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1. Adobe Creative Suite
An obvious and primary requirement (I feel) all serious web designers should have. I couldn’t get through the day without Photoshop while Illustrator and Flash are constantly called upon. I hear Fireworks is good too, especially for compressing images, but I’ve yet to use it myself.

2. Transmit
Transmit is an FTP client for Mac. Edit remote files, synchronize, search, SSL, tabs; it covers all your daily FTP needs.

3. Coda
Coda is a light-weight all in one text editor. You can edit your code, preview your web page, upload to server (integration with Transmit), edit CSS and run commands in Terminal; all from within this one app. I would use Coda for front-end development.

4. Textmate
Textmate is another text editor that I prefer using for back-end development. Code completion, snippets, syntax colouring are some of the things I enjoy about Textmate along with ease of customizing fonts and colours.

5. CocoaMySQL
CocoaMySQL gives you an interface to work with your MySQL databases. This is a desktop alternative to PHPMyAdmin, which is a lot quicker and in my opinion a lot easier to operate.

UPDATE 13/12/08: CocoaMySQL has been abandoned and replaced with Sequel Pro. Works just as well and looks even better. Check it out.

6. MAMP
MAMP is an easy way to get Apache, MySQL and PHP up and running on your machine. Just by running MAMP all these three services will be up and running, no messing around in Terminal needed.

7. Things
Great app for getting things done. Set yourself project tasks and daily tasks and check them off as and when you get them done.

8. CSS Edit
A very good CSS editor. It allows for real time previews of your website and styles and is a very efficient app allowing you to easily find all styles being applied to certain elements.

9. Transmission
Transmission is used for downloading/uploading torrents over the net. Useful for sharing files with friends and colleagues (among other things)

10. MarsEdit
MarsEdit allows you to compile draft blog posts on your local machine before publishing them live on your blog. I use it daily to take notes on various blog topics I think of and then I can easily compile a blog post over the course of a week.

11. Skitch
I was only recently introduced to this by GoodOnPaper @ FOWA. Allows you to easily share images/screenshots on the web and using the Skitch editor you can add notes to your image or highlight areas of a screenshot. Very useful and saves having to load up Photoshop for simple tasks.

12. Parallels Desktop
You can run Windows XP or Vista on your Mac using Parallels. Handy for being able to test your websites in versions of IE (using Multiple IEs) and if there are any Windows only apps you need to use, e.g. Microsoft Access.

13. Office
A good old favorite for creating text documents, preparing slideshows or looking after sets of data. There are a few Mac alternatives, and of course online alternatives, but I personally prefer Office.

14. Paparazzi
Paparazzi takes full screenshots of webpages. The problem with Cmd+Shift+3 is that it only takes a screenshot of the visible screen. Paparrazi takes the whole height of the page, even below the fold, so it’s great for showing screenshots of your web designs.

15. Twitterific
Easily interact with Twitterland via Twitterific. Saves you having to make the trip to Twitter to see what’s going on as it can retrieve and send tweets for you.

For example, to configure settings for the TextEdit application, open it from your Dock or the Applications folder, then from the TextEdit menu, choose TextEdit Preferences. Other application preferences can be configured in similar fashion.

The System Preferences pane controls system-wide settings (“global” settings), and is available from the Apple menu at the upper-left corner of the screen. System Preferences lets you to adjust things like your screen resolution, keyboard and mouse control, sound, and more. Read on for more information about using System Preferences.

Optimize Your Keyboard, Mouse, and Trackpad

We all type, point, and click differently. That’s why it’s important to make sure that you optimize your keyboard and mouse or trackpad, if you’re using a MacBook or MacBook Pro for your movements. Here’s how to do this.

Customize Your Keyboard

From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
In the System Preferences window, click Keyboard & Mouse.
Click the Keyboard tab. These controls allow you to set the keyboard sensitivity for how fast you type.
To control how quickly a key types its character repeatedly when held down, move the Key Repeat Rate slider left to slow down the rate, or right to speed it up. You can use the text field in the middle of the window to test your setting.
To control how long you can hold down a key before it starts repeating, move the Delay Until Repeat slider left to allow a longer delay or right to shorten it.
If you want to reassign the modifier keys on your keyboard (Control, Option, Command, and Caps Lock), click Modifier Keys. In the dialog that slides down, you can change which modifier is assigned to what key, or disable a key altogether. For example, if you keep hitting Caps Lock by accident and wind up typing in ALL CAPS, choose No Action from the Caps Lock Key pop-up menu. Click OK when finished.
If you’re using a MacBook or MacBook Pro and want to use the F1-F12 keys on your keyboard to control other application features, select the checkbox—you’ll need to press the Function (fn) key along with any F1-F12 key to perform a key’s default hardware function.
Optimize Your Mouse

Your Mouse preferences settings may differ, depending on what kind of mouse you’re using.

