Final Cut Pro X: What Does the Controversy Mean to You?
You've no doubt heard about Final Cut Pro X by now. About a week ago, Apple discontinued Final Cut Studio, it's line of professional video editing applications which consisted of Final Cut Pro 7, Color, Motion 4, Soundtrack Pro 3, Compressor 3, and DVD Studio Pro 4. These six applications sold for $1,300 from Apple, and represented a standard in many professional video workflows. While Avid systems have remained the king of Hollywood and larger production agencies, Final Cut Pro and its sister applications were preferred by many for their (relative) ease of use, especially among independent filmmakers.
PlayWatch: A New Take On iTunes Controllers
The world of iTunes controllers is a crowded one, and any new application that comes out has a lot to go up against. There are a variety of free and shareware applications that share and uniquely have numerous features. So it may seem a little odd to add another one to the crowd, but this one brings something new (at least as far as I know) to the table.
Aquarius Software’s Playwatch is a handy menu bar iTunes controller which will display the song information of whatever track is playing in a little mini iTunes-esque ticker, right in your menu bar. This provides a quick and easy way to view what song is playing without even having to press any buttons.
SimplifyMedia: Share Your Tunes over the Web
iTunes has many often-forgotten features. Among them are the web radio, visualizer, and (what I think is the coolest) shared music libraries. iTunes users on the same wireless network can share their entire music libraries (or only specific playlists) with each other by turning on “Sharing” in iTunes’ preferences (in either the Mac or PC version of iTunes). Once both computers are setup to share libraries, users at both ends can browse each other’s libraries and stream each other’s music. However, there is no way to download the music; users can only listen.
Safari-esque Firefox: Themes, Extensions, And More
On the Mac, there are many web browsers available. Mozilla Firefox is a great cross-platform browser, but until recent betas it hasn’t been very efficient or overall good-looking on the Mac. Apple’s Safari is simple and elegant, but lacks any official plug-ins, making it difficult to do the kind of advanced work that you can with Firefox extensions. For today, we’re going to be focusing on these two popular browsers. Many people seem to like the simplicity and integrated interface of Safari, but wish that they could have the wide array of extensions available for Firefox at their disposal.
Mac Office 2008: Shinier, Easier To Use
Microsoft released the latest version of Microsoft Office mid-January at Macworld 2008, and I have to say that after using it for a while, I am very impressed. The main change here is that this version of Office is actually Universal, meaning it runs natively on any Mac computer. All I can say about that is this: It took them long enough. Also, Mac Office 2008 is fully compatible with the new .docx file extension for documents. Beside that, the new Mac Office 2008 is a large improvement over Office 2004. For this review I’m going to focus on Word 2008, as it is the app that most users will use.
LeopardMOD: End-User Mods for Leopard
We’ve covered Leopard modifications and mods many times before, (culminating in the Ultimate Leopard Customization Guide) but LeopardMOD is worth posting about, even almost 3 months after Leopard’s release.
For those of you who haven’t seen it before, LepardMOD is basically a preference pane for those “hidden features” in Leopard. LeopardMOD is the ultimate leopard customization app.
It does everything that the smaller apps do, only all together and in one place. It doesn’t just change the dock from 3D to 2D, it also does other common and not-so common modifications to the Finder, Dashboard, Menu Bar, and more. Here’s what LeopardMOD does:
Lugaru: 3D Ninja Fighting Bunnies
Games aren’t usually the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “Mac.” And it’s true, Macs don’t have many games. By games, for the sake of this post, I’m talking about 3D games, which are not always commercially available. The vareity available on the PC just isn’t there for the Mac. Luckily, there is a wealth of free first-person shooters available based on the Cube and Quake engines (like OpenArena).
However, first person shooters get tiring. Lucky for us, there’s a great shareware game called Lugaru. What’s the premise of Lugaru? Well, basically you’re a rabbit named Turner on the island of Lugaru, and you’re out to avenge your family’s death. Hey, you’ve gotta give them points for creativity!
FStream: Lightweight Streaming Radio
Of the many features of iTunes, one that is constantly overlooked (even by Apple itself) is its streaming web radio capabilities. The number of stations available far surpasses 1,000 (that’s right, a thousand!) and it’s a great way to discover music the old-fashioned(ish) way. However, since iTunes is a pretty large application to simply use for web radio, FStream, a tiny, lightweight application, comes to the rescue and allows you to listen to internet radio and a teensy bit more.
Downloading FStream is simple; it’s under 4 MB and it works just like any OS X app. Once it’s ready and installed, FStream opens up as a tiny window, obviously taking a design cue from iTunes.
Freeware Pic: Resize ‘em All
One of the most problematic things that I run into when blogging is resizing images. Especially when there are posts with lots of application icons, resizing all of them is a big hassle. (Although, a lot of the time editors do it for us, so kudos to them.) Either way, it’s a task that will be repeated again and again.
There are many ways to do this. The online service Resizr is easy, but you can’t do batch resizes and only .jpg files are supported. I know many people on MacApper use the freeware-with-paid-benefits app ImageWell for their image resizing needs, but the free version doesn’t support batch imports either, and it does so much more than just resizing. What do you do when you just want to resize a couple of pictures? You resize ‘em all!
Editorial: Mac Freeware vs Shareware
As a fairly recent Mac convert, I’ve found that the one of the biggest differences between programs on Windows and applications on Macs are how easily they install. Drag, drop, done. Genius. But, besides that, the second biggest difference is where the applications actually come from. For people on Windows, most of their applications come from CDs that they bought in a store, or downloaded online.
