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Recently we ran a giveaway (3 licenses) and review of Exces. Exces is an encryption program able to keep your secrets safe and away from prying eyes. While OS X has built in file encryption tools we thought Exces took Encryption on the mac a bit further and were delighted to be able to give it away here.

First of all, thanks to the guys at SeoSoft for generously donating three licenses of Exces. And now without further adieu the winners in no particular order are…

Congrats to Walter Mitty, Joachim, and Mr. Bond. SeoSoft has been notified of your winning, so I would expect an email shortly.

Everybody has secrets. From something mundane like a list of possible gift ideas for your girlfriend’s upcoming birthday, to something more important like a text file with passwords or licenses in it. While OS X does include a function for encrypting files right out of the box, there have been a few products come out recently that aim to make this simpler, and more intuitive. One of them is Exces from SeoSoft.

I am going to take you through Exces a bit here but and guys over at SeoSoft have been kind enough to give us 3 licenses to give away at the end of the review - so read on for your chance to win.

Since we previously put the MacBook Air in perspective, it was high time we talked about the price. Starting at $1799, the MacBook Air may not float in everyone’s boat.

Yes, the Macbook Air is quite sexy. I think that a lot of the Apple products get instant “wow” power, based on great design, and ease of use. But in the long run, is the Macbook Air a laptop that YOU would buy? Is it powerful enough for your tasks?

Let’s take it to the polls to get an idea.

If you missed the last installment, read it first. In the previous article I discussed how to organize your files to be processed. In this article I will show you how to access your files, and how to process through them.

So if you remember I told you about how my mother’s desktop was a wreck: files everywhere, with the desktop full with icons. I could hardly find her hard drive on the desktop. Chaos!

I am a big fan of OnyX. If anyone in my circle is having problems with their computer, I always run this app. It allows me to run various tweaks, maintenance scripts, and log cleaning functions that otherwise would not be run. Imagine OnyX being the alternate fuse box of your Mac (the primary one would be a shut-down or restart process).

OnyX, for the uninitiated, is an application that does many things pertaining to optimizing your system, including doing disk verifications and permission repairs, running system cleaning and optimizing scripts, clearing out various caches, cookies, and bookmarks.

My mother has the messiest file system I have ever seen on a computer. I, being a savvy computer user myself, maintain the complete opposite: a slick file organization system. Let me explain.

Meet my mother: a few years ago, she was one of the few people in the entertainment industry who worked without email; a relic of an industry which used to rely solely on telephones. My mother’s lack of email was due to many things, including a fear of computers. So, on Mother’s Day, 2005, I forced her to conquer her fear. I gave her a computer, hoping to drag her (kicking and screaming) into the information age. She willfully agreed.

Something smells fishy about this (in terms of how AT&T, and those who receive ringtone revenues will respond), but Apple has just released a GarageBand update (4.1.1), and have included documentation on their website detailing how to create custom ringtones with GarageBand.

Of course, this process will require the latest technologies, including the iPhone 1.1.2 firmware update, iTunes 7.5, and the aforementioned Garageband 4.1.1 update (released yesterday).

The documentation states that ringtones have to be 40 seconds or less. After you have created your ringtone, you send it to your iPhone by selecting going to the Menu “Share”, and then selecting “Send Ringtone to iTunes”.

I love my Mac’s address book. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t used anything else. But it gets the job done, and hooks into all my applications (Mail.app), and devices (iPhone). Sometimes, my information is a little sparse, and isn’t up to date. I wish the people in my address book could just update their information themselves. Wish Granted. Enter FacebookSync. This little application will allow you to look through your Facebook friends, and add their personal information to your address book.

In my circle, I’ve had a lot of friends recently purchase Apple computers. One of the first questions that they ask me is: “How do I play this video? It’s not showing up properly!” My friends, you have come to the right guy, because I have quite the toolbox for you.

There are 3 very important applications that every Mac user should download. These applications will allow you to play almost every video file on your mac, and make you a happier, more entertained person.

Just follow these steps in order:

We strive to review and preview the latest and greatest applications for OS X here at Macapper, but if there is one thing I have relied on over the years, it has been several Mac Software download sites. They have pointed me in the right direction when looking for even the most obscure application. And as this blog and others can attest to, there are so many obscure and cool apps floating out there.

This list is by no means definitive but here is a list of my 7 must-know software download repositories for the best in Mac software, and more. Let me know if I missed any!

The staff here at MacApper look at Mac applications constantly so that we may bring you reviews of all the best Mac software. While we constantly are using new Mac apps, we all have our favorites that we use every day and would be lost without. I thought it would be interesting and hopefully helpful to some of you to to complile our staff’s favorite apps and share them with you.

So without further adieu: the 2007 Edition of MacApper’s Staff Picks.

The internet is saturated in GTD (Getting Things Done) mania, a system created by Religious Figure GTD Guru David Allen.

David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done” has been hailed as the in-vogue system for, naturally, getting things done. Or as I like to think, a to-do list on steroids. I will admit, I’ve read David Allen’s book, and it does make sense.

I’m just going to say it: I am one of the people who really love the Leopard dock. I love stacks: I think it’s elegant, quick, and makes my PC friends drool.

Like everyone else, I’m always looking for ways to make my dock more productive. Thankfully, this tip, via macosxhints.com, teaches you how to make a recent items folder for the dock.

You can add a Recent Applications, Recent Documents, Recent Servers, Favorite Volumes, or Favorite Items stack to the dock. After the trick is applied, a “Recent 10 Things” stack will appear (but only expand into tile mode).

Ah, aesthetics, aesthetics. Apple, you’ve made me a fiend for aesthetics. You gave me the Genie effect when I minimize a window, and translucent menus when I need to open a file. But when you created Leopard, you made a bunch of changes to the aesthetics that I used to love so much.

Some of the changes I like, and some I can live with. But in Leopard, you took away my rounded screen corners. Well, thanks to the Apple developer community, the guys over at Many Tricks have brought back rounded screen corners with their application Displaperture.

Apple, you really didn’t have to do this. Really, you’ve done so much. And to update it for Leopard? Oh alright, I’ll just say it. Ever since the debut of OS X, there has been a little trick that I have been using to impress my friends when minimizing and maximizing windows.

By holding down the shift key when minimizing and maximizing a window, the animation takes a longer time, but does it in slow motion. The same happens with Exposé. This little trick shows the power of OS X’s native animation capabilities.