If there's one thing I love about modern Macs it's the screen real estate. Remember the original Mac? It had a nine-inch screen. That's right. The screen was smaller than an iPad's screen, and totally dwarfed by any Mac screen today.What can you do with all those extra screen pixels?If you're... Read More »

To be fair, a barrel of monkeys is probably not all that much fun. Fun to watch? Maybe. Otherwise, the monkeys probably cause more grief than anything else what with running around, throwing bodily waste, and slobbering on anyone who gets too close. That's not to mention all the noise.Colored Folder... Read More »

Grabbing screenshots on your Mac is an art. You need the right tool. You need a good touch. And you need to remember all the steps.The old fashioned way of grabbing screenshots was easy. Command+Shift+4 captures the whole screen and saves it as an image. Or, Control+Shift+Command+4 gives your mouse... Read More »

Remember MacPaint? That's the app that started a digital graphics revolution back in the last century. At one time MacPaint and MacWrite had a $195 price tag. Eventually MacPaint made its way to Claris (an Apple subsidiary), languished for many years, then died of natural causes and neglect in 1998.What... Read More »

You don't need Photoshop Elements to enhance photos on your Mac when iPhoto doesn't do the job. LiveQuartz gives you 13 photo effects tools for $1.99 (which works out to about 15-cents each).This handy app is part of a trend among Mac App Store apps. Plenty of features, low price. In this case, you... Read More »

Effects and filters for digital photos are a dime a dozen on the Mac. Sometimes less. Video is a different story. Apple gives users a few video effects in iMovie, but the price of video specialty effects gets expensive quickly.For the budget conscious, there's CartoonizerFX. It's an elegant Mac app... Read More »

My Mac bag of photo enhancement tools grew overnight. The latest is a simple, inexpensive photo tool called Urban Lightscape. It corrects under and overexposed parts of a photo to soften harsh shadows, or fix overexposed sections.Not many Mac apps are this simple to use to improve lighting conditions... Read More »

How I take photographs has changed in the digital age. With film and SLR, each shot had to be composed carefully (film was expensive), lighting and exposure had to be just so before clicking the shutter. 20 years of film photography netted me about 5,000 decent, memorable photos.The digital age changed... Read More »

Real photographers have a camera bag. Inside are all the gadgets and goodies photographers need to take better-than-average photos. Extra lenses. Lens cleaner. Light meter. And so on.Camera bags of the past were a necessity for photographers. Today, all those goodies and much more show up in a modern,... Read More »

What's the price of security these days? Paranoia. Every month we hear of new Mac malware. If you're connected to the internet, there's someone out there trying to get into your Mac.What about those who already have access to your Mac? Whether home or office, your Mac sitting on a desk is fair game... Read More »

Apple gives Mac users plenty of apps; tools that we seldom, if ever use. I don't remember the last time I used Grapher. And I've never used Podcast Capture or Publisher.What I prefer to do is scour the web for add on utilities; tools that do something I need done, and do it well.First on the... Read More »

Sharing photos is easy. Email. Facebook. Twitter. Flickr. And a dozen other online gallery options make it easy for Mac users to share photos. Most methods of sharing are free or inexpensive.Photo Album Free is a slickly packaged Mac app which lets you publish your photo albums online. It's not just... Read More »

Remember MacPaint? If you do, then you love today's painting and drawing apps for the Mac. They're cheap, easy to use, almost a dime a dozen, and make excellent learning tools. If you don't remember MacPaint then you're spoiled by the likes of PaintBoard.A few bucks gets you a simple, elegant Mac... Read More »

Apple is on to something with gestures. We use fingertip gestures on iPhone and iPad. Even the Mac's trackpad does gestures (with limited gestures on Apple's Magic Mouse).Here's a simple note-taking app that pops out from the side of your Mac's screen. Just swipe and it's there.SideWriter hides... Read More »