The AppStore is known for a lot of things, but easy navigation isn’t one of them.  With tens of thousands of games on the service, knowing when a real gem comes out can be more of a challenge than it should be.  Big games may get featured on the What’s Hot or What’s New pages, and they may sit at the top of the sale numbers for a few weeks, but unless you’re actively checking to see what’s new on a regular basis it’s almost inevitable you’re going to miss a golden gaming experience.

Today we’re taking a look at 5 upcoming game worth keeping an eye out for.  Why miss out on the big names if we can give you the heads up before they happen?

Ravensword
Release Date: Shortly (currently submitted for approval)
Price: Unknown

What is it: A 3D action RPG that’s been described as equal parts Oblivion and Twilight Princess, Ravensword developers are promising a richer, deeper experience than anything that’s come before on the iPhone.

Why you should be excited: Set in an expansive world with plenty of side quests, rumor has it you’ll need 3-6 hours to get through the main quest alone.  In a traditional RPG that’s a drop in the bucket — but on the iPhone?  For a game that looks this good, that’s tremendous.

Forget about how good it looks and how deep it should play for a moment though and realize this:  what you’re witnessing here is the birth of a franchise.  The game isn’t even out yet and Chillingo’s already committed to an expansion in the next six months that should add new gameplay devices in addition to content.  Even bigger is the promise of Ravensword Online, the iPhone’s first true MMO in 2010.  An MMO.  On the iPhone.  And all of itstarts right here with the release of the first Ravensword.

Eliminate
Release Date: Shortly (currently submitted for approval)
Price: FREE

What is it: First person shooters on the iPhone have had a spotty reputation at best, but ngmoco hopes to turn that around with this upcoming online arena shooter.

Why you should be excited: Eliminate will offer instant, jump-in, multiplayer action from anywhere in the world.  Multiplayer on the iPhone has ranged from nightmarish to “meh.”  If ngmoco can pull off Eliminate, that’sall going to change.  The only downside to the game is that you’ll only have so much “energy” to use in a day, meaning you can only play so long before you have to let your character recharge.  Now that Apple allows microtransactions you’ll be able to purchase your way back into the game early.  It sounds a lot like the business model used by Zynga in games like Mafia Wars, which is definitely something I have mixed feelings about.

Galactic Keep: Dice Battles
Release Date: 2010
Price: Unknown

What is it: A role-playing game that plays less like Final Fantasy and more like… well, a role-playing game.  Remember those nights of D&D in your parents basement?  That’s Galactic Keep.  Everything down to the dice, hand-drawn maps, and monster stats replicates that old school, table-top gaming experience.

Why you should be excited: Try and forget the amazing hand drawn art style for a minute.  Forget about the brilliant table top vibe and photorealistic dice.  What you’re left with after all of the spit and polish is a role-playing game for the iPhone that accurately replicates the experience of real role-playing games in five separate quests.  Tough decisions, fierce battles, and engaging stories for what we assume will be hours on end.  If you’ve ever spent a night around a kitchen table with Mountain Dew, Cheetos, and a bag of 20-sided dies, Galactic Keep could very well be the greatest thing you’ve ever put in your pocket.

The Relic
Release Date: November 2009
Price: Unknown

What is it: Think Gauntlet, but better.  Chillingo is bringing the classic hack’n’slash action of yesteryear to the iPhone in a multiplayer dungeon crawler that they describe as “Gauntlet on steroids.”

Why you should be excited: Earlier this year, Chillingo kicked off a brand new genre for the iPhone that caught on like wild fire: the twin stick shooter.  As our review of iDracula will attest, Chillingo knows what they’re doing when it comes to crazy hyper-violent top-down gameplay.  Now they’ve taken that experience and added in bigger environments, a variety of enemies, some objectives and a storyline.  While iDracula may have come up with a great mechanic, The Relic has the chance to use that in a great experience.  If someone had told me that the iDracula team were remaking Gauntlet for the iPhone I would have squealed like a little girl.  Hearing about The Relic pretty much had the same effect.

Star Wars: Trench Run
Release Date: Unknown
Price: $4.99

What is it: Remember that last scene in the first Star Wars?  When Luke and his buddies go all Red Dawn on the Death Star?  In the Star Wars community that’s remembered fondly as the Trench Run.  Thanks to THQ Wireless, pretty soon you’ll get to fly it yourself with the magic of tilt control.

Why you should be excited: It’s a little too early to tell, but judging by the screens it looks like we might finally be getting a fresh taste of the classic X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter series that graced our desktops nearly two decades ago.  The in-cockpit view and dogfighting looks strikingly similar, and it makes our hearts smile.  There’s also a definite taste of the original Star Wars Arcade here.  If THQ Wireless wanted a game that paid homage to the classics, those would be the games to draw from.

It also looks like Trench Run might let us fill the shoes of both Luke and Vader.  There’s a moment in the trailer where the screen switches to Vader’s cockpit trying to shoot down Luke.  It’s just as likely that this may be a section of game where you’re controlling Luke and trying to evade Vader’s targeting, but we’re hoping on playing as the dark lord himself.

The first thing you will notice about Snowtape is its amazing interface. It uses a completely custom UI that really works for the app. It also includes a mini-comtroller (just like iTunes) that is also unbelievably good-looking. It doesn’t just have a good UI though, it is very easy to use. There is a directory where you can search for stations, and there is also a repository of recorded tracks that you can edit and send to iTunes. It’s very simple.

In the directory, Snowtape sorts all stations by genres. Each station can have many genres, so some may appear all over the place. With the recent 1.1 update, Snowtape now has 700+ stations built-in, so you may never have to add your own. If you ever do, though, you just go to File>Import URL… if you have the URL of the playlist (for the station) or File>Import File… if you have the actual playlist file. You can sort stations by title, description, genre, number of streams, quality and popularity. The streams usually range from 320 kbps to about 16 kbps with most at about 128 kbps.

Snowtape’s main purpose is to record internet radio. And this is very simple to do. When you are listening to a stream, simply click the record button, and until you click the button again, everything will be recorded. Once you have recorded what you want, you can go to the Last Recorded section and see what you have. Your recording will be split into tracks based on the song that was playing. However, the track data from internet streams doesn’t always change exactly when the song changes, so you may have to do some editing. But, if some of the song gets cut out, you are out of luck. Although you can cut a track, you can’t add from one track to another. Luckily, you can decide for Snowtape to not cut it into tracks by going to the Recording tab of Preferences and deselecting the Enable automatic cut at track boundaries checkbox. Using that feature comes at a cost.

Once you have finished editing a track, you can get artwork for it by simply clicking the Get Album Artwork button. You can then choose from the images it shows you. And once you have done that, you can export to iTunes. The track info will already be filled in, and if you choose artwork, it will be there too. Recording in Snowtape could not be simpler.

One thing that may be overlooked by some users of Snowtape is RadioURL.com. This is a service provided with Snowtape that allows you to share what you are currently listening to to other Snowtape users. When you are listening to a station, just go to Action>RadioURL.com and choose what you would like to do. Others can then click on the link created and listen to what you are.

Snowtape retails for $29 and you can download a free demo from that link as well. Having artist alerts would be nice, but with 700+ stations, by the time you got the alert, the song would probably be over. It is extremely well designed, and just nice to use. I was not much of a radio fan before it, but now that it’s so easy, I listen and record all the time. I think everyone should try out this app.

The iPhone winners were:

• MLB.com At Bat 2009
• Postage
• Topple 2
• Tweetie | MacApper Review
• Wooden Labyrinth 3D
• AccuTerra (3.0 Beta)

I have used all of these, and I must say, Apple is very right. There are a few apps that came out after the awards that I think would have won had the awards not been given out until after their release. A congratulations to all of these iPhone winners, we really appreciate your apps and the work you have put into them.

The Mac winners are:

• Billings
• BoinxTV
• Things | MacApper Review
• Versions | MacApper Review
• Fontcase | MacApper Review

Again, I have tried all these apps, and they are great. Congratulations to the winners of the Mac Apple Design Awards, we appreciate the work you have put into making your apps so great.

I recommend checking out all of these apps, not just because they won awards, but because they are great apps that really deserve notice. Especially the student winners (Fontcase and Wooden Labyrinth 3D), who not only create amazing apps, but also must manage schoolwork.

I have been a windows power user for a decade or more. I work for a medium sized company and am tasked with sales and manufacturing responsibilities. I have always looked for ways to allow technology to improve my efficiency and help move our business forward. I have built databases with MS access that see thousands of transactions in a year by many people, created our company intranet using .net that is accessed from all over the world, and was a Microsoft enthusiast.

When the first iPhone was released it caught my attention and I was very impressed, however I used Microsoft exchange for my work email and it was not compatible. iPhone 3G was announced and exchange would be built in. I started paying weekly visits to the local apple store to investigate and play with the old iPhone while I was waiting for the 3G to be released. While in the apple store I noticed these beautiful computers all around and remember thinking to myself I wish that someone would build a windows machine that pretty. During that time I started hearing people I follow on podcasts and on the web discuss their preference for the Macintosh over PC’s. I remember thinking to myself that all these people couldn’t be wrong so I started researching making the switch to a Mac myself. I found a blog from a David Allison that documented his switch from PC to Mac. I read it from top to bottom and it was the final piece of information that convinced me to make the switch to Mac.

Nearly a year after making the switch to Mac I’ve purchased for myself or family a 24” iMac, two iPhone 3G’s, two iPod touch 2nd generation, 15” Unibody Macbook Pro, 17” Unibody Macbook Pro, Apple TV, Airport extreme and a fair amount of accessories. It’s safe to say I’m an official ? fanboy. I can now understand the enthusiasm for the apple products and the mac way of life. Those of you who use a Mac at home and a PC at work will understand the sadness and frustration with having to log into windows every morning. No spotlight, no quick look, no iLife, no iWork, and no automator, to name a few. Add the windows deficiencies to the list of normal windows frustrations and I was missing my mac every day.

Now with the foundation in place we can explore, at least in my case, if a mac belongs at my work. I would think the process would be the same for anyone thinking about bringing a mac into their workplace. The first step in the process is to go through all the programs that one uses in the course of their job. Many of the functions I did in a day were done in Microsoft’s office suite or in a web browser which would work well on a mac. The programs I use at work that I found are only compatible with windows are the following: Autocad, Microsoft Visual Studio, our companies home built company quoting program, and Quick expense. I also use Oracle which could be ran on a mac, however I had no idea how well it would work. I would definitely need to run windows in a virtual machine such as Fusion or Parallels in order to run those four programs. I figure that I only spent 10-20% of my day using those windows only programs and the rest would be in OS X. Among those four programs Autocad is looking at building a mac version of their software, our quoting program has plans to be ported over to a web interface, and the quick expense program is scheduled to be replaced with an Oracle version.

Luckily I work for a company that has a very open minded IT group and they were more than willing to let me explore using a mac in our windows workplace. In fact one of the IT staff owns an iMac herself. I planned to use my macbook Pro 15” in a two month trial which lasted about a week. With our IT group on board I purchased a 24” iMac and Fusion for work. I felt that the small percentage of time I needed to use windows and the inevitable move away from the programs that only work on windows was a key factor in deciding to switch to Mac at work.

Now I have the 24” iMac unpacked and on my desk at work. In part 2 I’ll go through my process of setting it up and connecting to the company domain.

The first new feature is the customization of mouse clicks–You can now show users your mouse clicks. There is a new Mouse tab where you can customize the size, color, duration and strength of your mouse clicks. You can even display the button name for the click. This means, if you click the left mouse button, it says, ‘Left’ where you clicked as well as showing the animation. You can visualize all these styles without having to create a video in the Mouse Actions Preview box at the bottom.

The second major feature added was optimized export workflows to easily export videos to a few places. All you do is right-click on a video, and you will see a list of 3 pre-defined exporters. So now, you can export for the iPhone just by clicking that and then clicking okay.

Screenium by Synium retails for $29 and you can download a free trial from their site. If you would like more in-depth info about it, you can look at our Face off of screen-capturing apps.

To start off this series, I’ve decided to talk about some of the many popular tools web developers use every day to create their own websites.  This post is divided into two parts because there are two kinds of web development apps out there: W.Y.S.I.W.Y.Gs and Text Based apps.

W.Y.S.I.W.Y.G Apps

In case you’re puzzled on what that means, here’s an explanation.  WYSIWYG is an abbreviation for “what you see is what you get”.  It basically means that whatever you see on the screen, is what your web page will look like when you publish it.

Let’s take a look at some of today’s popular WYSIWYG apps for designing websites.