Open System Preferences and click Keyboard & Mouse to display these preferences.
Click the Mouse tab. These controls let you set the mouse sensitivity to control how fast the arrow flies across your screen when you move your mouse, and adjust for your double-click reflexes. Other controls may be available, depending on the type of mouse you’re using.
To control how fast the arrow moves across your screen when you move the mouse, move the Tracking Speed slider left to slow it down, or right to speed it up.
To set your computer’s reaction to your double-click speed, move the Double-Click Speed slider left if you tend to click slower, or right if you’ve got an itchy trigger finger.
If your mouse has a scroll wheel, you can set its scroll speed using the Scrolling Speed slider. You can also change the mouse’s primary button if you’re using something other than an Apple single-button mouse.
Optimize Your Trackpad

Portable Mac users can change the speed and functionality of their trackpad

Open System Preferences and click Keyboard & Mouse to display its preferences.
Click the Trackpad tab. These controls let you set the trackpad sensitivity to control how fast the arrow moves across your screen when you move your finger across the trackpad, and also adjust for your double-click speed.
To control how fast the arrow moves across your screen, move the Tracking Speed slider left to slow it down, or right to speed it up.
To set your computer’s reaction to your double-click speed, move the Double-Click Speed slider left if you tend to click slower, or right if tend to click faster.
If you want to add double-click functionality to your trackpad, select the Clicking checkbox below Trackpad Gestures. You can also select the Dragging and Drag Lock checkboxes if you’d like to drag items using the trackpad.
Change Your Screen Resolution
You may want to use a high resolution so you can see more files, folders, desktop items, and view graphics at the best possible resolution. Or you may prefer a smaller resolution. Here’s how to adjust your screen resolution.

This MacBook Pro display provides a maximum 1440 x 900 resolution, but also supports several smaller resolutions.

Open System Preferences and click Displays to display its preferences.
Click the Display tab; your display’s supported resolution settings are listed in the Resolutions pane, from the lowest to the highest resolution.
Select any of the choices to change the resolution. A lower resolution gives you less desktop space to display windows and interfaces, but these will also appear larger. A larger resolution maximizes your screen space, letting you see more of a photo or document, and can help you manage applications whose interface elements span multiple windows.
To adjust your screen’s brightness, move the Brightness slider left to make it dimmer, or right to make it brighter.
Change Your Sounds

Open System Preferences and click Sound to display its preferences.
To change the alert sound, it plays when your Mac wants to get your attention, click the Sound Effects tab, and select a sound in the top list.
If you want to hear sound effects play when you do other things in the Finder, such as when you drag stuff to, or empty, the Trash, or remove items the Dock, select the “Play user interface sound effects” checkbox.
To change the overall volume of sound effects, move the “Alert volume” slider left to turn the volume down, or right to turn it up.
To adjust the overall volume of your Mac, move the “Output volume” slider left to quiet things down, or right to crank it up. If you’d rather have your Mac be quiet, select the Mute checkbox.
To adjust the sound balance for your internal or external speakers, click the Output tab, select your speaker device from the list, and move the Balance slider left to skew the stereo sound mix to the left channel, or right to hear more from the right channel.
Customize Your Keyboard Shortcuts
Your Mac has plenty of functions and commands that can be triggered by a simple keyboard shortcut, pressing two or three keys simultaneously to perform an action.

Look in any menu. For example, click the File menu in the menu bar, and you’ll see a list of functions and commands, as well as a two- or three-character code to their right. These are keyboard shortcuts. Most shortcuts are made up of one or two modifier keys (Command, Option, Control, or Shift) and another key. Here’s what modifier keys represent:

You don’t have to stick with the keyboard shortcuts that are already assigned for your Mac. You can customize many of the functions with your own key combinations.

You can dictate which keys to press to make your Mac perform certain tasks in the Keyboard Shortcuts pane.

Open System Preferences and click Keyboard & Mouse to display its preferences.
Click the Keyboard Shortcuts tab to display a list of some of the system-wide menu commands whose shortcuts you can change.
To change any item, double-click on the actual shortcut, the characters in the Shortcut column, and press your preferred key combination to enter it in the text field.
To change the keyboard shortcut for any unlisted system-wide or application-specific item, click the plus (+) button.
In the dialog, choose All Applications or a specific one from the Application pop-up menu, and type the exact name of the menu command that you want to change in the Menu Title field, look in the menu to view the exact name.
Type your preferred keyboard combination in the Keyboard Shortcut field, and click Add.

Change Your Computer’s Sleep Habits
To conserve energy, all Macs have the ability to sleep. That is, when you haven’t used your computer for a set amount of time, the computer enter a low-power mode until you wake it by using it. Sleep doesn’t turn off your computer; it merely puts it into an inactive state that consumes less power. Waking your Mac from sleep is faster than waiting for your Mac to start up after a shutdown.

This is especially helpful for conserving battery life on MacBook and MacBook Pro computers. But sometimes you may need to alter your computer’s sleep settings, such as when you’re burning a DVD—if you’re not interacting with your Mac during this time, it could go to sleep during the process. Or, you may want to have your Mac go to sleep earlier than scheduled. Here’s how to change sleep preferences.

Set the Sleep Time

Open System Preferences and click Energy Saver to display its preferences.
Click the Sleep tab.
Move the sliders for both the computer and display to change the times in which they go to sleep.
Click the Options tab.
Select any other options you want, such as wake options, in the panel.
Customize Your MacBook or MacBook Pro Sleep Habits
If you’re using a portable Mac, you can set different sleep times for your battery and power adapter use.

