| 21 August 2009
Adobe CS4 - Adobe's products have always been award winning applications. I've been using Adobes products since Adobe PhotoShop version 1.0 and they were excellent products in their day. Today's version of PhotoShop CS4 is no different.
Aperture 2 - Aperture is for those in professional or semi professional photography who don't need a fully blown image editting application. Aperture imports RAW images and allows colour correction and minor editting in image BIT sizes larger than 24BIT, then exports in a variety of formats.
CaptureOne Pro 4 - CaptureOne's major draw card is that it does live-tethering (for supported cameras including very expensive medium-format digital camera-backs), shooting from camera directly to computer and supports the editting of images from tethered, dynamic or static locations.
Carbon Copy Cloner 3.3 - This is and always has been the best tool for backing up a workstations system boot-drive on Macintosh OSX since OSX first emerged on the market, when no other tool existed for making a perfectly bootable backup of a live operating system.
FileMaker Pro 10 - Fantastic database software. I've been using FileMaker since it was in version 3. The first commercial use I had for FileMaker was to build a streamline edittor that would add Quark-Tags to any database output to create thousands of business cards for Ford Motor Company Dealerships.
Firefox 3.5.6 - For some internet users Firefox will be more appealing and usefull than Safari. I personally use both, but when I have a problem site using Safari – usually the same site will work in FireFox. Firefox's third party achitecture allows you to use a large array of Firefox plugins.
Flip4Mac 2.20.49 - To get the many computer Windows format movies playing on your Mac, you will need Flip4Mac. Flip4Mac is especially good at decoding Microsofts Codecs and has been for some time. The only Microsoft Codecs it doesn't decode is Microsoft Windows Media 10+.
Google Earth 5.0 - A free fantastic application. GoogleEarth uses millions of satellite photos from many satellites and stitches them up almost seamlessly and as you zoom. The application also allows you to search addresses and get terrain as well as other information as overlays on the satellite photos.
Google SketchUp 7 - An excellent free 3D modelling application that allows you to build three dimensional objects that can be exported to other applications including 3D animation and rendering applications. Best of all is that this application is has a free and a fully featured Pro Version.
iLife '09 - This is a software bundle containing many cool applications. One of my favourite would have to be Garage Band '09. Garage Band has got over 100 instuments that you can play using a midi interfaced with a physical musical instument or using your computers keyboard or a microphone.
LittleSnitch 2 - This OSX application is a must for those who are security conscience, it catches applications trying to contact another computer, and it gives the user the option to allow or disallow this action. This application is especially good if your trying new applications from unknown companies.
MenuMeters 1.3 - MenuMeters is an OSX menu-bar application that displays network traffic stats, used/free computer memory usage totals, processor(s) usage as well as hard drive usage. It's as usefull as a car dashboard with odometer and rev-counter in a car.
Onyx 2.0.4 - Onyx is a very usefull utility that can check your hard-drive and do UNIX CRONS at the push of a button. Onyx can clean-out system and internet cache. If your Mac is sluggish, sick or if you just like keeping your Mac in tune then this application is a must.
Perian 1.1.4 - If you ever have a use for opening files with the FLV extension as well as many other media file types then you must install this codec that comes with a preference pane in your System Preferences. Perian also decodes many other audio and video codecs.
QuarkXPress 8.1 - I've been using QuarkXPress for many years (since version 3.1). In my own mind it is the best layout application available for the printing industry. The colour separation from QuarkXPress has always been more advanced than its competitors and has it's typogrphical control.
RealPlayer 11 - Only RealPlayer will play RAM files and many other formats that can only be played by RealPlayer as well as common file types. It also comes with RealPlayerDowloader which allows you to download flash FLV files from web sites like YouTube for offline viewing.
Sapphire 1 - This is a plugin that is installed inside of Apple Front Row. Apple Front Row allows you to do things like add external hard drive(s) as sources of Movie files. This means you can have an almost endless amount of movies at your fingertips using Apple Front Row.
ScreenFlow 2.0 - ScreenFlow is an OSX Screen Recording Application and is a new application on the market – and it is powerfully coded into a small application that does more that it's competitors. Capturing your the computer workflow business into movie format is just perfect for preparing temps.
Skype 2.8.0 - Skype has got to be the best computer telecommunications software applications available. Not only can you have free computer-to-computer text/audio/video chats, but you can also use computer to telephone features like calling/receiving landlines/mobiles phones.
TextWrangler 3.0 - If you have to do some text editting this application is free and more featured than Apple TextEdit. TextWrangleris great for hand coding and editting web pages, it colour codes the objects in the syntax and plugs in to Yummy FTP and other good FTP applications.
Toast Titanium 10.0 - Toast Titanium is a must if you have to burn different formats of CD/DVD to that of Apple's Disc Burner. As well as burning ISO Format, Toast Titanium can burn PC or MAC discs. It can burn DVD Movies, High Quality Audio CD's and burn MP3 CD's easily.
VLC 1.0.1 - VLC has finally released version 1 of their famous application existing on MAC, WINDOWS and LINUX computers around the world. VLC has many video/audio codecs built into it. VLC can play almost everything that Apple QuickTime can play plus it can play DivX, AVI, MPEG 1/2/3/4 and WMV.