RapidWeaver

Created by Realmac Software, RapidWeaver is one of the most popular 3rd party apps designed to create beautiful webpages with just a couple clicks.  With 40 themes included, all you have to do is enter in your content whether it’s text, images or both, and RapidWeaver will format it so that it fits with your selected theme.  To find out more, check out our review here at MacApper.

iWeb

iWeb is Apple’s take on a WYSIWYG web app.  Literally, what you see on the screen is what you’re going to see when you hit the big “Publish” button.  Insert and drag around text boxes and images to make your web page exactly the way you want it without having to type a single line of code.  iWeb is part of Apple’s iLife Suite of sofware apps including iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and GarageBand.  You can find out more via iWeb’s product page.

All of the apps have a price tag but also have a demo in which you can download and see which one you like best.  If you’re looking for a little more control over the design and content of your web page, try the other type of web development app:  Text Based apps.

Text Based Apps

These apps are exactly what the title suggests – Text based meaning that in order to achieve your goal of the perfect web page, you’re going to have to stretch your fingers.  The plus side is that with these apps, every element of your page is customizable making the result exactly like the image in your head.

Here’s a small list of popular text based apps out of the countless selections available today.

Coda

From Panic inc. comes a one-windowed web development app designed to have all the tools you need at your fingertips.  Coda takes a bunch of separate apps and incorporates them and their features into one nicely designed package.  Top feautres include a text editor with auto-complete for most of the many popular coding languages, a built in FTP engine which is used to transfer your files onto your web server making your page accessible to the world wide web, and a CSS editor.  If you don’t understand a bunch of these terms, stay tuned.  Everything will be explained in time.

Dashcode

Some of you might have not expected to see this app in the list.  Dashcode is Apple’s way of making the development process of creating “widgets” a lot easier.  But did you ever think of Dashcode’s code editing features?  Auto-complete, text coloring, and what’s more?  It’s Free!

Textmate

This one’s a biggie.  This text editing giant is from a company known as MacroMates.  You name it, Textmate’s got it.  Besides the standard ability of editing and creating files for the web, Textmate’s expandability in terms of plugins makes it truly a universal text editor for the Mac.  To find out more, check out their site or look at our review here at MacApper.

These are just some of the many amazing Text Based web developing apps available.  Be sure to check out Apple.com’s downloads page for a larger list.

There you have it!  If you have any more quetions about the apps, feel free to look them up and find a review here at MacApper.  Stay tuned for our next installment which will talk about using Dashcode to start developing your first webpage.

Apple provides a completely free package of Applications that can be used to develop in Cocoa and other languages, such as Java. To download this package, you will want to register for a free account from ADC (Apple Developer Connection). This will allow you to download the latest SDK (package of tools), and provide you with lots of sample code and guides. You can also purchase paid memberships, which include things such as hardware discounts and pre-releases of OS X builds. But if you are just beginning Cocoa development, I suggest you just register for a free account.

Once you have downloaded and installed the SDK, you can just begin programming. But if you have never programmed in any type of C before, you will most definitely need some help. This being the first part of a Cocoa series, I will not be giving sample code or instructions for how to do things, but I will point you to a few great books. The first one is Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, by Aaron Hillegass. This is usually known as the must-have book for any Cocoa developer. It is an especially great source for those starting out. It guides you through how to do many things in Cocoa, starting with the basics, and ending with topics like Core Data and Core Animation.

Another great book that’s not so much about Cocoa as it is about Xcode is Xcode 3 Unleashed, by Fritz Anderson. This book focuses on the Xcode programming environment, and teaches you how to use Xcode to its fullest. But if you are more concerned with learning Cocoa than learning Xcode, then you may want to hold off on getting this book until you understand Cocoa a little better.

Although people have differing opinions on whether this book should be read by beginners, I will still recommend it. It is The C Programming Language, by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie (sometimes known as K&R). Although, as seen in the title, this is not about Cocoa or Objective-C, this can give you an understanding of C. Although knowing C is not necessary for programming in Cocoa, it is very helpful. Objective-C is pretty vast, but there are some things that you may have to do in C, so it can be very helpful too. It is really up to you whether you would like to read this book.

The last book I will recommend is Stephen G. Kochan’s Programming in Objective-C 2.0. Objective-C 2.0 is very new, and some other books may have not been updated yet to cover it. It is great for beginners; it really teaches you how to program (as suggested in the title). It is much along the lines of Hillegass’ book, even though it is not usually seen as a must-have. I highly recommend this for you beginners.

I hope this has given you the tools you need to begin learning Cocoa. You should expect many more of these articles which will cover more advanced topics in Cocoa, Xcode, and anything related to Cocoa development. Happy programming!

Versions makes SVN easy. All you have to do to setup a Repository (where the files are stored) Bookmark is select the [+] button and click Add Repository Bookmark… You will then be prompted for a name, URL, and username and password. Most open-source SVN Repositories don’t require a password, but for a personal repository, you will probably want one. Once you have entered all the relevant information, just click the Create button. The Repository will then show up in the Bookmarks sidebar. When you click on one of these bookmarks, the Repository will be loaded.

The main panel of Versions has 3 tabs: Timeline, Browse, and Transcript. The Timeline tab shows you the most recent revisions. For each revision it tells you the user who made the change, the revision number, the files that were changed, and a description of the change. The browse tab gives you a look at the files in the Repository. It shows the files exactly like in list mode in the Finder. Double-clicking on a file will allow you to edit it and clicking the Quick Look toolbar item will allow you to view it in Quick Look. If you click the Compare Diff toolbar icon, you can compare the most recent version of the file with a previous revision. Once you choose the previous revision, it will open the files in the file-comparison app that you choose in Versions’ preferences (I suggest using Changes). The transcript tab just shows you what Versions has been doing (e.g. opening a file from a Repository, etc.).

Versions not only makes it easy to view Repositories, but it also makes it easy to upload to them. To create a Checkout Version (a local copy) of a Repository, just select a bookmark, go to the Browse tab, and select what part of the project you want, and then click the Checkout toolbar item. Versions will prompt you with a dialogue of where to save it to, and then it will save it. It would be nice if you could just select a bookmark and click Checkout, and it would download the entire thing. When you want to upload changes from your working copy, all you have to do is select your working copy, select the files you want to commit, and click the Commit toolbar item. If you added new files from the last time you uploaded, you will need to mark them as needing to be uploaded. You can do this by selecting the file and clicking the Add toolbar item. If there is a file listed that you do not want to upload, just click the Delete toolbar item. It can be a bit tedious to have to select to add all your new files, but it’s worth it.

If you are a real SVN lover and power-user, you will really like the information shown about files when the Inspector toolbar icon is clicked. I will not even try to explain all the features here, for I do not know them all, but they are useful to some.

Versions has just come out of Beta and now retails for about $48.57 (€39). It is the prettiest, most intuitive, and easiest to use SVN client available for the Mac. It is even a partner of Beanstalk, the best source of private Repositories. If you do any shared work, namely code, I suggest that you download the free trial of Versions and see how it compares to what you have used in the past; I think you will be surprised at how helpful it is.

The purpose of CleanApp, or any other app deleter is to completely remove an application from your hard drive. Obviously, they are not completely perfect, but they can come extremely close. One feature that CleanApp incorporates to try to get as many of the app’s files deleted is it’s Logging-Service. To turn it on, go to the Service pane of CleanApp>Preferences and click the Start Logging button. And if you Mac crashes, or you get errors about CleanApp, you may want to reset the database by clicking on the Delete Database button in the Database pane of CleanApp>Preferences. This logging service is a constantly running process that tracks what files each and every one of your applications creates; this helps it to completely remove your applications from your hard drive… and more sometimes. If you save a file with a text editor, the logging service will count this as a file created by the application. So, if you have this service on, you have to pay close attention to what files CleanApp says its going to delete; if you don’t, you might just lose that huge paper that’s due tomorrow. If you ever want to view what files any of your applications have created, just go to the Logging sidebar item. You can then click the triangle next to an application’s name to see these files. You can also delete an application (and its files from here) by just clicking the Prepare to Delete… button when you have an application (or an application’s file) selected.

Another feature that CleanApp implements that I have never seen in an app deleter is deletion of Language Packages. Language Packages are what developers use to make his/her application appear in the main language of the user’s computer. But, there is almost no reason you need to keep Language Packages for any other language than your default. So, what CleanApp does is allows you to choose what Language Packages from an application to delete. All you have to do is drag an application on to CleanApp like you want to delete it, but then go to the Language Packages sidebar item. You will then see every Language Package included in the application except for your default language. You will also see that only some of them are checked. The unchecked ones are the ones that you have told CleanApp never to delete. If it is your first time using CleanApp, then it probably wasn’t you who told it. So, if you want to change what Language Packages never to delete, just specify in the Languages pane of CleanApp>Preferences. The unchecked ones are the ones you will not allow it to delete. Of course, there are free applications like Monolingual that do this same thing, but it is still nice to have it included as an all-in-one.

Another nice feature in CleanApp is its ability to archive your applications. If you want to delete an application for now, but you think you may want to use it again later, you may want to use this feature. First, you may want to specify where the archives go. To do this, click the Change Archive Path… button in the Archives pane of CleanApp>Preferences. Then, when you drag an application on to CleanApp, instead of choosing the Delete item in the popup button at the bottom of the screen, either choose the Archive or Archive & Delete item. CleanApp will then show you what it is doing (e.g. Copying Files). When this process is done, you will notice that the Archives sidebar item has a 1 (or some other value depending on how may you had before) next to it. If you click on the Archives sidebar item, and select the click the checkbox next to the archive you just created, you can click Open Selected Archive… This will open the archive, and then all you have to do is click the Restore Check File(s) button that appeared and CleanApp will restore all of that app’s files from the archive. And, if you decide you don’t like CleanApp, you can open these files manually as disk images in the place you specified earlier. Archives are a great way to make sure you don’t delete an app and then regret it later on.

CleanApp also contains a few more notable features which I will quickly describe. The first one is its Old Files feature. To access it, just go to the Old Files sidebar item. This allows you to see large files that have not been used for a long time. If you want to change the directory where CleanApp searches for these, just click the Add Path… (or Remove Path) button in the Old Files tab of the Paths pane of CleanApp>Preferences. It should be noted, this is a feature that you can find in some free apps. The second one is its Cache Files support. To use this, go to the Cache Files sidebar item. This feature allows you to see the caches that your applications have created. Caches basically make your applications run and load faster… but you should still clear them every once-in-a-while. If you want CleanApp to clear all of your applications’ caches, just click the little checkbox at the top of the window. And to clear individual apps’ caches, check the checkboxes by their names. Again, this is a feature that can be found in some free apps.

Synium’s CleanApp retails for $13 and you can download a free trial from their site. Although all it does is implement a lot of features you may find in free apps, the fact that it is all-in-one gives it some major brownie points. I have also noticed, that even without the Logging Service enabled, it finds files that AppZapper and others don’t find. I think for the price, it is a great option with many nicely implemented features.

Wallet fits its name because it is your digital wallet. You have different groups (like sections in a wallet) where you can store serial numbers, web passwords, credit cards or anything else you want. To create a new set of items (like a database), just hit the [+] button at the bottom-left-hand corner of the main window. You will be prompted with a window where you can customize all aspects of the group. To change the icon of the group, just click on the default folder icon in the upper-left-hand corner and wither choose a pre-made icon or choose a custom icon (by clicking Choose Custom…). The fields are for the basic information you want for the group. If you are keeping track of expenses, you can have fields like Date, Amount and Tax. You can also have multiple sections of fields. To create a new section, click on the Add Field button under the New Section box. If you want to add an AutoFill in Safari for members of the group, just click the Enable AutoFill checkbox, and drag the Website URL, Username and Password icons to their subsequent fields that you created. I must say, I really like the look of this panel because it uses an iPhone like interface. The fields look like table view cells on the iPhone; even the [-] buttons and draggers look alike!

In each item of each group you can enter as many or as few of the fields for that group. You can even add special fields just for that item. To do this, just click the Add Field button under the fields in the item. The titles of there groups will be in bold blue so you can tell that they are special fields. You can also add notes to any item (no need to specify another field) just by editing the Notes section of the item. Along with notes there is also an icon field included by default. Here you can specify an icon for a specific item. And what’s better, when you type in the name of an application you have installed into the name field, Wallet will put its icon in this field! To edit an item just click the pencil icon at the bottom of the window. In editing mode, you can flag (or star) an item just by clicking on the big star next to the name field. Starred items will not appear in the list where they should (alphabetically) but they will always appear at the top. You need not be in edit mode to edit the notes of an item though. When not in editing mode, if you click on a field, Wallet will copy the contents to your clipboard and show any awesome animation! Wallet 3.0 makes is easier than ever to create information and access it!

The best new feature in version 3.0 would have to be MobileMe syncing. When you first launch Wallet, during the setup, you will be asked if you want to enable MobileMe syncing. All you have to do is enter your MobileMe username and password, and you are set. To change when to sync automatically, just go to the Sync pane of Wallet>Preferences… and edit the checkboxes in the Always Sync Before section. You can also always manually sync to MobileMe just by clicking on the Cloud toolbar button in the main window of Wallet. To disable MobileMe syncing, just uncheck the Enable MobileMe Sync checkbox. Not only does syncing allow you to have the same items on all of your Macs, it allows for the iPhone Wallet application to be up-to-date too.