In Energy Saver preferences, choose Power Adapter or Battery from the Settings for pop-up menu.
To change the sleep times for your power source choice, either move the computer and display sliders to change the sleep time, or choose one of the energy presets from the Optimization pop-up menu.
Schedule Sleep or Shut Down
You can also automate when your Mac goes to sleep and wakes up, or shuts down and starts up. If you want to put your Mac on a set schedule:

In Energy Saver preferences, click Schedule.
In the dialog, select the “Start up or wake” checkbox.
Choose a scheduled interval from the top pop-up menu, for example Every Day or Weekdays.
Set a wake up or start up time in the field to its right.
Select the bottom checkbox and from the pop-up menu to its right, choose either Sleep to have your Mac automatically sleep and wake on schedule, or Shut Down to make your Mac automatically shut down and start up on schedule.
Choose a scheduled interval from the next pop-up menu, for example Every Day or Weekdays.
Set a sleep or shut down time in the field to its right.
Click OK.
Change Your Language
Your Mac is set to display the language for the country in which you bought the computer. In other words, if you bought your Mac in the United States, your Mac is set to English. If you bought your Mac in France, your Mac understands French. But if you prefer to use a different language, you can.

If you bought your Mac in the U.S. but English isn’t your preferred language,
you can switch what language your Mac speaks via drag-and-drop.

Open System Preferences and click International to display its preferences.
Click the Language tab.
In the Languages pane, drag your preferred language to the top of the list.
Restart your Mac or log out and log back in to apply the language throughout your system.
Set Your Media Preferences
When you insert a CD or DVD into your Mac, we told your Mac what it should do. For example, when you insert a music CD, iTunes automatically opens so you can listen to it. When you insert a DVD, DVD Player opens so you can kick back and watch.

But you don’t have to stick with our assumptions. You can tell your Mac what you want it to do when you insert a prerecorded CD or DVD, or a blank disc.

You can tell your Mac which applications, scripts, or actions to take when you insert media

Open System Preferences and click CDs & DVDs to display its preferences.
The top two pop-up menus let you decide what your Mac should do when you insert a blank CD or DVD. By default, both menus are set to “Ask what to do”; this action opens a dialog. You can change it to open your choice of application, open Disk Utility, run a script, or simply ignore it.
The bottom three pop-up menus let you choose what your Mac should do when you insert a music CD, picture CD, or video DVD, respectively.
Change Your Date and Time
Your Mac has the ability to automatically set the correct date and time, or you can choose to set these manually. You can also decide how you want the time and date to display on your Mac. Here’s how to set these preferences.

Open System Preferences and click Date & Time to display the preferences.
Click the Date & Time tab.
If you always want your Mac to set the date and time automatically, select the “Set Date & Time automatically” checkbox, choose your location from the pop-up menu to the right, and skip to step 7. A network connect is required.
To set things manually, or if you don’t have a network connection, deselect the “Set Date & Time automatically” checkbox.
To manually set the date, click on the month, day, or year in the field above the calendar to select it,. Either use the up or down arrows to change the value, or type in the information. Or, click on the correct date in the calendar graphic, to change the month use the left and right arrows.
To set the time, click on the hour, minute, seconds, or AM/PM in the field above the clock to select it. Either use the up or down arrows to change the value, or type in the information. Or, click and drag the hands on the clock graphic to the correct time.
Click the Time Zone tab and either click your approximate location on the map or choose the city closest to you from the Closest City pop-up menu.
To change the way the clock displays on your Mac, click the Clock tab. In this pane, you can select whether to display the time and date in the menu bar, and whether it will be displayed in digital format, or as an analog clock face. Seconds display and additional options are available.

CleanMyMac is an OS X utility that helps to keep your Mac clean and healthy. It’s capable of freeing up space through slimming Universal Binaries, removing unnecessary language files, deleting old caches and logs, and various other miscellaneous files. This review will put CleanMyMac through it’s paces and assess whether it offers a good spring cleaning solution.

Running a Scan

When opening CleanMyMac, you’re presented with a list of the various areas of your system which can be subjected to a cleaning process. These include:

• Caches: All manner of temporary files that are left behind by user and software operations.
• Logs: Files which store warnings, errors and output from applications.
• Language Files: Many applications come with several sets of language files. Unless you speak a healthy combination of French, German, Italian and Mandarin, you’re unlikely to require them all.
• Universal Binaries: Strip down certain types of application if you no longer require they work on older Power PC machines.
• Widgets: This sections seems unexplained, but seems to remove redundant/unused Dashboard Widgets.

Two other options – Applications and Quick Erase – allow you to manually delete or clean files/applications by dragging them into the app.

Initiating a ‘Scan’ won’t change any of your files, but will offer an idea of how much space could be freed up. This is likely to be several gigabytes if you have a reasonable number of applications installed. You may be prompted to enter your administrator password as the software scans (or later, cleans) your Mac.

 

Getting Started with CleanMyMac

Upon completing a scan you can drill down into each section to assess which specific files CleanMyMac has found. My experience suggested that the app won’t try to remove an important file – but there’s no harm in quickly checking through the list to look for anything suspicious.

The main advantage of using CleanMyMac is the simplicity on offer. No advanced knowledge is needed to determine which files can be deleted – everything is handled automatically. However, as we’ve learned from various Hollywood blockbusters, “with great power comes great responsibility”. You’re entrusting CleanMyMac with free roam over your system and need to feel confident that it won’t cause any damage.

Removing Files

After selecting which files to remove you can just sit back and watch the progress bars move forward. CleanMyMac has a notable impact on system performance whilst progressing through all the files in question, so it may be worth making a coffee and letting the process run it’s course.

 

Removing Files

I experimented with removing caches, logs, a variety of language files, and compressing a few large Universal Binary applications. The process went without a hitch, and my system is still running smoothly. It’s difficult to assess whether it resulted in a major performance improvement, but the extra few gigabytes of disk space is certainly appreciated.

