Tech Talk: Techie's Top 10 Apple Recommendations
Our regular column, Tech Talk. Think "Dear Abby," but instead of relationship advice, the topic is technology.
Here are my top 10 favorite apps for the Apple computer users.
10. iPDA The perfect companion to the iPod by serving as a replacement PDA. This is an iPad software exclusive to Apple computers to iPods(not supported on iPhone or iPod touch). (http://tinyurl.com/TTiPDA)
9. Carbon Copy Cloner In its simplest form, CCC is the best backup software for the mac . . . seriously. CCC 3 features an interface designed to make the cloning and backup procedure very intuitive. In addition to general backup, CCC can also clone one hard drive to another, copying every single block or file to create an exact replica of your source hard drive. CCC's block-level copy offers the absolute fastest performance and highest fidelity in the industry!(http://www.bombich.com/)
8. ClamXav ClamXav is a free virus checker for Mac OS X. Although you can be pretty safe with an Apple computer with all system updates, but you never know. Don't forget, if you run VirtualPC you can still become infected and lose valuable data on your Mac even though technically you're running Windows inside a sandbox. VPC will run any application you tell it to, virus or no virus, it doesn't know the difference. You can protect yourself slightly by not using VPC's "shared folders", but that's a useful feature which you shouldn't have to be without (http://www.clamxav.com/)
7. Comic Life Comic Life is fun, easy, and powerful application that expands what you can do with your digital photos -- turn them into a comic book. Features include powerful Page and Panel layouts, (including styles for a real comic-strip look), streamlined image selection, cropping and placement, authentic speech balloons (enhanced by a built-in professional quality comic lettering font), captions and special effects text. Comic Life also offers full integration with .Mac (including RSS feeds), iPhoto image library and exports to jpeg, HTML, iPhoto and QuickTime. (http://tinyurl.com/TTComicLife)
6. PDFLab Anyone who uses Apple computers know how easy it is to create PDFs; this software takes it one step further. PDFLab allows you to spilt and join PDFs as well as insert images and blank pages. PDFLab lets you split and join PDF documents as well as insert images and blank pages. You will also be able to easily create PDF documents out of several images. Its usage is really simple. You add your files in a list, select the pages you wish to include, order them the way you want and create a new PDF document. PDFLab also ships with tools that let you quickly split a document into many documents, (one document per page or one document for odd pages and one for even pages), encrypt or decrypt a document, add a watermark, interleave several documents. (http://tinyurl.com/TTPDFlab)
5. Delicious Library If you have a collection of any kind Delicious Library is a must have. Your collections can be entered manually, inputting the ISBN or UPC, importing the library from another application, drag-and-dropping an Amazon.com URL, or scanning bar-codes using a scanner or my favorite the iSight camera. (http://delicious-monster.com/)
4. Scrivener Scrivener is a word processing program designed for writers. Because of its breadth of interfaces and features, it has positioned itself not only as a word processor, but as a literary "project management tool". (http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html)
3. Skype Is best way to make computer-to-computer phone calls, computer-to-conference (up to 24 people at one time), computer-to-cell or computer-to-land-line phone systems. Get yourself a headset/microphone combo for privacy, if not the Apple computers handle the software quite well. (http://tinyurl.com/TTSkype)
2. Boxee If you want a home theater using your Apple Intel computer, Boxee is your best bet. Warning - Boxee is content heavy and you will find yourself spending hours watching TV, MLB, NHL, Netflix, NBA and much more via Boxee Apps. Rumor Mill: Boxee Is Working on a GoogleTV App. (http://www.boxee.tv/)
1. Caffeine Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Right-click (or ⌘-click) the icon to show the menu. (http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/)
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