Another new feature added in version 3.0 is the AutoFill menubar item. Wallet has added a menubar item (that is always running, even when Wallet is not) that allows you to fill stored forms for Websites. To enable this, just go to the AutoFill pane of Wallet>Preferences… and check the Enable menubar app checkbox. You will now see a nice little icon (that looks like a wallet) sitting in your menubar. When you want to fill a form, just click this item and enter your Master Password in the field shown. If Wallet finds a stored form it will AutoFill it, and if not, it will tell you so. Instead of having to open Wallet and find the form and AutoFill if from there, you can do it in just one click! Wallet is now just as easy to use as 1Password.

Wallet, by Acrylic Apps retails for only $20 and you can upgrade from version 2 for just $5 and get a free trial! They also have an iPhone app that is only $3.99! Version 3 is a great upgrade to an already great app! If you like organizing any information with ease, then you have to try out Wallet today!

Mail Act-On works the same way as MailTags, once you install it, there will be a new preference pane in Mail.app. In the General tab of this pane, you can specify if the window is locked (it won’t disappear), and fading of the Result window. The “menus” tab lets you choose keyboard shortcuts for Mail Act-On’s basic functionality. However, if you own a laptop or new Apple keyboard, these shortcuts are very annoying because you must hit the Function key along with the F Key. Right now, there is a bug that does not allow modifier keys for these shortcuts, but I have been assured that it will be fixed soon. While you can turn off the need to hit the function key, it also turns off all of the special actions associated with the keys like Brightness and iTunes controls. To do this, go to System Preferences>Keyboard & Mouse>Keyboard and select the “Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys.”

Mail Act-On also adds some new Rules tabs. If you go to the Rules pane of Mail.app’s preferences you will see that there are now three tabs. The Inbox Rules tab is just like Mail.app’s regular Rules. The “Outbox Rules” tab allows you to make rules apply to messages being sent and the “Keystroke Rules” tab is where Mail-Act-On’s power is really seen. Here you can specify rules that can be applied to messages by just one keystroke. You will usually want the “If” part of the rule to be “Any Message” because the point of this rule is to apply it to every message selected when you invoke the rule. There is also a new field in this type of rule called the “Act-On Key”. When you want to apply a certain “Keystroke Rule” you select some messages and hit Control-[Act-On Key for the rule]. This makes it simpler than ever to apply dozens of rules to messages after they have been received.

Mail Act-On does not require you to have any rules set up to use it; you can just use it as a tool to perform many actions on multiple messages. To invoke Mail Act-On, just hit the function key you set up for Mail Act-On (unless you changed it, F1). You will see a HUD-like window popup with actions that can be done to your selected messages. If you have MailTags installed, you will not only see the “Apply Rules”, “Move”, “Copy” and “Open Folder” actions, but you will also see two more: “Add Keyword” and “Set Project.” You can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to scroll through these or just use your mouse. To lock this window manually, just hit F1 (or Function-F1) again. Then, even after you have performed an action of some messages, the Mail Act-On window will still be there. As you remember, there were also options for setting up shortcuts for each action in the Act-On window in Mail Act-On’s preferences. If you hit one of these key combinations, instead of going straight to actions part of the Act-On window, it will take you to the part of the window that corresponds with the keystroke. Although this window makes it amazingly easy to apply rules of all sorts, if Mail.app loses focus and then gains it again, the Act-On window disappears. It is a nice feature that it is not there when Mail.app doesn’t have focus, but it would be better if it appeared again.

indev’s Mail Act-On retails for $19.95 (an introductory price) and you can download a free 21-day trial from their site. If you are an avid user of Quicksilver, or even if you just want to speed up your Email system, you will love Mail Act-On.

Earlier today, Martin Gordon, developer of the forthcoming Flickup app for iPhone, wrote in a frustrated blog post about his experience with App Store submission and (lack of) communication with Apple about the status of his submission. He submitted Flickup early morning on July 7, before Apple’s announced cutoff period for App Store launch availability, but his app still wasn’t in the store three days after the store launched. Finally, he received an email explaining that Flickup would not be accepted into the App Store in its current state because it lacked a feature to let a user log out of or change the Flickr account they were using with the app.

After spending some time adding this feature and fixing a few bugs, Gordon re-submitted Flickup to Apple, as well as a “demo” version of the app with some reduced functionality for those wanting to try it out. By Tuesday, he had received another response from Apple saying that they would not accept Flickup Demo due to the fact that it was “a beta or feature-limited version,” and that “the application must be a fully functional app and cannot reference features that are not implemented.”

Gordon gleaned from this response that Apple would never accept a demo or trial of applications into the App Store period, and it certainly sounds that way. But there are a few iPhone applications that, at first glance, seems to follow this very model. One well-known example is Twitterrific. There is a free version that is ad-supported, and a $10 premium version that does not have ads and includes an additional visual style, and the free version of Twitterrific also contains a link to purchase the premium version in the App Store, seemingly contradicting with Apple’s requirements not to reference or “up-sell” a paid version. So how did it get into the store? I asked a well-known iPhone developer, who wished to remain nameless. He responded by saying that after a long discussion with Apple, they made one point very clear: “They don’t want demos in the store.” This tells us that Apple will not be including feature-limited demos or time-sensitive trial versions of applications in the App Store at all, at least for now. This is sure to come as a disappointment for many users and developers alike.

But what about another App Store feature that many developers are clamoring for, beta releases? The good news is that the future looks a little brighter for this functionality. TechCrunch reported yesterday evening on a tip from an iPhone developer that Apple is planning a beta option for devs. Great news, but according to the tip, beta releases will be hard-limited to just 100 iPhones, which is a tiny, tiny sliver of the entire iPhone audience of millions. Worse still, developers have to hand pick beta testers and submit the serial numbers of the phones they want to allow testing on, which could become a hugely tedious process. This may be a variation on the already-announced ad-hoc distribution method, or TechCrunch could even have a novice developer on their hands who has confused the two.

Even though these two answers cover a lot of ground for iPhone developers, there are still many questions to be asked. When will devs be able to discuss problems and solutions openly with each other? What kinds of applications will Apple explicitly disallow, exactly? Will developers ever be able to give out copies of their application to the press for review? And what are the details of the notification service that Apple discussed at WWDC? These are just a few of the questions we’d like answered sooner rather than later, but until Apple lifts the NDA surrounding the iPhone SDK, we may never know.

So while we wait impatiently, why not brush up on the basics by playing the original StarCraft in the mean time?

Unfortunately there’s a big obstacle: the game was initially released for Mac OS 9. While this isn’t a big deal for older PowerPC-based Macs that can run archaic software using the Classic emulator, the newer Intel systems are left out in the cold. So how can we relive the glory days of low-resolution, last century gaming?

Luckily Blizzard has got us covered. Buried away on the developer’s support site is a link to the Mac OS X Native Installer. Using this application and your dusty, old StarCraft disc, you can get a Carbon version of the game running on any Mac. Intel systems will use Rosetta emulation, but you won’t notice much slowdown since the game isn’t very processor intensive. This trick, however, won’t work for the StarEdit campaign editor, so budding creators should turn to the more advanced editor found in WarCraft III — or you could just wait out StarCraft II’s release.

StarCraft lets you choose from three armies, each with unique fighting abilities. The Terran is the basic human group, complete with traditional marines, tanks, aircrafts and nuclear missiles. The Protoss is a powerful race whose buildings and many of its units require battery power to operate at full capacity. Finally the Zergs spit green acid and normally travel in massive groups due to their ability to produce units quickly.

I was pleasantly surprised to find I could still jump on Battle.net almost 10 years since I first played and find people to compete against online. Granted the majority of them only spoke Korean and devoured my Terran army in a few minutes, but it’s still a fun way to relive years past.

Blizzard also offers an OS X installer for Diablo II. If you have trouble running it on an Intel Mac even after using the native installer, hold the Option key when launching the app, and set the video options to “software.” Now you should be good to go to Hell and battle Satan. Just make sure to watch out for high-level bullies who try to smack down newbies.

Recent releases of StarCraft and Diablo II include the native installers on the disc, so if you bought your copy recently, hopefully you can look forward to going online and seeing new players, who dug their old copies out of the closet.

But for less than 1/3rd the cost!

You might want to grab a coffee as this tutorial is quite large. It was also designed with both the novice and newbie in mind, and therefore is full of plenty of screenshots to help you along.

Disclaimer: Please note that I am not interested at all in cries of software piracy or license misuse involved with using a patched Leopard DVD to run OS X on a PC. I have bought more than my share of Jaguar, Tiger and now Leopard software to really have much of a problem with it. If I am making you queasy already then you might want to read Apple’s OS X SLA and go back to watching Cosby Show re-runs with your sister.

Glad you’re still with us! So in order to install Leopard on a PC you need to remove the code built into OS X checking for authentic Apple hardware. You could download a torrent of a ready made patched Leopard DVD (which is likely illegal in most countries) or you can choose to build a patched copy of your own store bought DVD, or the one that came with your Mac (quasi-legal). If you want to go the torrent route you could try searching for Kalyway leopard 10.5.1 but that’s as far as I can help you with that. As far as patching goes the guys at lifehacker have an immensely thorough procedure for building a patched DVD so I won’t rehash the process here. Either way get yourself a copy and prepare for the real meat of the operation ahead.

Without these guys none of this would be possible. The OSx86 wiki and InsanelyMac are ground zero for all of this stuff so you can direct your browser there to get aquinted with the project. They would prefer bloggers don’t link to files or threads over there so I will do my best to comply with that.

The Parts

There is no definitive hardware selection to build a perfect Hackintosh box but the following gear worked very well for me and others. To be more accurate, the wrong hardware can cause serious issues and drivers can be a problem so be sure to check that your stuff is going to work okay. You can also expand on what I have selected here, like adding more drives for RAID, as the motherboard I chose supports this. The nice thing about building your own system is that you can configure it to your needs.

The following image shows all of the internal parts I used for my Hackintosh.

• Motherboard: Asus P5W DH Deluxe.
• Processor: Intel Coreâ„¢2 Quad Q6600 LGA775 (Retail Package).
• RAM: 4GB DDR2 5300 @ 667 Mhz.
• Video Card: eVGA eGeForce 8600GTS w/256 Megs RAM.
• Hard Drive: Seagate 320GB SATA II. 7200RPM. 16MB buffer.
• DVD Drive: Creative 8x (ancient, from old computer. Model DVD8401E. May 2000!)
• Case: Ultra Wizard ATX Mini-Tower w/350watt Power Supply.

Next let’s take a look at some of the costs involved…

What everyone is missing in all this however, is that the people this notebook is targeted towards couldn’t care less about any of that stuff. Let me break it down for you right after the jump.

It’s expensive and the battery isn’t removable. Are we talking about the iPod and the iPhone again? Because those products are the same way, and they were complete disasters, right? And as for the people who like to bring an extra battery with them on trips, isn’t that defeating the exact purpose of an ultraportable computer?

It doesn’t have firewire. Firewire is now only common with video cameras and hard drives. The people with MacBook Airs aren’t buying them for video editing. And the consumer-level cheaper hard drives are nearly all USB.

It doesn’t have ethernet. WiFi is nearly ubiquitous. In the 5-6 years I’ve owned a Mac, I have never once accessed the internet via ethernet. Maybe some of you have, but the few people that need it can buy the dongle.

But seriously, optical drive?! This seems crazy at first. The true downside here is using discs on-the-go. All other burning and installing can be done on the reasonably priced external drive. The only real sacrifice is DVDs. People will have to think ahead and rip them with Handbrake. But in the grand scheme of things, think back. When was the last time you used your optical drive? When was the last time you used it away from home?

Overall the reason this product is getting bashed online is because it’s not meant for the intense Mac followers (read: fanboys). It’s slimmed down and streamlined for people who just want a computer to go online, write papers, and listen to music. It is also aimed squarely at business professionals. Today I heard a group of high school seniors talking about how perfect it would be for college next year.

It may not have all the features that everyone wants, and it may be a little expensive, but it’s damn slick and enough for most people. Sound familiar? Apple is shooting for another iPod star with this notebook.

I disagree with James because I think the networks are a little smarter than they are normally given credit. It is a very good point that James makes that they would hate to have an easy way for us to get shows for free. However, they also know that everyone and their grandma already owns a TiVo, so that ship has sailed. DVRs aren’t like piracy to the networks. They are actually trying to adapt to them, rather than fighting an unwinnable war against them, a la the RIAA and MPAA. Take a look at all the free episodes available on the networks’ websites and on Hulu; no question these companies (dragging their feet or not) are changing. From their perspective, it really shouldn’t matter that one more company has jumped on the DVR bandwagon, even if it’s one that they do business with.