Universal Binary is the name given to an application capable of running on both an Intel or Power PC Mac. These two types of processor require a different set of application code, meaning software includes both – it works universally. If you own an Intel Mac, it may be that the Power PC part of each Universal Binary is redundant and can be removed. Very occasionally this process can cause an application not to launch properly – it’s worth taking a backup to be safe.

Preferences

A variety of preferences customize how CleanMyMac works:

 

CleanMyMac Preferences

A default set of cleaning operations and required languages can be specified, saving you from selecting the same options time and time again. Secure erase can also be used to permanently remove files if desired – the equivalent of secure empty trash.

Pricing & Trial Limitations

Downloading the trial will allow you to clean up to 200MB of space before requiring you purchase the application.

The pricing structure for CleanMyMac is fairly unusual, based around a particular length of time:

• 6 Months: $19.95
• 1 Year: $29.95
• 2 Years: $49.95
• Lifetime: $50 (currently on offer)

I can’t say that I’m a huge fan of this model. I’m happy to pay for a major feature upgrade in a later version, but an arbitrary time period for software such as this doesn’t offer great value. This is especially the case as CleanMyMac is the type of application you may only run once every few months

Essentially, the price comes to $50 – quite expensive for the functionality on offer – particularly when you consider that certain features can be found elsewhere considerably cheaper (such asXslimmer for compressing Universal Binary applications).

Conclusion

CleanMyMac is excellent at what it does, and can definitely give you a cleaner, faster-operating Mac. As with any tool that changes system files, make sure you have a recent backup and all your data is safely duplicated elsewhere. That said, I felt comfortable to place my trust in the software and didn’t encounter any problems.

If you’re suffering from a sluggish Mac or a lack of hard drive space, CleanMyMac is definitely worth looking into. At the very least, download the trial to see how much space could be freed up. Whether you’re happy to pay $50 will be very much a personal choice – it might be worth trying a few other spring cleaning options first!

The picture-perfect fun doesn’t stop there, either. Both the regular iPod and the Nano can also display your photos in mini-slideshow form, right in the palm of your hand. And if you have the full-sized iPod, you can plug it into the television set with a special AV cable and fire up those slideshows on the living-room screen. This chapter shows you how to do everything except microwave the popcorn for the big show.

What You Need to Put Photos on Your iPod
In addition to a computer loaded with iTunes and an iPod with a color screen, you need a few other things to move pictures to ‘Pod:

• Compatible photo-organizing software for the Mac or Windows-or a folder of photos on your hard drive. The iPod and Nano can sync with several popular photo programs that you may already have. On the Mac, there’s iPhoto 4.0.3 or later. Windows mavens can grab pictures from Adobe Photoshop Album or the more versatile Adobe Photoshop Elements. You can also transfer pictures from a folder of photos on your computer, like the iPhoto Library folder for those who are a few iPhoto versions behind, or My Pictures on the Windows side of the fence.
• Digital photographs in the proper format. Most of the common photo formats used by digital cameras, Web pages, and email programs are acceptable to iTunes, along with a few others. On the Mac, you can use JPG and GIF files, as well as images in the PICT, TIFF, BMP, PNG, JPG2000, SGI, and PSD formats. In Windows, JPG, GIF, TIF, BMP, PSD, SGI, and PNG files work for the iPod.

You should remember a few other things when adding images to your iPod. For one, you can’t import pictures off one of those photo CDs from the drugstore or a backup disc you made yourself-iTunes needs to pull the photos directly from your hard drive. Photos stored on DVDs or CDs won’t cut it.

The iPod allies itself with one computer when it comes to photos. Unlike manual music management, where you can grab songs from several different computers and drag them onto your iPod yourself, synchronizing pictures can happen only between one iPod and one computer. If you want to load photos from a different computer, all the photos currently on the iPod will be replaced with ones from the new machine.

You also can’t dump photos directly into the iPod from your digital camera-you need to go through iTunes, unless you have a gadget like the iPod Camera Connector (available for $29 at http://store.apple.com) that can siphon photos from the camera’s memory card over to the iPod’s hard drive. These devices don’t work with the iPod Nano, though.

Getting Pictures onto the iPod
Okay, so you’ve got the right iPod and a bunch of pictures in iTunes-friendly formats on your hard drive. How do those photos get from your hard drive to the iPod? They get there like the music does-through iTunes.

But first, you should set up your iTunes and iPod preferences to copy the photos you want to carry around, like so:

1. Connect the iPod to your Mac or PC with its USB cable.
2. Once the iPod shows up in the iTunes Source list, click its icon to select it.
3. On the iPod’s preference screen, which appears in the middle of iTunes, click the Photos tab.
4. Turn on the checkbox next to “Sync photos from” and choose your photo program or folder of choice so iTunes knows where to look for your photos. You can choose to copy over everything or just selected albums (sets of pictures).
5. Click Apply when you’ve made your selections.

If you don’t use any of the programs listed in the “Sync photos from” menu, and just want to copy over a folder of photos on your hard drive, select “Choose folder” from the pop-up menu and then navigate to the desired folder. You can sync just the photos in your chosen folder, or include the photos tucked away in folders inside your chosen folder, too.

Select the “All photos and albums” option if you want every single image in your photo program’s library to get hauled over to the iPod. (If you don’t want those bachelorette-party snaps to get copied, opt for “Selected albums” and choose only the collections you want from your photo program.)

