is there some kind of alternative like Visio for Mac OS X?”

This is a great question, and I think you’ll be quite pleased to hear there’s an excellent Visio alternative that runs natively in Mac OS X, it’s called OmniGraffle. Omnigraffle is a excellent application that lets you quickly draw beautiful charts and diagrams that are perfect for presentations, project specs, website mockups, page layouts, documentation, or any other visual communication need.
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Now here’s a contrast, a unibody aluminum MacBook with a blast from the past… a PowerBook Duo 270c! The PowerBook Duo series was just about the most stylish and snazzy laptop you could get in the early to mid 1990’s, but over a decade later it just can’t compete with a unibody MacBook.

[ via Flickr ]

One of my favorite iTunes features is the ability to fade songs in and out of each other with the Crossfade setting, this makes for a seamless music listening experience as each song gradually fades out and into the next and is certainly a worthwhile option to enable.

By default, this crossfading songs option is not turned on though, so here’s how to change that and flip it on to make for a more enjoyable iTunes listening experience.

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GameStop.com is offering a pretty cool promotion for those Starcraft 2 fans out there, if you pre-order the game on their site, they’ll email you a free key for the beta… this is particularly awesome since the beta is due out for Mac OS X very soon.

According to Joystiq, Blizzard will be releasing the Starcraft 2 beta client for Mac OS X sometime in April, meaning very soon. Proof of this is on the beta client download page, where the Mac client download is visible but grayed out (see screenshot below).

A thread on Battle.Net Forums indicates that the Starcraft 2 DVD will include both the Mac and PC version, so this would suggest the pre-order version available from GameStop.com would be that cross-platform installation disc. This is not confirmed however, so if you’re uncomfortable playing the game under Boot Camp than you might want to wait to find out for 100% sure if all Starcraft 2 installation DVD’s are PC and Mac since GameStop won’t refund the purchase once the beta key is mailed out.

So if you want your Starcraft 2 Beta key, head on over to GameStop.com for the pre-order. The final version of Starcraft 2 is due out for both Mac and PC sometime this year.

If you’re interested in gaming on a MacBook Pro, pay attention. The new MacBook Pro with the Core i5 processor and GeForce GT 330M graphics unit performs significantly better than it’s predecessor with the GeForce 9400m. Check out the above performance comparison, Left 4 Dead on the new MacBook Pro with the 330m chip runs at 44.9 FPS, nearly three times better than the 2009 MacBook Pro with it’s 9400m GPU. World of Warcraft shows practically the same performance boost: 52.3 FPS on the new MacBook Pro versus 19.1 FPS on the old model. Whoa. Now it’s worth mentioning that Anandtech (the source of the benchmarks) ran these tests in Windows 7 under Boot Camp, so that may skew the results a bit when compared to running something like World of Warcraft or the soon to be released Starcraft 2 in Mac OS X. I’d be really curious to see how the new MacBook Pro units perform with native Mac OS X games, if the performance boost is the same that’d be pretty incredible.

You can see the full review of the 2010 i5 MacBook Pro 15″ at Anandtech: Apple’s 15″ Core i5: the one to get?, or you can see more general benchmarks of the new MacBook Pro’s.

One of the coolest features of the 27″ iMac is it’s beautiful LED screen with a whopping 2560×1440 resolution, but what’s even cooler is the ability to use that gorgeous display as an external display for another Mac. So if you want to use an iMac as an external screen for another Mac, you’ll need to use a featured called Target Display Mode and select the 27″ iMac as the video input. That may sound complicated but it’s really pretty easy, let’s walk through this:

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Do you want to keep yourself or your employees from wasting time on certain websites? Maybe you don’t want your child to see some of the virtual trashbins of the internet? By editing the /etc/hosts systems file, you can block any website, and here’s how to do it.

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Many of us have been looking for a nice and simple iPad stand, preferably a good one that is also affordably priced since it remains to be seen how useful they are.

Now we may have a prospect, as James sent us in this picture of the Logitech Alto Express Notebook Stand being used as a “perfect stand for the iPad” that apparently makes “typing 100x faster and easier.” Not bad considering it’s $10-$25 either if you get it on the sale price.

But of course Amazon has so many iPad stands available that you should sort through the list yourself and see which is best for you. The options grow by the day, as iPad popularity blooms.
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So you need to run Internet Explorer on your Mac and you don’t want to bother with a full Windows install in something like Parallels. What are you left with?

Update: You can download Internet Explorer and Windows virtual machines for free that run within Mac OS X. That method works for IE7, IE 8, and IE9, although they run within a VM rather than as an app like the below method.

Try WineBottler, it runs off of Wine and ‘bottles’ various Windows apps into launchable .app files that sit in your Applications folder like any other Mac app. There’s several packages included in WineBottler but the ones you are interested in using are Internet Explorer.

Download Internet Explorer for Mac

Downloading Internet Explorer for Mac directly can be done with IE5, but as we mention below Microsoft stopped supporting it officially after this version. Later versions of Internet Explorer can be downloaded and run through the WineBottler app within Mac OS X, the instructions below will walk you through this process with versions 6, 7, and 8.

Here’s how to get Internet Explorer running on your Mac using WineBottler:
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