Yes, I know…we all know how much I love my Mac. I just realized that it has now been two years since I bought the MacPro desktop, and in January it will be two years that I’ve had my 13″ MacBook first generation unibody. And I haven’t looked back once with any regrets. The ONLY thing I need to pull the Toshiba PC out for is to do my taxes, and only because I just don’t want to do my taxes online because they are a bit complicated and I’d need to manually transfer all of my capital cost allowance items over and figure out depreciation on them. It’s just easier to fight with the PC once a year on that front. I keep hoping someone will develop a Mac version of Canadian tax software, but it’s not the end of the world if they don’t. But it’s funny now. Every time I do open up the PC for some reason, I am so annoyed by how long it takes to get itself moving. Windows is really, really, slow. I suppose that’s partly because it has to shut itself down every time and I never shut my Mac down. The only time the Mac ever gets completely shut down is if I am doing a software update, and those are so infrequent that it’s not really even on the radar screen. The Macbook just gets shut at night, and when I open the cover the next day, everything is exactly as I left it the moment the cover opens. No long startup, no painful waking from hibernation mode. Just blink and we’re going again. The desktop is set to go into sleep mode at midnight every day, but all it takes is a touch on any key on the keyboard and it’s instantly awake and ready to go. No long waits, no “go make a coffee while the computer gets going again”.
I love my Mac!
But that wasn’t what this was all about. This is a post about some software I picked up. There is a site called MacUpdates that I love. It’s a Mac and iPhone software download website, started in the late-1990s. MacUpdate is updated every day, listing the newest updates and releases of Macintosh software for the Mac OS X and iPhone operating systems. The website is free to use although they do have a membership service that offers expanded services such as email notifications, watch lists, daily email newsletters, and the ability to rate and review software, and discounts on software sales through their MacUpdate Promo website. There is also a MacUpdate Desktop application that enables members to automatically update all of the software on their Mac, leveraging the large MacUpdate software database.
It’s the promo website that is the real kicker! It provides a deal a day (usually only valid for 24 hours) on Mac software; often 40% off. And best of all, three or four times a year they offer promo bundles at insanely reduced pricing. There are usually 10 or so software programs and the bundle sells for about 90% off of the combined program values. OK, so that’s great if you want them all, but you never do. So you need to poke through and decide if there is enough in there to make it worthwhile. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. This month’s was a no-brainer for me.
The current software bundle includes:
Toast Titanium – List price $100.00
Toast is a useful program that I’ve ‘ahem’ downloaded and used a lot. It’s a powerful disk burning program for backing up, creating DVD’s, CD’s, etc. True, I don’t burn as many discs as I once did, but it’s still a very useful program for those times when I want to backup data (once a month) for archiving photos etc. It’s one of the best all around burning programs I’ve come across. It also allows you to rip music from LP’s and transfer them to mp3’s, music tagging isn’t too bad…etc..
So this alone was worth it to me….and now I’m ‘legal’.
My Living Desktop – List price – $35.00
This is cool! This is my favourite piece of software to come out of this bundle. Everyone likes a pretty background and an interesting screen saver, right? But other than using a slideshow function, it’s pretty static. How about a background that is a video? Flowing water, gentle waves on a beach with a sunset in the background, an ocean tidepool with fish swimming, an underwater reef ecosystem with colourful aquatic life zipping around. All real video footage, not animated.
Knwo what else is cool? It appears that you can actually use your own video as long as it is in .mov format and more than 15 seconds in length!
FABULOUS! I LOVE this!
Live Interior 3D Standard – List Price $50.00
OK, I don’t have a lot of use for this, but others might. We already did our kitchen last year, and the bathroom is on the horizon, so maybe. But I think this is probably for others. The description follows:
Do you periodically get an itch to change your surroundings? Or does that faded brown sofa from the seventies just not do it for you anymore? Maybe you just want to try your hand at the art of home design. The award-winning Live Interior 3D can save you a heap of time, money, and sweat by giving you all of the tools necessary for designing the interior of your home and viewing it in virtual reality before setting off for your local paint or furniture store.
Maybe, We’ll see.
ShareTool – List price – $27.00 for 2 licenses (required)
Ah, now this I am interested in. I use MobileMe and love it, but sometimes I need a file that’s on the other computer and I did not put onto MobilMe. It would be so nice to be able to “easily” connect with the home computer remotely and grab what I need on any drive (I have about 7 hard drives attached to the desktop). This program claims to make that possible with ease. The only problem is that it’s hard to test when at home since both computers connect to my home wireless network. Maybe if I turn it off and hardwire the Macbook in I can test it and see how it works. But I’m hopeful on this one.
MindNode Pro List Price – $25.00
I’d be more interested in this one if I didn’t already have MyThoughts, which does the same thing but is a bit more advanced with a huge database of images to add to your mind map. It’s also significantly less expensive than MyThoughts though. Curio is another fabulous program that I’m interested in, it takes mind mapping and adds a whole other dimension to it. Still, MindNode a nice and simple program for mental flow charts.