Now, whenever you connect the iPod, it syncs the photo groups you’ve designated and also picks up any new pictures you’ve added since you last connected it. During the process, iTunes displays an ” Optimizing photos…” message.

Don’t let the term ” optimizing” scare you: iTunes hasn’t taken it upon itself to touch up your photographic efforts. The program is simply creating versions of your pictures that look good on anything from your tiny iPod screen to your TV screen. Then it tucks away these copies on your hard drive before adding them to the iPod.

Digital Photographer Alert: Storing Full-Quality Photos on the iPod
When iTunes optimizes your photos for iPoddification, it streamlines the images a bit for faster travel instead of copying the big, full-resolution files. But if you want, you can copy the full-size photo files to transfer them to another computer-good news if you’re a photographer and you want to haul around a big, print-ready photo collection.

Just follow these steps:

1. Connect the iPod and select it in the iTunes Source list. Make sure you’ve set up the iPod as a portable hard drive. (See Chapter 8 for details.) The short version: in your iPod’s settings page in iTunes, click the Summary tab and then turn on the “Enable disk use” checkbox.
2. Click the Photos tab in the iTunes window.
3. Turn on the “Include full-resolution photos” checkbox.

After you sync, full-resolution copies of the photos sit happily in the Photos folder on the iPod’s hard drive. (The Photos folder also has a subfolder called Thumbs that’s full of iPod-optimized images all scrunched up in special .ithmb files; you can safely ignore these.)

Viewing Pictures on the iPod
Once you’ve got those photos freed from the confines of your computer, you’ll probably want to show them off to your pals. To get to the goods, choose Photos -> Photo Library from the iPod’s main screen. Or, if you opted for different photo albums when you set up your synchronization preferences, scroll to the name of the album you want to view and press the round center button. 

The iPod pops up a screen filled with tiny versions of the pictures in the group you just selected. Use the scroll wheel to maneuver the little yellow highlight box, and then zoom along the rows until you get to the picture you want to see. If you have hundreds of pee-wee pix to plow through, tap the Previous and Next buttons to advance or retreat by the screenful.

Here are some other navigational tips:

• Highlight the photo and press the center button to call up a larger version that fills the iPod screen.
• Press the Previous and Next buttons or the click wheel to move forward or backward through pictures in an album.
• Press the Menu button to go back to the screen of tiny photos.

Playing Slideshows on the iPod
A photo slideshow takes all the click work out of your hands and frees you to admire the pictures without distraction. To run a slideshow on the iPod itself, you need to set up a few things, like how long each photo displays and what music accompanies your trip to Disneyland.

Start by choosing Photos -> Slideshow Settings. You’ll see a slew of options to shape your slideshow experience.

• Use the Time Per Slide menu to set the amount of time each photo is displayed on screen, from 2 to 20 seconds. You can also choose to move to each new image manually with a tap of the click wheel.
• Use the Music menu to pick one of your iPod’s playlists to serve as a soundtrack for your slideshow, if you want one. You may even want to compose a playlist in iTunes just to use with a particular slideshow. If you’ve already got music assigned to the photo album in iPhoto, choose the From iPhoto option at the top of the menu.
• As with your music, you can repeat and shuffle the order of your photos. You can also add fancy Hollywood-style scene transitions by choosing Photos -> Slideshow Settings -> Transitions. Pick from several dramatic photo-changing styles, including “Push across” and “Wipe from center.”
• To make sure the slideshow appears on the iPod’s screen, set the TV Out setting (toward the bottom of the screen) to Off, which keeps the signal in the iPod. (Nano owners don’t have to worry about this step.) Or you can select Ask, so that each time you start a slideshow, the iPod politely inquires whether you intend to run your photos on the big or small screen.

Once you’ve got your settings just the way you want them, select the album or photo you want to start with, and then press the Play/Pause button on the click wheel to start the show. Press the Play/Pause button again to temporarily stop the show; press it again to continue.

Your choice of music, transitions, and time per slide all match what you chose in the Slideshow settings. If you get impatient, you can also use the Previous and Next buttons on the click wheel to manually move things along.

Playing Slideshows on a TV
Flip back to the previous chapter if you need help connecting your iPod to the television set so you can display videos and photos on the TV. These figures show one possible setup. Once you’ve linked your color screen iPod to your TV, you’re almost ready to start the show. You just need to adjust a few more things on the iPod:

• Choose Photos -> Slideshow Settings -> TV Out -> On. The On option tells the iPod to send the slideshow out to the TV screen instead of playing it on its own screen. (You can also set it to Ask, if you want the iPod to pester you about what screen to use when the time comes.)
• Select your local television broadcast standard. If you’re in North America or Japan, choose Photos -> Slideshow Settings -> TV Signal -> NTSC. If you’re in Europe or Australia, choose Photos -> Slideshow Settings -> TV Signal -> PAL. If you’re in an area not listed above, check your television’s manual to see what standard it uses or search the Web for “world television standards.”
• Turn on your TV and select the video input source for the iPod. You select the input for the iPod’s signal the same way you tell your TV to show the signal from the DVD player or VCR. Typically, you press the Input or Display button on your TV’s remote to change from the live TV signal to the new video source.

Now, cue up a slideshow on the iPod and press the Play/Pause button. Your glorious photographs-scored to the sounds of your selected music, if you wish-appear on your television screen. (Because television screens are horizontal displays, vertical shots end up with black bars along the sides.)