Digging a little deeper, it is actually a good thing for them to have Apple be the one with DVRs in people’s homes. But you say, the people who buy the Apple TV are probably the same ones that buy shows on iTunes. Now they’ll all stop buying right? Well, yes and no. Sure they won’t keep on buying each episode of a running show; they’ll record those. But as for the shows’ earlier seasons, those will still sell just as well. And putting a DVR in the Apple TV makes it a worthwhile purchase for many people who never considered buying the light-on-the-features first generation machine, definitely a major plus for Apple’s “hobby”. I know I’ll buy one the day they put a DVR in it.

So, now this new money-losing, network killing, Apple TV is in the hands of many more viewers, but guess what, it’s not only a DVR. It also has the ability to buy tv shows and rent movies. So now the networks have a great salesman in the living rooms of people across the country. Most companies’ DVRs have nothing to do with the networks, but Apple’s will actually make them money. I think that’s something they could get on board with. Think of it, if someone is sitting watching tv and there’s nothing on or in the DVR, they might just pop open iTunes with their remote, and buy an episode of a new show a friend told them about, or rent a movie. Just like that, as an offset to decreased iTunes sales where people record the shows instead, the ease of use of iTunes in the living room will bring in far more sales.

James may be right, Apple’s entanglements with the networks could prevent them from doing what customers clearly want. I do think, however, that Apple can explain to the networks why this would be a good thing for everyone. It could be the networks’ last chance to be a part of the DVR trend, rather than just try to adapt to it as an outside force.

Going a little deeper, though, one notices a few fatal problems with this.

Apple already has a business selling TV shows through the iTunes Store. A DVR-enabled AppleTV would cut into this business plan and potentially take money away from Apple. It’s also somewhat unlikely that the content providers (Fox, Sci-Fi, etc) will enjoy customers being able to record their shows and not have to pay royalties, though to counteract this, they may ask for something like the “Zune Tax” in which Microsoft payed Universal $1 for every Zune sold.

While introducing a DVR would make quite a few customers happy, Apple would have a hard time getting studios to agree to it, and it wouldn’t really be in the best interest of their business selling TV shows. Sorry, guys, but I don’t think your DVR will be coming this MacWorld.

The list is sorted alphabetically by category and currently has 57 freeware mac apps.

We hope to extend this list regularly and make it one of the best places to find out about great freeware for Mac. Having said that we definitely will have missed some of your favorites so please feel free to vote for Mac apps you feel should make the list in the comments.

Audio/Video

Audacity
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. While it is more recommended for advanced users, novices should be able to perform basic editing and recording as well. Useful for podcasters.
iUseThis

Backups

Carbon Copy Cloner
Carbon Copy Cloner is a very useful and robust tool for making exact copy backups of any disk, even across the network. The newest version features an advanced scheduler tool and backup tasks can now be scheduled on an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly fashion. If you don’t like Time Machine give CCC a try.
Our Review | iUseThis

Mozy
Mozy is a free online backup service to keep your important files safe. On the free version, you get just 2GB of storage, so may only be any use as part of your backup solution; however for those important documents it’s well worth a look, as you can retrieve your documents from any computer, a definite plus.
Our Review | iUseThis

CD/DVD Authoring

HandBrake
Handbrake is the One-Stop-Shop for ripping DVD’s to your Mac, to use on your iPod, Apple TV, iPhone, or pretty much anything you can think of. A lovely bit of software that nearly everyone will probably need to use at one point or another.
Our Review | iUseThis

Burn
Burn allows you to… burn any kind of CD or DVD, data, music or video. You can even copy or burn ISO and DMG images.
iUseThis

Development

DiffMerge
This a very simple application to compare your files and folders, showing you differences and allowing you to merge them. Very handy for programmers or code monkeys.
iUseThis

Nvu
Nvu is a fully featured web authoring application (WYSIWYG) similiar to something like Dreamweaver that allows you to edit HTML/CSS with no technical expertise or knowledge of either. Well sort of. Nvu is not without its caveats but it is opensource and deserves a spot here.
iUseThis

Smultron
Smultron is a open sourced text/code editor written in Cocoa that is both easy to use and quite advanced for a freeware offering.
iUseThis

Education

SchoolHouse
GTD is the in-thing at the moment, however most GTD app’s aren’t that great for organising your school life. Schoolhouse, however is, and is perfectly suited to the job. Never miss an assignment again, and know exactly how you’re getting on in each of your subjects.
Our Review | iUseThis

FTP/SFTP Clients

CyberDuck
Cyberduck is a great, simple and very quick FTP/SFTP browser. It lets you do everything you need to, and even lets you edit text documents remotely, without the need to download them. It also takes full advantage of Apple’s Bonjour, and supports full drag and drop.
Our Review | iUseThis

Fugu
Fugu is an opensource SFTP client with a dual pane view distributed by the University of Michigan. Fugu has become fairly robust and supports most of the features you would expect of a solid SFTP app.
iUseThis

Games

* Be sure to also see our article on free games for Mac.

Quinn
Quinn is a nice simple Tetris game, but it has beautiful graphics, as well as some features you rarely see on freeware games, such as Bonjour play, allowing you to play across a network.
Our Review | iUseThis

Graphics

GimpShop
GimpShop is the absolutley free Photoshop clone, which gives you most of Photoshops features, but in an open source package. On the downside, it does run in the X11 environment, however it will do nearly everything Photoshop can do without the massive cost. Great if you only need to do the occasional bit of Photoshop work, and don’t want to shell out the whole amount.
iUseThis

ImageWell
ImageWell is a small, yet quite powerful image editing application that lets you quickly resize, crop, watermark, and edit your images, for use on the web and elsewhere. While the base image editing software is free there is an Extras package which costs $19.95. The freeware version is useful enough we thought it deserved a spot here.
Our Review | iUseThis

Instant Shot
Instant shot is the perfect tool for your screenshot workflow – you can shoot a whole screen, part of a screen, rapid fire and even assign shortcutkeys to create snapshots on the fly.
iUseThis

Resize ‘Em All
This is a brilliant app, and it does what you need it to and very quickly. Useful for resizing photos, especially when you have a whole batch. Although the new finder can perform the same function, this is much quicker, and easier to use, with CoreImage effects just making it all the better.
Our Review | iUseThis

Seashore
Seashore is an amazing image editor, based on the same framework of “GimpShop”. It is, in basic terms, a GIMP based editor, with an OS X Cocoa wrapper. It works like every other OS X app, and is great if you don’t have the time to learn the huge monster, that can be GimpShop.
Our Review | iUseThis

Internet/Web

Adium
Adium is the standard for the multi-network chat client on OS X. It does too many networks to count, and does them well. It is the app of choice for many MSN users, while some AIM users prefer it over iChat; and with Video chat slated to be available soon, it can only get better!
Our Review | iUseThis

aMSN
aMSN is the underdog. It’s not the best at doing MSN, and it does only do MSN, however it does video chat, unlike Adium! A nice app if you need to do video chats on what is one of the most popular networks throughout the UK and much of Europe.
iUseThis

Chicken Of The VNC
Chicken of the VNC is a great VNC to control a remote computer; and now that leopard has VNC built in, it means there is very little setup on the ‘host’ computer. VNC allows you to take control of a remote computer, using your mouse.
Our Review | iUseThis

Colloquy
For Many, IRC is a great way to be part of an online community. It’s used throughout the iPhone hacking teams, as well as on websites like MacHeist; it’s a nice way to talk over the net, or in our case here at MacApper, to organise the next big thing. Colloquy is a must for any IRC user.
Our Review | iUseThis

Flikr Uploadr
Flickr is the photo website, and so many people use it to share their images. But uploading through a website is never easy, so here you have it. Flickr Uploadr an extremely simple uploader that works with both Finder and iPhoto. Why do it any other way?
iUseThis

GarageBuy
You may have used GarageSale, which allows you to sell through eBay with ease. This free Garagebuy allows you to buy on eBay in much the same way, with more ease and in some cases better security than just using the regular site.
Our Review | iUseThis

Google Earth
This is an obvious one, everyone and their grandparents have heard of it, and who hasn’t had a look at their house from the overhead photos? Even better, it now has a flight simulator built in, so you can fly past your neighbourhood, and have a go at landing a plane for yourself!
iUseThis

Joost
Joost is one of the most talked about products of the year, and is one of the first products to bring IP TV to the masses. It’s still in Beta, but it’s getting better all the time! It’s very simple to use, and although the resolutions can often be fairly low, the image quality is high, and it’ll work nicely on your nice 24″ iMac!
iUseThis

Skype
Skype seems to have been adopted as the main standard for free VOIP calls across the internet, and is growing in popularity as an IM client. Of course, it’s free to download, and works great as a video chat client.
iUseThis

Thunderbird
If you don’t get along with Apple’
s mail.app then this is the email client you want. Brought to us by the great people at Mozilla THunderbird allows for advanced email work with IMAP, POP, spam filters, and a plethora of options you would only expect from commercial software.
Our Review | iUseThis

Vienna

RSS is THE way to get news, and Vienna is a great, free RSS/Atom news reader. It is simple to use, has a built in WebKit browser, and is completely searchable. Vienna is nearly as good as commercial alternatives, or in some cases better.
Our Review | iUseThis

iPod

Senuti
Senuti is the most effortless possible way to get all of the content off an iPod or similar device without even needing to open iTunes. If you have an iPod you need Senuti.
Our Review | iUseThis

Network Tools

KisMac
KisMAC is an opensource and free stumbler/scanner application for Mac OS X using monitor mode and passive scanning.
KisMAC supports several third party PCMCIA cards – Orinoco, PrismII, Cisco Aironet, Atheros and PrismGT. USB Prism2 is supported as well, and USB Ralink support is in development. All of the internal AirPort hardware is supported as well.
iUseThis

Nmap
You will need to install the Apple Developer Tools and compile from source but where would you be without the best port scanner ever built. Nmap is a must security tool for any network admin.

Office & Productivity

Bean
Bean is a simple Word Processor. It is built on the same engine as TextEdit, but adds some extra features related with printing and a word count. It is a simple word processor and not as powerful as MS Word, but it does the job that it’s meant for quite well.
Our Review | iUseThis

LyX
LyX is a different kind of word processor. Most word processors let you focus on content and style, giving you inconsistent documents most of the time. LyX allows you to create professional documents while focusing on structure first, and when you’re done, you can export your document as a PDF or web page. This tool is excellent for professional reports, scientific papers and so on.
iUseThis

NeoOffice

Office Apps are expensive, Office ‘08 starts at $149.95, and although iWork is cheaper it is still $79.95. Enter NeoOffice, a fully featured Office suite, based on Open Office. This differs from Open Office as it is Mac native, and does not require X11 to be installed seperately. A great way to get started with office productivity for free.
Our Review | iUseThis

Skim
Looking for a better PDF reader than Preview? Skim is a PDF reader with a few powerful built-in editing tools such as adding an arrow/circle, or striking out unwanted text. With Skim, you can quickly sort through and edit your PDFs in a pinch.
Our Review | iUseThis

P2P File Sharing

Cabos
Cabos is Gnutella file sharing program based on LimeWire and Acquisition. Cabos provides simple sidebar user interface, firewall to firewall transfers, proxy transfers, Universal Plug and Play, iTunes + iPod integration, “What’s New?” searches, international searches, and more.
iUseThis

Transmission
Transmission is a fast, easy, and free multi-platform BitTorrent client with a focus on being lightweight yet feature-filled. If you are doing any Bit-Torrent downloading and find other clients to be a bit clunky, this is the app you want. Simple, elegant, and completely functional.
iUseThis

Utilities

AppFresh
If your are reading this list, you need this app. It tells you when you need to update, you can use ‘iUseThis’ from within the app and if your not on Leopard it has a killer feature; You can take a snapshot of all your appss and back it up to wherever you want. Of note, this is a ‘Preview’, however it comes highly recommended.
Our Review | iUseThis

AppleJack
AppleJack is a very easy to use tool to troubleshoot your Mac when no other startup disk is available to you. The script gives you an interactive menu-driven environment for basic disk check/repair, permissions repair, .plist validation, cache cleanup, and swap file removal. Sadly AJ no longer works under Leopard 10.5.x but we are still hoping this changes!
iUseThis

Disk Inventory X
Got a fairly low amount of disk space left on your Mac? That’s where Disk Inventory X comes in – it shows you a visual representation of what files are on your disk, a big block means a big file, and a small block, a small file. Really simple, and highly recommended when space is tight!
iUseThis

Linotype FontExplorer X
FontExplorer X is a robust and stable program for managing all your fonts, both system and user added, from the leader in font technology LinoType.
Our Review | iUseThis

