Top 10 Mac Apps

Everybody’s got their own Top 10 Mac apps list, and what with my brother recently taking purchase of his first Mac I thought it would be handy for me to do a list of what apps I would recommend for him.

Adium X – Chat client that supports multiple networks and is also highly customizable.

QuickSilver – With QuickSilver and Spotlight you’ll rarely use the dock anymore.

NewsFire – Stylish and functional news reader. (I personally love the Smart Feeds feature)

Synergy – Puts three buttons to control iTunes in your menubar as well as providing you with visual feedback about the currently playing tune, also provides global hotkeys for iTunes.

Flickr Export – Plugin for iPhoto 4 and later which provides a direct export interface to Flickr.com

VLC – Video player for watching…. anything!

Acquisition – You know… handy whenever you need to download that very very popular Linux distribution.

Sentui – For getting songs off your iPod. Handy if your songs are on your iPod, but you forgot to back them up when upgrading computer (here speaks the voice of experience!)

StuffIt Expander – I’m sure it used to be built into Mac OS X, but not any longer. Get it here for free.

Flip4Mac – Industry first product offering that allows you to play Windows Media directly in your QuickTime Player.

Hello, my name is John and I’m an Apple Fanatic

I had a feeling I may have been a little fanatical already, but I didn’t realise just how much until I read this pretty interesting article today about Apple Fanatics which has a funny piece about how to tell if you’re an Apple fanatic…. I took the test.

You believe that Apple is superior and have tried to convert people.
For sure, I’m currently trying to convert my whole family to Mac OS X. So far my brother has seen the light and is expecting his first Mac (MacBook Pro) next week. I guarantee he’ll never look back.

You start your day by reading Apple blogs.
Yep. I have my NewsFire set up for a smart feed called ‘Apple Matters’ which collects feeds from myapplemenu and applematters Then I’ve got another smart feed called ‘Mac Rumors’ which collects feeds from thinksecret and macruomors (although I could probably do without macrumors as it generally relays thinksecret.)

You consider Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs your god.
Well, I wouldn’t say he’s my god, but he’s surely something special.

You refuse to throw away your old Mac computers and/or collect vintage Macs and other Apple paraphernalia.
I’m only on my second Mac so far. My son has my old iMac G4 in bedroom, while I have the Mac Mini with 23″ Apple Cinema Display in the living room. I know for a fact that I’ll keep the iMac g4 forever, and when I replace the Mac Mini (once the new intel macs are fairly stable) I’ll probably have a go at trying to set the Mac Mini as some sort of media center thing. I have a 20GB iPod, an iPod Shuffle and a 1GB black iPod nano. I also have various other Apple accessories such as the Mighty Mouse, wireless Apple Pro keyboard and mouse and Airport Express. Oh, and a really cool dashboard mouse-mat.

You get annoyed with how the media portrays Mac fanatics.
Um, well no not really. I don’t care how they portray us

This isn’t on the list, but I’m an avid Mac spotter when watching TV shows and films: “look darling, they’re using a G5 Powermac!!”

However:
I do not have a higher household income.
I have never received a graduate degree.
I am not self-employed.
I don’t live in California or Massachusetts or in big cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, but I am in suburb of Glasgow

Click, Roll, Squeeze and Scroll

Just recently I’ve dug my Mighty Mouse back out of the drawer it was in and plugged it in again. I say plugged it in because Apple still haven’t made this mouse wireless yet. The swines! Straight away I notice how light it is compared to the bluetooth Apple Pro mouse I normally use and I also notice how good it is to have that little ball for scrolling. I didn’t realise it, but I miss that little scroll ball. Apple have the mouse set up so that clicking the ball invokes the dashboard, and squeezing the sides invokes expose, but squeezing isn’t a natural movement to do with your mouse, and I rarely use my dashboard to be honest. Expose on the other hand is brilliant and I use it all the time, so I’ve reversed these two actions, then disabled the squeeze in my system preferences.
However I’m elaborating too much here, I wanted to share a little tip I found out today after having a few problems with the scroll ball. You see I noticed I could scroll down the way, but not up the way. This was weird in itself because surely you would think if there was a problem scrolling one way there would also be a problem scrolling the other way, but apparently not. After a quick Google search I discovered lots of others were having the same problem. Some could scroll up, but not down and vice versa.

The solution:
Press down firmly on your ball and rotate it in both directions (fnar, fnar!)
I find it easier to turn the mouse over and press the ball against the mousepad and drag the mouse up and down on the pad.
I can only assume that there’s some dirt and crap getting down there clogging something up. No doubt after another couple of weeks I’ll have to preform the turn, press and drag maneuver again.