Your preselected slideshow settings control the show, or you can advance it manually with your thumb on the click wheel. Although just one photo at a time appears on the TV screen, if you’re driving the iPod, you can see not only the current picture, but the one before it and the one after, letting you narrate your show with professional smoothness: “OK, this is Shalimar before we had to get her fur shaved off after the syrup incident…”

If you’re showing a video, select the file you want to display on the TV from your Videos menu, and then press Play/Pause.

This section is all about programs that can be used to work with files and applications

1) AppFresh
Software updater is great for Apple applications, but appfresh has the ability to check thrid party apps for updates. A great little tool for keeping upto date.

2) AppZapper

Although applications are easy to uninstall on a mac there are usually small preference files hanging about. Appzapper cleans up an uninstall all of those files.

3) Disk Inventory X
A simple program that scans your disk and visually shows what files takes up how much space, good to visualize if you are running out of space and you have some size hogs.

4) Grand Perspective
Very similar to Disk Inventory X, shows you what files take up how much space on your website.

5) OpenPlist

A very cool little tool if you need to end up editing Plist files.

6) Quicksilver
One of the best applications ever made for the mac. Its a quick launch tool that enables you to open and do practically anything. Very fun and really increases your productivity.

7) Stuffit
An application design to unstuff or unpack nearly any file. Create if you use archives a lot.

8) TextWrangler
A very cool text editor that lets you edit text files quickly. Sometimes more powerful than text edit.

9) TidyUp
An application that enables you to search through a list of files finds duplicates. Great if you have many files and you need to organise them.

10) Todos

Leaves no application behind. A very visual way to view all of the applications on your computer. Kind of surpassed by the stacks in the dock.

11) UnRarX
UnrarX gives you the abilty to easily uncompress .rar files. Very good, although stuffit can now handle .rar files.

12) Xslimmer
Give your mac a diet. It goes through and removes the powerpc or intel parts of your program. It can really reduce the size of applications. Can also break them if you are not careful.

Internet

This section is all about applications that use the internet or this type of connectivity in some way.

13) Adium
A simple all in one AIM, chat client. Supports, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and many other through the use of plugins and basic support. It does lack some functionality in some chat protocols.

14) ApGrapher
A great little program that offers the ability to find information about the wireless networks whizzing around your head.

15) Azureus
One of the best bittorrent clients out there. Has lots of user extensions through the use of plugins.

16) Colloquy

A really powerful application that can be used for the IRC networks. Special care has been taken in this application to make it blend in with the rest of the Mac OS theming.

17) CSSedit
A must for any web developer. CSSedit offers the best tools around to help you edit and modify CSS code for you webpages.

18) Cyberduck
A small lightweight application for ftp. Has some small niggles, but it is free. Transmit is better if you use ftp a lot.

19) Firefox
One of the best web browsers around in my opinion. Has a massive add-on library which you can customize to your needs. A viable alternative to safari.

20) iStumber
I found this a great small application that enabled you to view wireless and bluetooth networks quick and hassle free.

21) LittleSnitch
The application that snitches on any application that is trying to access the net to phone home. Great for protecting you privacy.

22) Netnewswire
A very popular RSS client for the mac, nuff said.

23) Skype
Offering superior calls over the internet, it is the application if you do a lot of talking and want a good quality transmission.

24) Transmission
A light weight bittorrent application that is gaining popularity. Its personal choice at this point of transmission verse Azureus.

25) Transmit
A great application from Panic that will feature a couple of time in this list. It is a powerful application for ftp uploads and downloads.

26) Undercover
A piece of software that dials to the undercover servers if you computer has been stolen. Great if you use a laptop, less useful on a desktop.

27) Unison
Another piece of panic software that enables you to use the usenet newsreader networks. A really good piece of software if you use usenet a lot.

28) Vidalia
A GUI controller for the Tor anonymity network. One click on, one click off, simple and easy to use. Best of all its free.

Multimedia

This section is all about video, images and sound. Anything of this nature is included here.

29) VLC
The all in one application for watching videos. Supports nearly every codec imaginable.

30) Aperture
One of Apples Pro programs for organizing and altering photos. A very powerfull application although comes with a bit of a price tag.

31) Audacity
A free audio editor which has a few advance features that make it create for editing audio for your videos or other applications.

32) Blender
A free 3D modeler which has the same power of many of the most advance applications on the market. Comes with quite a steep learning curve.

33) Delicious Library
A very cool application used to organise your books, movies, games and CD’s. You can use your built in iSight to save time by scanning your books. Very cool and fun to use.

34) DeskLickr
A simple application that uses the vast photo resource of flickr to change your wallpaper every so often. Makes a cool change.

35) Desktastic
Anoter Panic app. This time it can be used to write directly on your desktop. Very cool if you use a tablet for your daily work.

36) Gimp
The free image editing program. Used by many open source and linux users. A create start since Leopard doesn’t include any image editing software.

37) Google Earth
One of the best applications from Google. Use it to zoom in on planet earth and explore the world around you. A great time waster, as well as a very useful tool if you are going anywhere and want to check out the surroundings.

38) HandBreak
An open source application that can quickly convert DVD’s to Mpeg-4.

39) iLife
The all in one package made by Apple. I don’t think this needs any explaining.

40) iShowU
This application takes a direct recording of your screen. Great if you want to make recordings of specific applications. You need a good CPU, a bit of a power hog.