Onyx
Onyx allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of OS X’s System files, to run misc tasks of system maintenance, to configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, and more.
Our Review | iUseThis

Quicksilver
Love by many, yet so few use it to it’s full potential! An amazing App launcher, and so much more, it’s a must for every Mac, and lightning quick to open your apps. integration with other apps help’s you search them, and even send quick e-mails without even opening Mail.
Our Review | iUseThis

Video

Flip4Mac WMV
Really a must for most users, Flip4Mac removes most of the need to use the ageing mac version of Windows Media Player, by allowing you to play most of your WMV files directly in QuickTime.
iUseThis

Jing
Jing is fairly new to the scene, but makes it much easier to get your screencasts out. We’ve both used it and blogged about it here at MacApper. A very useful tool for any blogger.
Our Review | iUseThis

Miro
Miro (a.k.a Democracy) is another IPTV app, that does so much more. It will play your WMV, XVid and Quicktime files, it’s a BitTorrent client, and it can even save YouTube videos. All for free. A really nice app that will do something for everyone!
Our Review | iUseThis

Perian
Perian enables any OS X application that uses QuickTime to be able to play many other media types like DivX, XviD, mpeg4, AC3 audio, etc. A must download for anyone watching video on their Mac.
Our Review | iUseThis

Real Player
Real Player is a nice all round media player, but it’s unlikely to make you switch from iTunes/Quicktime or VLC; however you need this is you want to watch videos on some websites, such as bbc.co.uk.
Our Review | iUseThis

TubeTV

Who doesn’t love YouTube? Not only is it fun, and a bit of a laugh, but it’s a great way to find great videos; or even some real TV, courtesy of companies like the BBC. However, you need an internet connection to watch it. TubeTV searches YouTube, saves the videos, and converts then to play on other devices.
Our Review | iUseThis

VLC
VLC is another must for every Mac. If your usual media player refuses to play something, chances are VLC will play it. DVD’s, MPEG 1, 2 and 4, OGG Vorbis, DivX and much more, VLC will play it. This really is a must so just get it now.
Our Review | iUseThis

Web Browsers

Camino
Camino is the cocoa-encased, Mac version of Firefox, using the ‘Gecko’ rendering engine . Although Firefox for the mac is available, Camino is more Mac-Like, and works more like other Mac-Apps
iUseThis

Firefox
This is the second most popular browser in the world, we couldn’t omit it from a list like this. It’s fast, and supports all the plugins that the windows version does. It’s not the best browser on the Mac, however, for a switcher, it’s perfect as it works exactly the same way the windows version does.
iUseThis

Flock
Social Networker? Flock is the browser for you, it integrates with many of the social networks including FaceBook and Twitter, as well as some media sites like YouTube.
Our Review | iUseThis

Shiira
Shiira is a browser, based on the same ‘WebKit’ as Safari.It has some nice transition effects, and more usefully a page dock which alows you to browse through tabs. Shiira is a serious contender to replace your current browser.
Our Review | iUseThis

Widgets

iStat
iStat is a great thing that comes in nearly any format you want, whether it be an app, dashboard widget, or menu-bar item, they all tell you everything you ever wanted to know about what your Mac is doing at any precise moment. They’re fast, and very low on resource useage, so if you need to be in the know, these come highly recommended.
Our Review | iUseThis

So there you have it, our list of freeware for your Mac. We plan to expand this page as quickly as possible, however some great apps likely slipped through the net unnoticed. If you know of any great freeware apps that deserve to be on this list please leave a comment and let us know. Oh and one more thing:

“Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer. ” – gnu.org

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.

Present day: I travel a lot, and for a short while each time, I spend time with my mother. She greets me with a warm hug, a home cooked meal, and a bevy of computer questions. She wants me to help her fix her computer. Regularly. I willfully agree.

As I open her MacBook, and place my finger on the soft white power button, I hear the familiar chime of an Apple product coming back to life. The chime echoes my mother’s plea for help, and quickly guides me to the desktop. A horror is brought to my eyes: the desktop has become an endless black hole for random downloads, documents, and images.

Meanwhile, amidst this cluttered nightmare, I cannot find the hard drive. There seems to be a pile (not a Stack) of files where the hard drive would be. I start moving files left, down, another one left, a fourth one down, and so on. This process continues for more than 20 files. I turn to my mother as Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now: “the horror, the horror”.

It’s time for a cluttered file system makeover! Here’s how I work, and hopefully you, as well as my mother, will find some solace in the system I have learned, adapted, and put into place.

Start with an inbox. It’s that simple. Make sure everything that you download goes into this inbox. Additionally, any files that are not organized must go into this inbox as well. This is the place where you will process and delegate files to different places. If you can complete a task from the inbox, great! If not, delegate it to a different folder. The time length of files that exist here are 24 hours.

At first, I thought, all I needed was an inbox. The problem with that was the inbox began turning into an archive: files would never leave the inbox! So, make sure you constantly are clearing out your inbox, and for those files you want to keep longer, put them into an archive.

Create an archive. The archive will be for files that you don’t want to organize now, but will eventually be organized and currently do not need attention. Most of my completed design projects go into the archive in case clients need them after completion. The time length of files that exist here is 2 weeks.

Now that we have a system for items that are a day old, and 2 weeks old, what about the items that exist between those times? You need folders for items you are going to process.

Create the core process folders: “Read, Watch, Listen”, “Pending”, and “Current Projects”. Each folder has it’s own function and use:

Read, Watch, Listen: This folder is for all of the items that don’t need modification, but need my attention. This includes items to read, videos and images to watch, and audio to listen to. Items that I want to keep for longer than 2 weeks, for reference or entertainment, go into my hard drive for long term storage.

Pending: These items need attention and modification, but require something in the future. This includes items to send, files to upload, and documents that require modification from another person. As I write this article, all the images I capture, and eventually upload for this article are going into my “Pending” folder. Before they are ready to be uploaded, they will be stored in a folder called…

Current Projects: In this folder, I keep all my documents that I am going to modify, or am currently modifying. This includes all source material for each project. This article, as it goes through various drafts, is sitting in my “Current Projects” folder, along with all the accompanying images. All projects with groups of files go here. Pending is for single files which require action. Current Projects is for groups of files which require action.

With those folders, you have now created a dynamic filtering system for all your new documents. But you can go even further.

Stay tuned for the next part, where I will discuss how to filter, quickly access, and process through your data.

This article adapted from experience using this article at lifeclever, and looking at desktops at the GTD flickr group. Inbox icon from Optica Optima.

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!

Apple Downloads
Includes: Categories, Editor Picks, Popular Download list, RSS feed.
Pros: Slick interface. Elegant design in the Apple way.
Cons: Lack of community. Apple applications hold prominent positions.

Download.com
Includes: Categories, Download Cart, Editor Picks, Editor Reviews, Popular Download list, RSS feed, User Generated Ratings, User Comments.
Pros: Reliable (owned by CNet), nice looking design, quick search and interface.
Cons: Lack of community, as there aren’t a lot of user comments or reviews, and the most popular downloads are surprising. The main URL is complicated, which makes it hard to quickly get to the Mac download page.

iUseThis
Includes: Facebook Application, Popular Download List, RSS feed, Tags, User Comments, User Voting System (like Digg).
Pros: Simple interface. The voting system makes the popular application list feel more relevant. Quick and reliable.
Cons: Application list pages (New, Search, etc) includes full description and info, rather than just titles for finding an application quickly.

MacUpdate
Includes: Blog, Categories, Downloadable Client, Editor Picks, Popular Download list, RSS feed, User Generated Ratings, User Comments.
Pros: Mac-centric. Simple layout. Good for finding an application at a glance, as search reveals a list of application names.
Cons: Search is often slow.

Pure Mac
Includes: Categories, Editor Picks, File Extension Database, RSS feed.
Pros: Very simple interface. Clean. Surprisingly informational for being so simple.
Cons: Lots of Google Ads. Lacks professional polish.

Softpedia
Includes: Categories, Download Cart, Editor Picks, Editor Reviews, Popular Download list, User Generated Ratings, User Comments.
Pros: Includes a lot of applications, even obscure stuff. Quick Search.
Cons: Cluttered interface. Latest Additions is at the bottom of the page, below news and reviews. Rollover ads.

VersionTracker
Includes: Categories, Downloadable Client, Download Cart, Editor Picks, Editor Reviews, Popular Download list, RSS feed, User Generated Ratings, User Comments.
Pros: Reliable and quick.
Cons: Requires free registration for some basic functions. Interface seems a bit cluttered.

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

Taylor Sternberg
Perian – Whenever I am helping someone set up their computer, I always go to Perian first. It is the “Swiss Army Knife for Quicktime”, which means that it installs additional codecs. More codecs = more videos are compatable with Quicktime.

Adium – This is another app that I adore. It could be considered the Firefox of Instant Messaging applications (although that could change), with plugins and customization galore.

Quicksilver – Move over Spotlight! This is the best way to search for items on the Mac (even with the improved Leopard Spotlight). Although I have not yet unleashed its true power, it still remains my favorite application. I always feel silly when I try to invoke it on another person’s computer.

Miles Evans
Coda – Coda by Panic has changed the way I work on my web based projects and significantly increased my productivity.  I can’t say enough about this app, if you do any webdev at all just buy it and thank me later.

kisMac – No l33t h4×0r’s Mac is complete without a packet sniffing and WEP cracking tool like kisMac. Also check out Nmap.

Keynote – Of all the Apple apps, keynote is likely my favorite. I do a few presentations per year and keynote makes me look way more professional than I truly am. 10 stars!

Steven Owens
Adium – Has many more features than iChat and allows me to utilize multiple IM protocols.

TextMate – The ultimate text editor for any application. Literally supports every type of syntax highlighting out there. Very extendable with plugins.

NewsFire – Allows me to get all my RSS feeds in one place. Interface is intuitive and easy on the eyes.

Will Holmes
NewsFire – The best RSS Reader? It’s really well designed and easy to use.

Pages – It’s cheaper than Microsoft Word and if people gave it a chance I know they’d love it.

Quinn – It’s a really fun tetris style game. What more can you say!

Victor Johnson
NetNewsWire – Simplistic interface, offers just enough features without bloating the interface and confusing the end-user.

Aperture – Combines two very important things: Professional image editing and image organization. I used to have to resort to using both Photoshop and iPhoto, but now I am down to one application.

Mail.app – The one application that is never closed on my Mac. It plays well with IMAP as well as .Mac rules and mailbox syncing.

Alec Feld
Awaken – I would be out of school if it wasn’t for Awaken. This trusty little tool wakes me up everyday to my music choice, and acts as a full function alarm clock. The Apple Remote functions as a sleep/snooze controller, and the full screen mode is perfect for glancing at the time when waking up. Awaken is a great app from Jerry Brace at Embraceware. Jerry’s always working hard to improve the app and listen to customers, and his work shows in the app.

Remote Buddy – This app is perfect for those lazy days or weekends. With Remote Buddy, I can effortlessly navigate and control my Mac from my sofa. Need to launch a video? With Remote Buddy, it’s no problem. Navigate through it’s amazingly organized menu, find the app you want to launch, and choose the file. Remote Buddy supports a bunch of apps, and is bound to support more in the future.

1Passwd – Sometimes, filling out login forms or order forms can be tedious. With 1Passwd, forms are filled in a click. 1Passwd securely saves all of your login information for various sites, and even saves identity forms, great for quickly completing orders. To fill in a form, click the 1Passwd button in your browser, and the form is instantly filled. This app is a true timesaver, and is incredibly helpful.

Van Lam
Mozy – Free automatic online backup. I’m no cryptologist, but it seems pretty secure to me. The interface for scheduling and retrieving backups is easy and intuitive as well. It’s free for 2 GBs, or you can pay a mere 5 clams a month for unlimited storage.

Pzizz – It may seem like a silly idea to pay for sounds waves crashing on a beach and weird ambient tones, but I’ve found that this app actually works. I now sleep a total of four hours a night, up from 2 hours. Lovely.

Nocturne – A night vision mode for your mac . It does everything OS X’s built in Cmd+Option+Ctrl 8 does, in addition to shadow & desktop background removal, and color correction. For the hacker personality, obviously.

Darcy Fitzpatrick
Final Cut Pro – There are other major Non-Linear Editing applications on the Mac that many Apple zealots may not be aware of, like Adobe Premiere Pro and Avid, but Final Cut Pro schools them irregardless of where your loyalties may lie.

Celtx – The do-everything pre-production tool. It’s ten years ahead of the screenwriting application curve and includes server-side collaboration features. Best part: it is free.

VLC – Plays everything. ‘Nuff said.

Fraser Drew
iTunes – Simplest way to manage music in OS X Period.

EyeTV /Aurora combo – Best Alarm Clock in the world. Why have *beep beep* when you can have TV!

Adium – Microsoft MSN on OS X is terrible, so until someone does MSN A/V (whether it be Adium or MS), I can’t live without it!

Michael DeLeon
Amadeus Pro – One of the best audio editing apps on the mac at a fraction of the price of other popular apps on the Mac. For podcasters, you’ll love the id3 tag editor and exporting straight to mp3. Good interface, easy to use, feature-packed and only $40.

Final Cut Express – New version out with even more features. Still wondering how they can sell an app like this that in now way seems like a “lite” version for $200.

Visual Hub – Previously used sites like media-convert.com and zamzar.com to re-encode videos to a format which I could work with. Visual Hub does that and a lot more and won’t take nearly as long.

Michael Mistretta
iChat 4.0 – I just love the tabs, and the ability to have my AIM, MSN (through Jabber) and Google Talk contacts. Video chatting and Audio chatting rock and the quality has been greatly improved. iChat theatre make sharing presentations and slideshows so simple, and screen sharing is so much fun, and is implemented wonderfully.

CoverSutra – Awesome iTunes controller, that allows you quick access to rate, skip, play, and shuffle songs. Beautiful interface, and and only there when you need it.

Skitch – Allows me to easily and visually share what I’m doing to someone else over the internet. Takes screenshots, annotates them, and allows you to upload them in one click. Amazingly easy, and changes the way I communicate my ideas to others.

Austen Saltz
Quicksilver – It’s the definition of simple, yet still has many advanced features. My favorite uses are iTunes keyboard shortcuts and Camino bookmark indexing. I simply can’t live without them. And now, it’s open source!

Schoolhouse – My homework is a lot easier to process and complete with this app. Not only does it help you keep track of assignments, but it can color-code different courses, and allow you to track your grades over the course of the semester.

NeoOffice – Cheaper than MS Office, cheaper than iWork, cheaper than pretty much anything, NeoOffice is a free, native office suite for Mac based on OpenOffice. It integrates well with OS X, and performs all the functions that I need from an office suite.

Andrew Brigmond
FontExplorer X – Simply put, this is the best font management program I’ve seen in a long time. Extremely stable in a harsh working environment and carries no price tag what so ever. Free software just tastes better.

Parallels Desktop – While Apple is an amazing company there’s still plenty of things you can’t do without a Windows machine handy. I use Parallels daily for everything from troubleshooting to gaming. The performance is amazing and new features are added often.

REALbasic 2007 – Support for the OS X platform is rapidly growing and new applications are being developed all the time. Yet sometimes what you need just hasn’t been made yet, so why not just create what you need? REALbasic 2007 lets you do just that with an easy to understand programming language and user friendly interface. And if you also happen to be a PC user still it can automatically build Windows and Linux binaries along with your OS 9/X application. This one I definitely couldn’t live without.

Sébastien Arbogast
ForkLift – The next level of Finder, I use it all the time to access remote servers like FTP, SFTP. It even handle Amazon S3 remote storage. There’s even a “delete application” button to uninstall apps properly.

Pages – Every time I send a communication to my colleagues, like an invitation for some business meeting or a newsletter, I just prepare the content in plain text, and just before sending the final version, I copy/paste it into one of the layouts in Pages. And I always some feedback like “hey, you must have spent some time on it!”. And I say “no, I’m just using a Mac!”.

Remote Buddy – Thinking about other ways to use your WiiMote? This is the application you need. It allows you to do everything on your Mac from a remote distance. You can even reprogram buttons on the Apple Remote.

Greg Healy
RapidWeaver – Whenever I need to throw together a quick website, nothing beats RapidWeaver. Being able to add a video gallery, flash slideshow, and blog with one click sure is better than doing it by hand.

ImageWell – As an Editor here at MacApper, I sometimes have to resize the images in some contributor’s posts. ImageWell makes this as easy as dragging the image onto it’s icon in the dock, typing in my restraints, and then clicking “Send.” Couldn’t be easier.

iClip – This application has become invaluable to me. Being able to have multiple clipboards is a life and time saver. If you do not have iClip 4 or an application that allows you to have multiple clipboards, I suggest that you go and download one right now!

Well that about wraps it up! What are your 3 favorite OS X apps?

The good news is that, in at least one case, the missing functionality can be re-found with a simple, little trick.

On my old Mac’s keyboard, Exposé was controlled by the F9, F10 and F11 keys. F9 gave me all windows, F10 gave me the current application’s windows and F11 hid all windows. These were, of course, customizable assignments, bit this was the default behavior – and I committed it to muscle memory. On the new keyboard, only the old F9 functionality exists and it is mapped to a different key, F3. This creates two problems: first, I was consistently hitting the wrong key to show all windows and, second, I could no longer access the F10 or F11 versions of Exposé.

Enter the magical modifier keys, Command and Control. In Mac OS X these keys do wonders, often adding secret additional functionality to mouse clicks, keyboard shortcuts and menu commands. In this case, they modify the new keyboard’s single existing Exposé key, allowing it to do three times the work of a single button. It works as follows:

• F3: show all windows (used to be F9)
• Ctrl-F3: shows current application’s windows (used to be F10)
• ⌘-F3: hides all windows (used to be F11)

Sure, this requires retraining my muscle memory, but such is the price of progress. On the flip side, the new keyboard gives us dedicated iTunes control keys which we did not have before. And, if you really miss the single-press access to the other Exposé options, you can alway use the Keyboard Shortcuts section of the Keyboard and Mouse Preference Pane to map those functions to the unassigned function keys at the upper-right side of the new keyboard.

Right after the quick breakdowns is a poll asking you to select which browser you prefer. I’m really looking forward to hearing your preferences and opinions, so here we go…

Firefox

Firefox is all the rave in the PC world, but here on the Mac side it’s not really that big of a deal, as we have such a wide range of browsers to choose from. Firefox is a real powerhouse mind you. While takes up a good chunk of the system memory it also has support for a whole world of add-ons, which some people find they can’t live without (like web developers).

Pros: Add-ons, themes, cross-platform.
Cons: Not that native, a well known memory pig.
Who it’s for: Anyone who works daily on both Macs and PC for familiarity’s sake, and people who can’t live without Firefox’s powerful extensions; power people.

Camino

Camino, also by Mozilla, supposedly fixes the problems with Firefox for Macs that so many users complain about. Add-ons don’t work here, but there is a sweet cocoa interface and it is considerably faster than Firefox and most other choices.

Pros: Native interface, faster browsing than Firefox.
Cons: No official add-ons (check out Pimp My Camino), can’t re-order tabs.
Who it’s for: Anyone who wants a clean, fast browser based on the gecko rendering engine.

Safari

Safari is Apple’s web browser that ships for free with OS X and runs on the snappy Webkit rendering engine. It is obviously Cocoa based and its main focus is simplicity and usability, which it does very very well. If you’re on a Mac you are definitely using Safari to some degree. Am I wrong?

Pros: Native interface, integrated with Mac OS X, built-in RSS reader.
Cons: No tab button (must use Command-T), few advanced features.
Who it’s for: For Mac purists and people who want a browser that does stuff fast and simple.

OmniWeb

OmniWeb has been around a while and is what many people might call a “premium” web browser. It’s a bit difficult to gauge its overall popularity but it certainly has its fans. According to some it has the features of all other web browsers, and then some. That some will cost you $15 though.

Pros: Native interface, many advanced features including: session saver, RSS capabilities, built-in ad blocking, visual tabs.
Cons: Costs $14.95.
Who it’s for: People who want lots of advanced features but can’t stand Firefox. Also I guess people with $15 to blow on a web browser.

Flock

Flock is a browser based on Firefox that is helpful on integration with Web 2.0 services like Flickr, Del.icio.us, and more. Flock also seems focused on the management of media on the web, but overall it seems a bit bloated. Flock was reviewed recently here.

Pros: Nice theme, integration with pretty much any web service that you can think of, blogging and RSS features, compatible with most Firefox add-ons.
Cons: Interface not particularly native, somewhat bloated.
Who it’s for: People who are signed up and using many Web 2.0 services and want a browser to work with them nicely. People looking to ditch Firefox but not its plugins.

Shiira

From Japan comes a relatively new contender in Shiira, touted as the next browser for Mac. Shiira is also based on Safari’s webkit rendering engine, and in many people’s opinion takes Safari to the next level.

Pros: Native theme, very similar in feel to Safari, “PageDock” alternative to tabs shows a preview of pages, very fast.
Cons: Can’t re-order tabs, feature set limited but expanding with new releases. Users still reporting crash issues.
Who it’s for: People who are signed up and using many Web 2.0 services, are beta friendly, or interested in a sleak, newskool style of browser.

Opera

Hmm really what can you say about Opera that hasn’t already been said? Opera has been around a long time and really is a powerful and stable web browser with some interesting end-user features. There I said it.

Pros: Webpage speed-dialing, cross-platform, long life cycle, dedicated developers and community, helpful features for the disabled and elderly.
Cons: Interface not native (seems a bit dated), quite bloated and needs to be paired down by the user.
Who it’s for: Some of my University professors use Opera. If you’re elderly, disabled, or looking or a browser you can scale down Opera might be for you.

So what’s my choice? Camino. I used to use Firefox, but these days it just feels too slow for my casual surfing sessions. I miss a couple of the extensions for Firefox (like the webdev stuff), but Camino fulfills most of my needs for a browser. My next favorite after that will have to be Safari or Shiira. They’re just so snappy and simple.

What browsers do you use? Let us know by voting and if possible explain your reasons by commenting below.

This handy feature doesn’t come without its downfalls though, as I found out this morning. I was sitting in a coffee shop that will remain nameless, to protect it’s image. Because this has nothing at all to do with the coffee shop, it just happens to be this establishment that had been chosen as a hacker’s hotspot trap.

I turned on my laptop and instantly was asked to choose between two different networks. “attwifi” was first on the list, which has always been the one and only network that comes up as accessible at this particular location. Never before has any other accessible network shown up. Others may be on the list, such as other protected networks for the store, or other stores next door, but today, for the first time there were two openly accessible hotspots to choose from.

A second open network was oddly named, “Free Public Wifi”. So I connected just to see if it really was a newly created open network. I thought it may possibly be giving access to people who cannot come in and connect to the AT&T hotspot, because you either must have phone, internet, or paid access to their network. Perhaps this was to cater to those who have none of those services, or object to paying for Internet access twice. I am here often enough that I should consider shutting my Internet service off at home. When I connected to the wireless network however, I wasn’t seeing the default airport signal strength icon in the menu bar. I was seeing this:

That ladies and gentlemen is the icon that is displayed when you are connecting to the Internet through another computer setup to share its internet connection. Opening up Safari did gain me access to the Internet, but it was quite slow. Upon looking at network traffic, I noticed another computer, or website was trying to create an incoming connection with me. After hopping over to whatismyip.com I quickly learned that this attempted connection’s IP address was now only one number off from mine. Coincidence?…I don’t believe so.

I cannot say whether this was normal behavior, as I was essentially using that computer’s broadband connection to gain access to the Internet. It seems to me though, that this could potentially be the open Wifi hotspots we have been hearing about, that hackers are creating in order to intercept your incoming and outgoing Internet and Mail requests. Upon talking to the manager of the establishment, he showed quite an elevated level of concern, and also informed me that they had not added another open Wifi network, and that this matter would be looked into immediately.

He had also heard about this threat in recent tech news, and proceeded to place a sign by the register warning customers not to connect to it. I thought that I would offer this as a word of warning to any of you who have noticed these openly free public wifi hotspots. What kind of security precautions do you take on Wifi hotspots?

All of my favorite tips are posted after the jump. Let’s save some power today shall we?

Screen Savings

First go to the “Energy Saver” section of System Preferences. In the second drop down box you can simply choose “Better Energy Savings” and the sliders below will shift to be more conservative about how your computer uses resources.

Your display will turn off after 5 minutes, so it shouldn’t interfere with your work, but will also start saving energy soon after you walk away. Also, the actual computer itself doesn’t doze off for another 5 minutes, so a quick flick of the mouse and the computer is instantly wide awake within a full 10 minutes of inactivity. Another point to note is that you should put your hard disk(s) to sleep when possible (check that little box on the bottom). Not only will this save energy, but it will also help your hard drive last longer. One caveat though, is that if you often come back to your computer soon after the HD shuts down, this could actually have an adverse affect when it it started and stopped frequently.

One disadvantage to this plan is illustrated by the bright yellow “!” caution symbol; you won’t have any time to display a fancy screen saver in the 5 minutes you leave your screen on. If you really like your screen saver, you could have it go for the 5 minutes before your whole computer goes to sleep, but the display is a big electricity hog, so have it turned off as soon as possible.

Unlimited Paper in a Paperless World

Have you ever printed a several-page document and thought about all the extra paper wasted? One good way to save paper is by choosing a smaller font, to minimize the number of pages needed. Also, you can choose to print in black and white, or lower the ink volume to conserve your pricey ink cartridges.