Espionage – List Price – $35.00
Hmm, not sure if this is really of interest to me, but I can certainly see it’s value if you are in a setting where your computer is accessible to others. It is a program that allows you to password protect files, folders, even emails and chat history without blocking program access. It says that “many programs can inadvertently store valuable private information without encrypting it” So I suppose if you want to block access to certain things from certain people you can use this for encryption or password protection. Not really of interest to me though. So that one is a bust.
Voila – List Price – $30.00
OK, this is a nifty little program.
Voila can capture any shape of your choice, such as Circular, Polygonal, Triangular, or Freehand objects. Alongside these unusual shapes, you’ve also got standard capture tool options such as Menu Capture, Fullscreen Capture, Object Capture, Rectangular Capture and a Timed Capture as well. A lot of effort has gone into integration with other image applications and sites and so you can send and open files from iPhoto and Flickr. In addition, Voila is integrated with Mail if you want to send-off your screen grabs immediately.
Voila features all the standard options you expect from a decent screen capture tool, including annotation tools that allow you to add text, arrows, lines, crop and even add watermarks. There are a few filters too to give screen shots a cooler look including blurred, torn and framed edges. Exporting can be done to PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PDF, GIF and BMP formats.
That’s definitely useful!
Concentrate – List Price – $30.00
Concentrate helps you work and study more productively by eliminating distractions. To start, create an activity (design, study, write, etc) and choose actions (shown below) to run every time you concentrate. When ready, just click “concentrate.” All your distractions will disappear and a timer will appear to help you stay focused.
That would have been useful when I was trying to write my thesis! Seriously though, I can see a use for this. When you are working on the computer and emails come in, chat requests, etc…it’s easy to divert your focus away from what you are trying to finish up. On the flip side, one could just close the offending distraction programs and work only in what needs to be worked in.
Nope, don’t think I’ll be using this one anytime soon.
Cashculator – List Price – $30.00
A little cash flow tracking program for personal finance. Interesting, but we use iBank. Doesn’t matter how good the program is, if you don’t stay on top of it it’s all useless. But I can say that the easier a program is to use, the more likely it is to be used. It doesn’t connect to financial institutions though, and I always download bank statements into iBank. So this is an interesting application, but not for us for home use. Might be useful for business expenses or something though.
Vitamin-R – List Price – 20 Euros (~$30.00)
Again, something that would be of value to a grad student, or anyone working on a major project. It breaks projects down into chunks and then forcing you to concentrate on one task while keeping distractions at bay. Interesting, not sure if I would have much use for it personally, but I’ll play with it. MacWorld does give it a 4.5 out of 5 rating though.
Compartments – List Price – $25.00
Ah, now I’m interested in this one! I’ve often started a home inventory for insurance purposes, but it always gets unwieldy and I can’t decide how to best organize the information. this little gem will hopefully make it happen. And, best of all, it syncs with MobileMe! It gets rave reviews for ease and intuitiveness.
A brand new, gorgeous, fast, easy-to-use home inventory application.Every household should keep a complete inventory with photos to prove loss after a catastrophic event. Compartments helps you remember where all of your stuff is. Quickly catalog everything you own: enter dozens of items in seconds, all in one dialog box, with Quick Add, and apply bulk changes with Quick Apply. One-click printable inventory reports that can be printed or saved as a PDF, to be used in the case of disaster. Organize your things with auto-updating smart collections. One-click customizable inventory reports to distribute to your insurance company in case of disaster or theft.Spend minutes, not hours, entering your information: Quick Add and Quick Apply allow you to enter and edit many items at once.
WarrantyGuard keeps track of warranty expiration dates and necessary warranty info, including receipts and serial numbers. Backup and sync via MobileMe or Dropbox keeps your data safe even if your computer is lost or stolen.
Organize your items by location and with tags into smart, auto-updating collections.
Yup, I think this one is a winner!
Get Backup Pro – List Price – $40.00
I’m sold on Time Machine, it has saved my music archives (20,000+ mp3’s) twice, and it’s rescued a few other important things for me. Since “going Mac” I’ve not had a catastrophic loss of any kind. So I’ll have to look at this one a bit closer to see why one would want this in lieu of Time Machine, which is built into the MacOS.
Time Machine creates a backup that is not bootable, so in the event of a catastrophic failure, you still have to install the operating system again before you do an install. Not exactly something that happens with any regularity on a Mac…on a PC…definitely! Time Machine does incremental backups hourly, although there are a few little applications out there that let you change that, but GetBackup Pro lets you schedule the backups. It also lets you split archives and create separate backup projects.
They provide a comparison of Time Machine and GetBackupPro for information.
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So, roughly $450 worth of software for $50.00. Of that, I will definitely use 5, and possibly another two. So even at using half of the programs in the bundle it was a fabulous deal. Mac software is always a good deal, but this was an amazing deal!
I love my Mac!
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