41) Joost
A very hot application that lets you watch free TV. Beautiful application even though the amount of TV stations are a bit small.

42) Photoshop
The high priced application for real pros who want to edit and manipulate images and photos. Not for people with tight wallets.

43) Pixelmator
The medium priced application that has a lot of great image editing potential. Not as expenisive as Photoshop.

44) Shapeshifter
Bored of your interface? Let shape shifter change it for you. Not Leopard compatitble although this is likely to change.

45) Theme Park
A great little app which lets you delve into the resource files for applications and lets you change them. Not as powerful as Shapeshifter but lets you tweak little bits of your operating systems interface.

46) TVShows
A little app that downloads all of the torrent files for your favourite TV shows. You need a bittorrent client to finish the process off.

47) Wallsaver
Puts your screensaver as your wallpaper. Add a bit of life to your desktop.

Little Apps

Little Applications are small applications in size that add a bit of functionality or are just plain cool.

48) Autorate
A simple piece of software that rates your musis in your iTunes libary based on the number of plays and track skips.

49) Fish
A simple little program that shows you little fishes swimming around.

50) iAlertU
A little program that can arm your computer. Moving your laptop will set of the alarm and alert you to intruders.

51) Liquidmac
Once again using the motion sensor in a laptop. This program fills the screen with water which you can play around with by moving your computer.

52) MacSaber
Let your Mac become a jedi. Once again using the motion sensor makes cool lightsaber noises. Don’t let the mac fly out of your hands as it has with a couple of people.

53) Quinn
Tetris on the extreme side of life. A cool little app with amazing graphics on the old arcade favourite Tetris.

54) Resize ‘Em All
A little program which can be used to resize images.

55) Rulers
Put a ruler on your screen. This application lets you measure nearly anything on your screen, great if you are in the design world.

56) smcFanControl
A small application that runs in your menu bar to control your fan speeds. A must if you think your computer runs a bit hot.

57) TimeOut
One for the work-a-holic. A little application that tells you to take a break and stop what you are doing.

58) Wallsaver

Sets your screen saver as your wallpaper. A great little program to add a bit of movement to your desktop.

Tools

This section of essential applications is all about tools. These are tools to do specific task or just to give you information.

59) Apple Remote Desktop
One of Apples many programs that lets you work effectively on your network. This app lets you look in on a remote desktop and work with it remotely.

60) Battery Health
One of many tools used to help you find out how much juice is left in your Mac battery. A tool for any laptop.

61) BootCamp
Installing Windows on a Mac is never easier with BootCamp. A simple program that create a partition on you disk for installing windows.

62) BwanaDik
A menu bar monitoring tool for you network. Lets you find tons of info about you LAN and WAN in one easy to reach place.

63) Carbon Copy Cloner
For serious back ups you need somthing like Carbon Copy Cloner that can clone your entire drive quickly and easily.

64) Chmox

Chmox is a program that enables you to open .chm help files on your Mac. Chm files are not supported in preview.

65) Coconut Battery

A personal favourite of mine, this is another battery tool to monitor the health of your battery. I wish my laptop was run off coconuts.

66) DasBoot
DasBoot is a tool to create a diagnostic and repair kit for your computer to put on an iPod or flash drive.

67) Flip4Mac
The tool endorsed by Microsoft to help with those pesky .wmv files.

68) FreeDMG
This software creates drag and drop .dmg archives on the fly. Easy to use if you make a lot of disk images.

69) GeekTool
GeekTool is a preference pane module to show system logs, unix commands output, or images (i.e. from the internet) on your desktop.

70) Growl
A very useful tool that is used by many applications to show a clean way of displaying messages to you. Like the bubbles in Windows except a hell of a lot better.

71) Hardware Monitor
Hardware Monitor is designed to check the various pieces of hardware on you computer for faults and problems as well as give messages back to you.

72) Hex Fiend

Editing hex files cannot be easier with Hex Fiend.

73) HoudahGeo
HoudahGeo allows you to add Geo data to any image within the EXIF data. Helps you find your way around the world in your images.

74) iStat Menus
iStat Menus off a wide range of statistical analysis of your computer including various hardware bits. Their widget is one of my favouites.

75) Mac Pilot

This piece of software allows you to modify various parts of your computer that you would normally have to do through Terminal.

76) MacJanitor
This little app cleans up various system files and other bits and bobs to keep your computer running smoothly.

77) MainMenu
MainMenu is another piece of software to help you keep your computer running smoothly. This one has more advance options such as rebuilding the spotlight database.

78) MenuMeters
Another monitor piece of software but this one is designed to run within the menu bar.

79) Monolingual
Who needs to know French. Monolingual removes the languages from the computer that you do not need.

80) Operation
A project management tool that lets you organise your projects quickly and easily.

81) Parallels

Highly recommended virtualization software for virtualizing other OS’s.

82) Service Scrubber
Helps you organise and remove services from your menus (Name of App > Services)

83) SquidDan

Once a very popular proxy tool for sorting out your own proxy for handling your internet connection. Has become disused over time.

84) Stomp

Stomp those big files down to size. Helps reduce video files into more compressed formats.

85) SuperDuper
Another great backing up utility although its not fully Leopard compatible at the time of writing.

86) Synergy2

A very cool little application that lets you share a mouse and keyboard between one or more computers.

87) TinkerTool

A tool that lets you access more preferences the Apple has built into the OS.

88) VMWare
Another very good piece virtualization software to enable to to virtualize other OS’s.

Work

This final section ,and to round up, is going to be all about top programs for use at work.

89) Cha-Ching
A simple money program that helps you organise your accounts, budgets and finances.

90) Concept Draw
More of a group of programs that offer a wide range of applications such as flow charts to mind maps.

91) Filemaker
A cross platform database application, that has amazing power and potential.

92) iWork
Apples work application package to complement iLife, a good package if you want the Apple integration although lacks on some features.

93) Microsoft Office
Office is one of the most prominent packages on the Windows machines for work programs. Very good on Mac, although some small annoying bugs.

94) Money2
Another application for managing your accounts. The interface on this program is amazing.

95) Neooffice
An Open Office port to Mac, like Microsoft Office, except its free.

96) Nvu
A very powerful webpage editor for designing and creating websites. Just as good as Dreamweaver.

97) Omnigraffle
A brill program that offers a really cool way of creating presentation diagrams. Check out the Omni Groups offerings for all of the cool programs they have to offer.

98) Process
Another program by Jumsoft on this list that lets you plan and organise your projects.

99) Quicken

Another personal finance program, but this one feels more corporate and official.

100) Yojimbo

A cool little program that helps you organise all your bits of information, great if you end up filling up dashboard with millions of stickies.

Often you will receive an email message which you need to respond to or do something with. You can flag it in Mail (Command-Shift-L) but this doesn’t allow you to add any extra text to remind you what you actually wanted to do with the email.

If you use Stickies a lot, a great way to keep a reminder of the email is to just drag it to a sticky note. A link will automatically be created that takes you back to the exact message in Mail when you click it. 

If the message has a subject, that will be the link text. Otherwise it will be something likemessage:%2DC4DABB48-CEC9-4301-B56D-249C041CDBEA@mac.com%3E (which is the actual link — try pasting it into Safari). You can change the link text by selecting it and typing something new. However, if press delete at any time while writing the new text, everything you write from then on won’t be linked.

So if you keep a To Do list in Stickies, and you have to do something like “Reply to Bob”, you can now add a link to that To Do item so you don’t have to search through your inbox for the message.

Every year Apple rolls out another version of iLife. While iPhoto and GarageBand got major updates, some apps, like iWeb and iDVD, ended up being nearly forgotten about. Still, with updates come new features to figure out and a navigation that’s changed ever so slightly. 

We dived right into the new suite and came up with 20 tips and tricks that we hope will help you enjoy all the features the new iLife ‘09 has to offer.

iPhoto

1. Add geo-tagging info to your uploaded photos - By default, iPhoto doesn’t upload photos with location information to online sites. To share your location with the world, open the iPhoto preferences, choose Web and click on “include location information for published photos.”

2. See only photos that haven’t been imported - If you store images on your iPhone, but want them to be imported into iPhoto, you can show only the photos that need to be imported by checking the “Hide photos already imported box.”

3. The more you tag, the smarter iPhoto gets - Find a group of images with a certain person. As you tag the images, iPhoto will learn their face and will eventually ask if if they are the person you’re looking for. No word if iPhoto will help you find the droids you are looking for.

4. Multiple people in Faces - You can tag multiple people in a photo. Click on Faces and iPhoto will attempt to find all the faces. You can tag faces already found, then click on “add missing face” to create new face boxes. Adjust the size of the box, click done and add the name.

5. Hide photos - Got photos you want to keep, but they might be NSFW, or you have photos are just cluttering up an event. Use the Hide feature to make those photos disappear without deleting them. Select a photo you want to hide and cick on the red X Hide button. You can show all your hidden photos, select View>Hidden Photos in the menu bar.

6. Zoom in and out - Double left clicking zooms in to the map in iPhoto. Double right clicking zooms out. You can also use the slider in the lower right-hand corner.

7. Use Faces for animals - While not an official feature in iPhoto, we were able to get iPhoto to recognize the differences between two cats and train the app to recognize their faces. 

8. Moving Faces on the Corkboard -Be careful when moving faces around on the Corkboard. You can accidentally drop a person onto another person. It will erase your tags you’ve added to that person. A quick cmd-z will reverse the problem. 

9. Change a person’s Faces Key Photo - Open a person’s images in Faces. Right click on the image you want to be the key photo and choose “Make Key Photo” An easier method, drag your mouse over the key photo in the corkboard view and while the photos are changing, tap the space bar on the photo you would like to be the key photo, violá!

10. Empty the trash - The trash is usually filled with photos you don’t want, empty it for more space. Right click and delete those lame photos.

Key            Description

C            Boot from CD or DVD drive installed in the computer

D            Boot from the internal disk drive

N            Boot from the network server

R            Resets the display on PowerBooks and iBooks to factory settings

X            Boot into MacOS X

Shift-Option-Command-Delete    Ignore the configured boot device setting and scan for an alternate boot device

T            Put the computer into FireWire target mode so it can be used as a hard drive

Option            Have Open Firmware run the OS Picker app to choose a disk to boot from

Shift            Boot into Safe Mode

Command-V            Perform a verbose boot allowing you to see all the BSD output as the system boots

Command-S            Perform a boot into single user to peform some sort of system maintenance

Option-Command-O-F            Access Open Firmware directly without booting into an operating system

Option-Command-P-R            Reset Open Firmware’s NVRAM, also known as “zapping” the PRAM

Hold down mouse button       Eject any media, such as a CD, in the system’s removable drive