General Tips

• Turn off your Mac if you’re not using it for a few days
• Always recycle your electronics
• Don’t turn your Mac on and off every night, this wastes more energy than having it sleep for those hours
• Turn off Bluetooth and WiFi if you aren’t using them. This goes a long way in getting better battery life as well
• Email rather than Fax

What are you doing to go Green?

The security technology, known as ASLR (address space layout randomization), randomly arranges the positions of key data areas to prevent malware authors from predicting target addresses. It is used in tandem with additional security features to reduce the effectiveness of exploit attempts. According to Apple, the library randomization feature will allow Leopard to defend against attackers with no effort at all. One of the most common security breaches occurs when a hacker’s code calls a known memory address to have a system function execute malicious code. Leopard frustrates this plan by relocating system libraries to one of several thousand possible randomly assigned addresses.

So what does this mean in English to the real people out there? Here is a little analogy that will give you a good idea of the technology. Picture your computer as the wastebasket across from your desk and you are the hacker. You keep throwing paper at the computer (this is akin to an attack) and every now and then you will get one in there – this is akin to knowing the memory location of an application in an operating system that you’re trying to penetrate. You know where it is and you keep firing at it until you figure out a way to get it in the basket. Now enter ASLR, and to keep with the current analogy, turn off the lights and have someone randomly move the wastebasket to any one of thousands of locations every few seconds. So how many pieces of paper are you going to get in there now? Would you even bother?

That is the entire point of ASLR – make it so difficult and hard a target to hit that it isn’t really worth your time to attempt it, because your odds of success are so minimal.

Apple has also added systrace (often referred to as Sand-boxing) to Leopard to limit an applications ability to affect the rest of the system. As there is some of this inherently in the Unix protected memory scheme, in Leopard systrace puts up some additional barriers to protect against misbehaving applications, enforcing access policies to ensure some rogue application doesn’t reformat your time-machine partition or other such nastiness. Not all applications will be sand-boxed initially, the most surprising of which is Safari, though I am confident that will get added in short order.

Note: Right now the Leopard website lists Bonjour, Spotlight, and Quick Look as being sandboxed. It will be interesting to see the entire list.

Some of the other improvements include:

• Tagging Downloaded Applications – Protection from potential threats. Any application downloaded to the operating system is tagged. Before it runs for the first time, the system asks for the user’s consent – notifying the user when it was downloaded, what application was used to download it, and, if applicable, what URL it came from. There is a similar feature in Vista but Apple’s approach has a more polished user experience.
• Application-Based Firewall – Leopard will feature the ability to specify the behavior of specific applications to either allow or block incoming connections. In other words if your FTP application suddenly tries doing some secure shell magic (which it should never do) the firewall will kill the connection as it violates what FTP traffic is supposed to look like.
• Application Signing – This is a pretty simple concept that has had mixed reviews on other platforms. Signed applications (like signed Java Applets for you Java folks) contain a certificate with the creators information, which you can verify or trust prior to installing any software from that publisher. If the application isn’t signed, the idea is, you shouldn’t trust the application. Apple will be signing all of their applications.
• The Keychain has been enhanced to manage multiple user certificates for email encryption and digital signatures better, a welcome update for multiple POP account email users.Apple is also doubling encrypted disk images from 128bit to 256bit AES encryption. While this is a good move for those requiring compartmentalized security for their documents, the processing hit is pretty high, so use this sparingly.

So what does this mean to the general business user of Mac OS X? Less worry, more stability, less time spent rebuilding and recovering from viruses, malware or network penetrations. For a very detailed run-down of these security improvements (and others), check out this article on TidBITS.

What do you think of the security side of OS X Leopard? Like a warm blanket?

Ok, right, that’s a bad word trick that has been used thousands and thousands of times. Of course the Java I’m talking about is not something to drink, it’s something to write: I’m talking about the programming language.

One day, I was interviewed for a job and my potential employer asked me a very tricky question: how could you explain Java programming to your grandma? Well, that’s not what I’m going to do here, I am not going to take you through Java programming from scratch. I’ll just assume that you already are a Java programmer on Windows or Unix, and you are afraid to switch to the Mac because of Java. Welcome to the wonderful world of Java development on the Mac. Please fasten your seatbelt…

Environment variables
One of the first issues you usually encounter is how to setup that damn JAVA_HOME environment variable. On Windows it’s relatively simple: click, click, click and click. On Mac OS X, it can be a little trickier. Let’s try to see what Apple has to say about setting environment variables. In a few words, the solution is to create or edit the file /Users//.MacOSX/environment.plist which is actually an XML file.

For that, either you install developer tools from your Mac O SX installation disc and more specifically the Property List Editor, or you just use your favourite text editor. For the sake of convenience, here is my environment.plist file with a few useful environment variables for various Java-related tools:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>FLEX_HOME</key>
  <string>/Applications/flex_sdk_2_hf1</string>
  <key>JAVA_HOME</key>
  <string>/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Home</string>
  <key>JBOSS_HOME</key>
  <string>/Applications/jboss-4.0.5.GA</string>
  <key>M2_HOME</key>
  <string>/Applications/maven-2.0.7</string>
  <key>M2_REPO</key>
  <string>/Users/sarbogast/.m2/repository</string>
  <key>MAVEN_OPTS</key>
  <string>-XX:MaxPermSize=128m -Xmx512m</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Save this file, log out and back in and that should be it.

Now in my experience, this only works when you want to add an environment variable. But what about extending existing ones, like $PATH for example. Some say it depends on your shell. Well that’s true: if you have modified your default shell to something like tcsh or something else, you will probably have to dive into your shell configuration file (.tcshrc for example). But if you’re just using the default shell, all you have to do is to edit /Users//.profile. Here is what is in mine:

test -r /sw/bin/init.sh && . /sw/bin/init.sh

*Ed: Had to break the line below to fit in the page.

PATH=”/Applications/flex_sdk_2_hf1/bin:/Applications/maven-2.0.7/bin:
/usr/local/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin:${PATH}”
export PATH

As you can see, thanks to the “:${PATH}” at the end of the line, we’ve extended the default PATH variable and I’ve added useful things like the Maven bin directory. Don’t forget to log out and back in, and run commands like “echo $PATH” to check that your environment variable is correctly set.

Getting API and sources
Assuming that you have downloaded and installed the Mac OS X Java 5 distribution here, something might upset you a little bit: where are the JDK sources? Where is Javadoc? Both of these are very important when you’re developing using advanced IDE’s like Eclipse or so. Of course you often need to see the Javadoc of the class or method you’re trying to use.

But even more importantly is when you automatically generate some implementation of a standard interface from the JDK; something like TableCellRenderer for example. Well, your IDE names all the method parameters based on their name in the source. And if it can’t find the source, then they are named based on their type. That’s ugly, huh?

Well, at least I’ve been struggling with this for a while until I found a very interesting article in my RSS feeds. Basically, here is the procedure:

• Create yourself an Apple Developer Connection account if you don’t have one
• Log in to ADC website
• Then click the “Downloads” link
• Then click “Java” on the right menu
• And finally download “J2SE 5.0 Release 5 Developer Documentation”
• Once you’re done with setup, everything can be found and linked to in /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home

Isn’t it amazing?

Java editors
OK, now let’s talk about your development environment. Of course, as usual there are several schools here and I will just give you a few leads.

First things first: forget about XCode. Before getting my Mac, I thought “wow that’s cool, Mac OS X is actually packed up with a full IDE like Eclipse, and if it is as neat as their other apps, it might be interesting…” Bad guess! XCode might be really adapted for Cocoa and Objective-C development, but for Java, it’s really weird. That’s why I looked for other options.

The first thing that can be very useful is a simple text editor with syntax coloring and that kind of stuff. Very interesting when you just want to view an isolated file or for very small projects. Of course you could buy something like Textmate, which is very popular. But before getting $39 out of your pocket, you might want to consider downloading Smultron for free. And if you’re not satisfied with Smultron default icons, there’s even a neater set here.

For those Unix fans who can’t work outside of Emacs (and I’ve been a great Emacs fan myself when I was a student), there is this special distribution just for you. Now just to avoid a World War III between Emacs and VIM fans, I’ll just point to this very interesting article about Configuring VI for Java Development.

Of course, I won’t go into more details about Eclipse, which is of course available for the Mac. But since you have switched to a platform that provides so much more usability and ergonomy, maybe now would be the right time for you to try something better as a Java IDE. Something like… IntelliJ Idea. OK, it’s not free, it’s something like 250 bucks for a personal license, but believe me, if you work on big projects, it’s really worth it. As Jetbrains guys told us last year at JavaPolis, “it’s the only Java IDE that is actually worth paying for!”. And it works great on the Mac, so…

Last but not least, I want to talk to you about something else. It’s not a text editor or an IDE, but a companion that can be very precious in you Java tasks: iTerm. Of course, Mac OS X comes with its very own Terminal application, but iTerm offers a whole lot of additional features like tabs, bookmarks and so on.

Special keys
When I wrote my first Java classes on my brand new Mac (inside IntelliJ Idea of course), I first had big trouble writing something like:

if(foo == null || foo.bar() == 0)
//do that
}

Why? Because of the keyboard! OK, I don’t know what kind of keyboard layout you have, maybe it’s simpler on yours, but on my French Belgian keyboard, I couldn’t find characters like “|”. So I had to do a little bit of research and just in case you don’t find them either, here are a few tips:

| – alt+shift+L
{ – alt+5
} – alt+)
[ - alt+shift+5
] – alt+shift+)

What about native apps?
A few weeks ago, I was looking for a bandwidth counter to help me monitor my download/upload quota with my DSL provider. And I finally found a menu bar widget to do just that. But unfortunately it was not supported anymore and it didn’t work with the new infrastructure of my provider. So I contacted the author, just in case I could get the source code and try to upgrade it in some way. He kindly sent me the source code and I was very surprised to see that it was Java.

That’s when I discovered that there was a Java API on Cocoa libraries. Well, at least there used to be one! Apparently, Apple has made a choice: they won’t support these API’s anymore, and if you want to develop native apps for the Mac, you will have to learn a whole new language: Objective-C. I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure that Objective-C is gonna be profitable in the IT industry anytime soon, so I’m gonna stick with Java for a while, at least until I have some time left to learn a whole new language.

Fortunately, there is an alternative.

Look And Feel
There is something very special about Java on the Mac. Sun provides Java implementations for Windows, Linux and Solaris, but not for the Mac. It means that it’s Apple responsibility to provide its own implementation of the JDK. It’s very disturbing because it means that the Mac OS X JDK is always going to be behind Windows in terms of schedule. For example, there is no final implementation of JDK 6 for the Mac yet. But on the other hand, it means that Apple developers can really focus on adapting Java, and more specifically Java UI libraries to the Mac OS X look and feel.

For example, I was working on an MDI application and I was very surprised to see that when I minimized my internal frames, they actually minimized into some sort of dock at the bottom of the JDesktopPane. That’s something very specific in the Mac implementation. And then I found this article which details even more ways to customize your Java application for the Mac and make it look almost like a native application. Ain’t that cool?

Java 6 is coming through!
Now what about JDK 6? The truth is there is a “hidden” developer preview implementation of JDK 6 on the Mac but I can’t find it anymore. It seems that Apple is preparing a final release bundled with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard due in October 2007. And this new release could feature a Swing look-and-feel adapted for the rumored new “Illuminous” style. Just a few weeks and we’ll see…

Anything else?
If you have other tips and tricks about developing Java applications on the Mac, feel free to leave comments and let’s make this post a reference for all Java developers on the Mac.

The Interface

The Amazon MP3 store’s interface closely resembles that of the rest of the site. Featured content appears right in the middle of the page, with a search bar on the top and genres and pricing options on a sidebar on the left. While Amazon’s store does not have the same unified visual appeal as the iTS, it does have a few nice visual goodies: when scrolling through the featured albums section, the site uses a fun motion blur effect to simulate flipping quickly through the records. Of course this doesn’t compare to iTunes’ Cover Flow feature, but it makes the browser-based shopping experience more enjoyable.

The Selection

The main area where music shoppers may find fault is in Amazon’s selection. The store currently offers 2 million tracks available for download, compared to 6 million on the iTunes Store. However, there is one notable exception where the Amazon store triumphs in terms of selection: Radiohead, a popular (and my personal favorite) band, has been included in their catalog. Radiohead, who have long abstained from selling their songs digitally through iTunes, have made them available through Amazon, a gesture that is sure to please many fans. However, beyond that detail the iTS triumphs. While Amazon’s store includes music from “Big Four” labels EMI and Universal (as well as 12,000 other labels), it lacks other major players like Sony BMG and Warner, whose catalogs are offered on iTunes. So while it seems counterintuitive, more obscure artists have equal presence on Amazon and iTunes, but iTunes has dominance when it comes to more mainstream popular musicians. This isn’t to say, of course, that Amazon’s catalog won’t expand. It is only a matter of time before the Amazon store grows to be comparable in size to iTunes.

