Mac Must Knows

With Apple announcing that the iPhone would be coming to Canada I got very excited.

Finally the coolest phone of the market would make its debut here. Thousands of people were excited to get their hands on the phone that had been acclaimed one of the greatest inventions of 2007.

But the excitement would only last so long.

Rogers will be the carrier for the iPhone in Canada... the only carrier.

They have decided to obviously take advantage of the fact they will be the only providers by jacking up the price, way beyond what it has been set in other countries. People here have been astonished and quite pissed off to say the least.

In a step to fight back against unfair prices to Canadians, a petition has been created that will be delivered to Rogers on the day of the launch.

At this moment the number of people who have signed is 47,344! Do your part too by signing the petition.

You can sign it here or at: http://www.ruinediphone.com/

Get your friends and family to sign as well, the more the better!

Its time to fight back.

System Preferences does not only help modify programs that came with your computer, it also works with programs you've installed.

If an application has it's own spot in system preferences it most likely runs on startup and is using up power.

It is a good idea to keep an eye on what you have installed. Check the "Other" section for things you don't use very much.

Whatever you don't use, get rid of. These types of Apps usually come with Uninstallers that will do the job. Run the Uninstaller to remove the program.

Now in the unfortunate event where the Uninstaller is lost you can do 1 of 3 things:

1. Download the program again and see if it comes with an Uninstaller.
2. Invest a bit of money in a program like AppZapper. It allows you to properly remove any plugins, programs or special settings you have on your computer.
3. Leave it alone.

This may not sound like much, but doing this can really lessen the load on your computer.

"10 Ways To Speed Up Your Mac": Clean Useless Startup Items

When you log on to your computer, it has a few programs that it loads as soon as it starts.

The more it has to load, the longer it will take to load. You can cut down the load time by removing some of these startup items.

To do this go to:

System Preferences --> Accounts --> (Click the account you want to clean) --> Login Items

There you can find a list of Applications that launch at the start.

Look through them to see which ones you don't need.

When you find one you want to remove click it to highlight it and click the minus button.

Do this with all the accounts you want. This will make your computer start and run faster!

Anyone with tons of applications will know how hard it is to keep things up to date.

Some applications will check for updates when you run them, but others don't. This means to know when updates come out you have to keep checking back to their website.

Doing this means you'll always have the latest updates... but it's also a waste of time.

So how can we check ALL our apps for the latest updates... all at once.

Well recently I stumbled across a widget that does this for you.

It's called "App Update". It finds all the latest updates for your apps with a click. App Update does this by checking for the latest version on different sites. These sites keep track of the application releases and let you know if you have the newest releases.

You can set it to check for you whenever you want and however often you want. You can customize it down to how it looks for each app.

It's a great little widget that makes updating applications quick and easy.

If you like that you will also want to give Widget Update a try. Exact same thing... but for widgets.

Both great little widgets definitely worth taking a look at.

Here are the websites.

App Update: http://retiredblog.gkaindl.com/downloads/app-update/

Widget Update: http://retiredblog.gkaindl.com/downloads/widget-update/

Enjoy!

If you've used a computer you probably have used instant messaging.

Instant messaging is great for chatting with all your friends online.

When it comes to clients for instant messaging there are tons for Windows but few for Mac.

The big one many people used is "Windows Live Messenger". On Windows it's great... on Mac, not so much.

If you are used to "Windows Live Messenger" and like it's features then you may want to try aMsn.

The way it is set up is much more similar to Windows Live Messenger. It also has most of the features of Live Messenger like video and audio chat.

Perfect, so what's the downside?

Well aMsn does not perform as well as Adium. There is yet to be a stable release of it to come out. Updates for aMsn are also much less frequent so if you have a problem you need to switch or wait a while.

The next option is the one I use. It's called Adium.

Adium is truly a Mac instant messenger. It is very similar to iChat without the Video and Audio chat.

This sucks because you can't use the lovely iSight camera that comes with all (other then the mini and pro) Macs.

On the bright side though, Adium is much more stable, gets more updates, and is the MOST customizable instant messenger client out there for Mac.

You can change almost everything about it. The colors, the emoticons, the message styles, the window styles, the icons... almost everything.

Their site has plugins, emoticons, sound sets, service icons, status icons, apple scripts, message styles, window styles, dock icons and other things.

You can download hundreds of things to customize Adium and make it however you want.

The only edge aMsn has on Adium is the Video and Audio chat. Although these are really cool features to have I would say, survive without them for now. Adium is currently working on bringing Audio and Video chat to Adium. It shouldn't be long so keep your ears open.

So there you have it, aMsn and Adium. Both great, I'll leave it up to you to decide.

Adiums Website: http://adiumx.com/

aMsn Website: http://www.amsn-project.net/index.php

Enjoy!

If you are a big mac fan, you've most likely seen the Ads.

Mac vs PC.

If you haven't you can find them on Youtube, they're pretty good.

I was just looking around though and found that there's UK ads that are different from the ones played in the U.S and Canada.

I thought this was kind of cool.

If your interested you can see them here: