good time

Apr 27 2009

The best parts of Panther

By: Jon Gales

Now that a good bit of the Mac population has Panther, I thought it would be a good time to go over what I like most about the new OS. If you have a differing opinion, let me know.

TextEdit
Apple didn’t make a new ad campaign centered around TextEdit, but they could have. This little, “application that could”, can now read and write .docs! It also sports cool things like styles. This makes my rare grab for Word, a lot more rare.

Preview
Another one of those little upgrades. Preview can now crop, which is really handy when you just need a quick change and don’t want to fire up Photoshop. It also sports a search function for PDFs. Both very cool. Not really Preview, but the sheer speed of PDF rendering in Panther is great

Application switcher
Yes, I know it wasn’t original, but I like it. Quite handy.

Activity monitor
Again, one of these quite updates. One of the things that bugged me about X was that you could never really tell how much RAM applications were taking up without some weird Terminal tricks or freeware. Is it some sort of secret? Come on Apple.

With the new activity monitor (changed from process viewer), you can not only see RAM usage, but CPU, disk and network usage as well. It really kicks butt, and has some neat graphs that make it look like you’re doing a lot of work when your boss comes in for the 4th time in an hour.

So, do you have some favorites that I didn’t mention? Let me know!

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Apr 27 2009

Getting a Clearer Picture

Take screenshots, convert graphics and more with this week’s picks.

mu Getting a Clearer PictureScreenshot Helper

Switch to a less distracting background while taking screenshots with this free gem. This app hides your desktop picture and clutter and can even hide the menu bar and dock.

mu Getting a Clearer PicturePictu

With Pictu, your favorite picture is a menu item away. Pictu pops up a picture of your choice on click, and lives in the menu bar. And that’s all it does. Don’t you love programmer restraint?

mu Getting a Clearer PicturefreePhotoConverter

Rather than firing up Photoshop for simple image conversions, try this app. It converts between many formats and can resize and compress (jpgs).

mu Getting a Clearer PictureVNCDimensions

Is the picture you’re looking for on another system? Get VNC. If you haven’t used VNC already, this is a good time to try it. Share your Mac over a network, and view and control another Mac/PC.

mu Getting a Clearer PictureWinSwitch

Don’t misinterpret the name on this one. WinSwitch makes fast user switching faster. WinSwitch gives you quick access to other users’ accounts through a menu bar item. You can even tweak settings with the accompanying preference pane.

Get the picture? Have fun.

Brian

mu Getting a Clearer PictureDownloads provided by MacUpdate

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Apr 7 2006

Mac Only Freeware

This week the web is abuzz with Apple’s 30th anniversary. And, with the announcement of Windows support on Intel Macs, its a good time to revisit the software that makes OS X the OS of choice.

Sure you can put Windows on your Mac, but none of this week’s freeware picks will run on a PC. Join me for an OS X love-fest in this week’s Freeloader Friday.

Note:

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