Pricing

Here is where Amazon is the big winner. The normal price of their songs – 99 cents – matches that of the standard iTunes pricing, but Amazon also offers the top 100 tracks at a discounted 89 cents apiece. It is also worth noting that all of Amazon’s downloads are free of DRM, but the modest selection of songs that are offered DRM-free through iTunes sell for $1.29. So a song on Amazon is up to 40 cents less than a song on iTunes.

Amazon vs. iTunes

Also, while iTunes consistently offers full albums for $10 or more, Amazon’s prices rarely pass the $10 mark, and many are as low as $5. Although the price difference between Amazon and iTunes is often not dramatic, Amazon’s discounts definitely give it the upper hand.

The Downloading Experience

iTunes has the advantage of being a unified store and music manager, meaning you can purchase a song, download it, and listen to it, all without switching between applications. Amazon’s store doesn’t have this luxury, instead requiring you to download and install a lightweight “download manager” app (both Mac and PC compatible). But buying a song through the Amazon store is still a fairly simple process. If you already have an account on Amazon, you don’t have to do a thing to configure the store; it will automatically use the credit card information you have provided in the past. All you need to do is click the Buy Now link next to any song or album, and the download manager will automatically pop open. During my testing, the songs downloaded at a very satisfying rate. And the download manager can automatically load the songs into your iTunes library. While iTunes wins for simplicity of downloading, Amazon comes about as close as any online store can.

The Songs

Amazon’s songs come encoded at 256 kbps (VBR), which is high enough quality to please all but the most hardcore audiophiles. They also come loaded with high-resolution album artwork very comparable to what iTunes provides. And finally, and most importantly, Amazon’s tracks are 100% DRM free. I’ve been bringing this up throughout the course of the article, so I feel some explanation is required. DRM, which stands for “digital rights management”, is a system that distributors such as iTunes use to discourage piracy of the content they distribute. While this is a commendable motive, the way they go about doing it often cripples what can and cannot be done with the music. For example, when you buy a DRM-encoded song on iTunes, you can only put it on iPods (no other MP3 players allowed), and store it on a limited number of computers. There is also a cap on the number of times you can burn playlists with DRM-encoded songs onto CDs. In the past, most major record labels have been strong proponents of DRM, but recently it has been meeting strong criticism. In May, Apple began offering tracks from the major label EMI without DRM, but at the increased price of $1.29 per song. Amazon’s store, which offers many DRM-free big-label tracks at reasonable prices, is a major step forward in the downfall of DRM.

Final Thoughts

At this point in time, the only thing that is holding Amazon store back from being an iTunes killer is the selection and the lack of integration with a music player. iTunes has three times as many tracks, and it is impossible to argue that it could suffer serious losses as a result of Amazon’s new store, for the simple reason that there are so many artists not yet available through Amazon. iTunes is also REALLY convenient. It’s right there in your music player and you don’t have to go to a website to get more music.

But this is not the only reason that Amazon’s store poses little threat to Apple. Currently, Apple only encodes its tracks with DRM because of its contractual obligations with the labels whose music it distributes. In other words, DRM isn’t Apple’s idea, and in fact Apple CEO Steve Jobs has publicly opposed the restrictive measures. So with the tide turning so thoroughly against DRM, it seems very likely that it will soon become a thing of the past. And when it does, the playing field will level greatly, with Apple being able to offer the same quality and lack of restriction as the new Amazon store currently has. While Amazon’s new music store is a great innovation today, it is an even bigger step in providing an overall improvement in the quality of digital music downloads. If you’re a music lover, you should be very happy right about now.

How We Got Here
Once upon a time in a business far, far, away there was something called Ethernet that was enabling small businesses to tie computers together for sharing resources at a relatively inexpensive cost. There was Artisoft Lantastic, Banyan Vines, Novell Netware and 3Com 3Server network operating systems with their own proprietary methods of connecting machines together, sharing files, and printing; life was good. Novell was the dominant player in the majority of the business space, Banyan Vines in the government and security conscious organizations, and Lantastic for the small workgroups. Back in these days, people had to learn key stroke combinations to make Word Perfect format their documents and yes believe it or not work got done.

In the early 90’s, a Redmond based company you may know released its first draft of its network operating system, Windows NT 3.1 . Initially no one really cared including me as Novell was the standard, Lantastic for the small guys, and Vines for the government folks. As time went by, I looked at NT 3.1 and tore apart the beta certification exam Microsoft was working on (which was inclusive of microkernel architecture concepts and questions) and I got pretty excited that Microsoft had included things like RAS (Remote Access Server). This allowed me to dial in and manage the server remotely and it didn’t even cost me or my clients extra. NT 3.1 also did all management with this neat thing called a GUI (graphical user interface), allowing you to actually use that mouse thing you bought. These features were all built into NT 2.1, but were features you had to pay for (and sometimes pay heavily) in Netware. Along came SNA Server, now just a memory, but at the time an epiphany of technology allowing companies that needed mainframe access, which at the time was most of them, to use pooling and other cool technologies that again saved customers a large amount of money. These Microsoft guys had something compelling, a lot of free features, a cool interface to administrate the system with and a price point we could live with.

Fast forward to 2007 and lets move some pieces on the chess board; Microsoft now sits where Novell sat, fat and happy. Novell has changed its model from proprietary Netware to open-source Linux based software through Suse acquisition. Then there is a company no one thinks of as a business server – OS X Server from Apple – the sleeping giant. Apple’s OS X Server provides businesses with, dare I say it, a better GUI, easier administrative tools and a bunch of included features you have to pay for from the other guys. This sounds like a history lesson, but I digress. Lets dig a little deeper and look at the bang for the buck you get with OS X Server.

The Value Proposition
Well it’s all fine and good that Apple has a great GUI, easy management tools, and a bunch of features, but the bottom line to the small business owner. Let’s take a side by side comparison of Microsoft’s Small Business Server (SBS) and Apple’s OS X Server Software and see how Apple’s server stacks up against the 800lb gorilla’s offering.

*(limited to 75gb mailboxes) **Limited Edition and/or 32 bit version ***Additional Users Require Licensing, Limited to 75 Users Max. ~Can act as File/Print/Authentication Server for Microsoft XP and Vista Client machines.

No I am not trying to sell you OS X Server, I just want to make you aware that OS X Server is a suitable alternative to the “mainstream” choice. There are a couple of other items of note that I should mention here. Apple includes 64 bit versions of Apache, and MySQL as well as web platforms JBOSS, PHP, Ruby to allow a business to leverage open source solutions to fill their application and groupware needs (more on these to come in future articles). Apple OS X Server can be used as the server in a network full of Windows machines providing them with authentication, file/print, and the balance of services listed above (except Patch Management, Xgrid and Netboot), so it’s not just an Apple to Apple solution either.

Wrap Up
This article just scratches the surface of the differences and overall value proposition of OS X Server. We haven’t delved into the redundancy options you have free with OS X Server that you pay for with the other guys, but that isn’t the purpose of this article. My purpose here was to get your attention and provide you with a brief introduction to business computing options in the Apple realm. Based on your feedback we can either dive deeper into this comparison or tackle other Apple in business issues, etc. so please provide some feedback so I can tailor the content of my next articles to suit you, the audience.

The casual OS X user may not have intimate knowledge of the inner-workings of the terminal and may need to run any of a number of maintenance tasks or scripts that require access to the terminal and a knowledge of the structure of the filesystem. Enter Mac Janitor.

Mac Janitor is a great small application that exemplifies minimalism. Comprised of six small icons, you can run a number of the regular system maintenance scripts on command. The interface is clean and gives you quick access to its core functionality. There is also a small lock icon which prevents you from accidentally clicking one of the action icons until you’re ready. Documentation, however, is basic and if you’re performing the functions provided by MacJanitor, it helps to have a knowledge of what’s going on “under the covers”.

The “Action” Icons
Referring to when these scripts normally run, the action icons are across the top of the main interface window in decreasing order of frequency: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, All Tasks. This refers to the schedule that the UNIX Cron subsystem follows in executing each set of tasks. While easy to use and understand what is happening generally, it also helps to understand the specific functions being performed.

Daily
The daily script which is run internally is one of the most feature complete, running a large array of maintenance functions on command.

By selecting the daily icon, you are executing a script in the /etc/daily location on disk. This is a symbolic link (sort of like an alias or a shortcut) to a script residing in the location /etc/periodic/daily/500.daily. Reviewing this script, it is a Bourne Shell script that bills itself as “Removing scratch and junk files”, which is precisely what it does.

First, it looks into the /var/rwho directory for output from a configured rwho subsystem. Rwho is a feature like the “who” command (used to list currently logged in users on the system) but for all machines on the local network. If it finds output there, it removes all files that have not been modified in the last 7 days from this location.

Next, it peers into the /tmp directory (a location for temporary files used by the OS and various applications on the system) and removes all files that have neither been modified or changed in the last 3 days as well as any directories that have not changed in the last 24 hours.

If your machine receives Faxes, the script also has something for you. It looks into your scratch fax directory ( /var/spool/fax ), removing all scratch fax files more than a week old.

Finally, the script prunes system logs based on function. System accounting gets pruned to 21 days, and Netinfo Data gets backed up. The mail queue (if you are running local mail) gets checked, disks get looked at, and basic network connectivity is checked. Syslog is rotated and restarted as well as cleared and a security audit is run and emailed to the root user.

Note that there are a few other checks that get run, but are run on an “if this exists, then run it” type basis. These are /etc/daily.local and /etc/security, and since some systems contain them and some do not, they are out of the scope of this article.

Weekly
The weekly tasks run by MacJanitor are a different class of task, as you will see. Instead of log removal and truncation as the primary tasks, the weekly tasks revolve around the updating of important databases in the BSD subsystem. By clicking on the “Weekly” icon, you invoke the /etc/weekly script which is a symbolic link to /etc/periodic/weekly/500.weekly.

First, the script looks at the locate database and updates it to the most current system state. What is “locate” you may ask?

Much in the way Spotlight searches your hard drive and finds files and or partial file names you put in it’s dialog window, OSX has a command known as “locate”. Locate’s main function is to respond with a full path to any file you are searching for. To perform this, locate makes a database of all files in the system and their location. When you use the terminal command “locate “, the output is simply an answer to a query to the locate database. However, since the filesystem is constantly changing, you need to have a way to keep track of those changes. To accomplish this, the system runs a script (/usr/libexec/locate.updatedb). When you choose the “weekly” icon, one of the functions performed is the update of this database.

Next in the weekly tasks is the makewhatis function. The whatis function allows you to ask a database similar to locate’s what a file is or does. The man page (system documentation) for the whatis command explains:

“whatis searches a set of database files containing short descriptions
of system commands for keywords and displays the result on the standard
output. Only complete word matches are displayed.”

Executing the weekly tasks also updates this database to make sure it is in synch with the actual current state of the filesystem, assuring proper functionality of the whatis command.

Finally, the system logs get rotated, compressed and truncated as well as set to the proper ownerships and permissions and the weekly.local script is run (if you have created it).

Monthly
Last but not least, the monthly icon executes the /etc/monthly script which is linked to /etc/periodic/monthly/500.monthly. The monthly script assures that any fax logs are rotated, compresses, rotates and truncates the system logs, and runs your monthly.local. One difference from the other tasks is that monthly accounting (from the UNIX system accounting subsystem) gets run, the wtmp and install.log files get archived & rotated, and all remaining logs not handled before are rotated in a similar fashion.

All Tasks
As can be expected, the “All Tasks” icon makes sure all the above get run at once. Since you are updating some very large databases with this command, depending on your system specifications and available memory, it can take quite some time to run all these tasks at once, so be patient before trying to cancel or move on to something else. (Note: on my Macbook Pro Core2 Duo with 2GB Ram, this process took roughly 9 minutes. YMMV)

The “Service” Icons
To the right of the interface, there are two service icons titled “Cancel” and “Clear”. The Cancel button will allow you to interrupt processing of any of the features you are currently running. In my testing I was able to cancel all three individual types of runs as well as the “All Tasks” run. In all cases, there was a short delay after pressing “Cancel” before the task ended, and I regained control of the program.

The gray area below these icons is the “console”. As the various processes run, the output of their functions gets sent to this window. The clear icon gives you the ability to clear the console screen for clarity.

Conclusion
MacJanitor is a useful little utility, should you need to regain some space or just to do some routine maintenance and rebuild the locate and whatis databases.

MacJanitor is one of many utilities developed by Brian Hill that can be found on his software page. It is currently at version 1.3 and is freeware. Be sure to have a look at the rest of Brian’s software, and if you find something you can use, please support Brian by registering with him to help encourage developers such like him to keep producing quality Mac software.