A look at a few of the reasons why its just so easy to just open your new Mac and start using it instead of fighting with your hardware and software to do what you want.

Macs look cool

Before you even turn your new Mac on you are going to notice this one, it looks great. Design is great, buttons are great, ports are great. Even the cords and other accessories are well designed.

Not as many viruses

With very few viruses that target Macs out in the wild, most users do not ever install anti virus programs. If you were on Windows you would be crazy to go online without a firewall and anti virus. Navigating your way through anti virus trial offers and what is the best anti virus forum threads isn’t exactly fun.

OSX and dock is where its at

Your OSX toolbar is going to be a welcome change to your cluttered Windows desktop, its all there right from the first time you turn it on. Windows 7 does give the OSX dock a run for its money though.

No need to install 50 million drivers

Your sound and wireless will just work. There won’t be a need to scour the internet for the correct drivers you will just be able to get online with the network of your choice at a few clicks.

Unobtrusive updates

Windows is renowned for prompting multiple update downloads the first time it is switched, most of them are for security purposes. Macs download updates automatically letting you get on with what you want to do with your Mac.

iLife

Standard on every Mac iLife lets its users play around with photos, music and video straight away.

Sweet Apps

Software support used to be a problem for Macs but the fact that you can now boot windows so easily this is no longer an issue. There are plenty of Mac exclusive apps you will be glad you can use as well.

It talks nice to your iPhone and iPod

Your iPhone and iPod will feel right at home on your Mac. Programs like Liveview utilise both Mac and iPhone, once again no crazy drivers to hunt down before it works.

Apple retail store

If you need help learning how to use your new Mac you can attend a workshop at an Apple Store, did we mention there is no charge. Or if you have a quick question you can just ask one of the staff. If you buy your Mac at an Apple store someone will even help you move all your old files over to your new Mac, handy!

If something goes wrong

Not that it often does but if something goes wrong you can take your Mac into a retail store where everyone will know exactly what your talking about. Customer support is excellent and anyone that works on your Mac will have worked on the exact same configuration before.

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Bamboo – Leopard

Camouflage – Leopard

Leopard Cirques

Autumn Leaves – Leopard

Blue Graffiti – Leopard

Pink Graffiti – Leopard

Iceberg Leopard

Leopard Leaf

Misty Mountains – Leopard

Snow Leopard

Leopard Scratching

Leopard Prowling

Leopard with Flurries

Starry Night – Leopard

Mountain Summit – Leopard

Summer Leaves – Leopard

Saree – Leopard

Silk – Leopard

Lake Tahoe – Leopard

The Great Wave off Kanagawa – Leopard

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Yep don’t think you need the full box set. You can just purchase Snow Leopard to upgrade from Tiger. Also if you bought your Mac on or after June 8th you can get Snow Leopard for $10 on the Apple up to date scheme.

2. Traveller clock

Go into Date and time preferences and you can check "Set time zone automatically using current location”. Perfect for those that travel around a lot with their Mac. Third party apps will also be able to take advantage of location support.

3. 64bit my Mac

If you want to boot into 64-bit mode hold the 6 and 4 keys on startup. 64bit programs will start up slightly faster in this mode.

4. All you Sync belong to us

You can now Sync your Google and Yahoo accounts via Address Book > Preferences, Accounts tab. iCal will now syncs with Google and Yahoo Calendar. Also of course it now supports Microsoft Exchange servers one of the biggest features of the upgrade.

5. Where is my Clean Install

Sounds like Apple had more than a few people call up and complain about where the #$@$ there data was. So you can no longer select the friendly sounding clean install instead you will have to go to Utilities > Disk Utility.

6. Check scanner and printer support

Not much more annoying than not being able to print so you might want to make sure your printer and scanner are supported before you upgrade. There is also a new auto update feature for printer drivers so when your printer is supported you should be set.

7. Boot camp buffed

You can now view your Windows files and vice versa your Mac files while in Windows. Handy although restricted to read only access for now (will keep an eye out for hacks around this).

8. Give me my hard drive back

Results vary but you will definitely claim back hard drive space by upgrading between 5-10GB.

9. Wardriving just got easier

When you go to select a wifi network you will now get a handy icon next to the connection name showing the signal strength.

10. Wake up

You can now wake servers when data is needed if they are in sleep mode.

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1. Firstly create a directory with a short name (will be easier to type into terminal) that only contains the file you wish to burn, remove .nfo files (if a torrent file) or previews/covers leaving just the main .avi file. I called mine “movie”.

2. Open terminal (click finder and type it in if you haven’t used it before).

3. Browse to the directory above movies, enter “cd /user/downloads” where the directory containing the files you are burning is /user/downloads/movie (cd simply stands for change directory). Terminal will then display that you are in that directory. If you get stuck here because you haven’t used terminal before comment below and I will help you out.

4. Create an iso of the movies folder, in terminal enter “hdiutil makehybrid -o isofilename movie/” and your .iso will be created from the files in the folder movie. The progress will be displayed in terminal (doesn’t take long).

5. Enter your cd or DVD into the drive and burn using “hdiutil burn isofilename.iso” (while still in the same directory, which you will be if you follow the steps above). You will not be given the option of what speed to burn the disc at (in most cases this fastest setting is fine),  status will again be displayed in terminal while burning and verifying the disc.

6. Once burned you can delete isofilename.iso if you don’t plan on making any more copies.

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When your in a hurry and just need to share some files quickly between your Windows 7 PC and Mac there is not better way than this 3 step process.

Step 1:On your Mac. Go to Finder, Click “Go” and select “Connect to Server”.

Step 2: On your Apple Mac, under server address type in “smb://” followed by your IP address for your Windows 7 PC, example smb://192.6.1.100

Step 3: You will be prompted to enter your Windows 7 username and password, do so and you will be connected and asked which drive you would like to mount.

Troubleshooting: If you can’t see any files or folders ensure that they are visible on your Windows 7 PC under “Network” and your computer name in explorer. To share a folder in Windows 7 just right click it and select “share with”.

There is no need to restart your Mac for sharing to begin.

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10th – Battle For Westnoth

Build up a great army, gradually turning raw recruits into hardened veterans. In later games, recall your toughest warriors and form a deadly host against whom none can stand! Choose units from a large pool of specialists, and hand-pick a force with the right strengths to fight well on different terrains against all manner of opposition.

9th – Scorched 3D

Learning how to play is easy, just point the turret, adjust power and trajectory, select a weapon – and shoot! Manage your inventory of weapons with the prize money you can win during each round of combat. Learn the basic controls using the tutorial mode, or set up your own game by customizing dozens of economy and environmental conditions to your liking, or simply play online immediately at one of the various public servers.

8th – Chopper

Chopper is an action-packed, side-scrolling helicopter game. Complete your mission, and return to base, while avoiding enemy fire from tanks, bazooka-wielding mad men, and jets.

7th – Sauerbraten (Cube 2)

Free single and multi player 1st person shooter game with some satisfying fast old school game play. A large variety of game play modes from classic SP to fast 1 on 1 MP and objective based team play, with a great variety of original maps to play on.

6th – Freedoom

This game is an open source version of Doom. Enjoy a jam-packed action of zombie-killing madness.

5th – Neverball

Tilt the floor to roll a ball through an obstacle course before time runs out. Neverball is part puzzle game, part action game, and entirely a test of skill.

4th – Quinn

Quinn is an arcade-style tetromino puzzle game written and designed specifically for Mac OS X.  It features a clean, elegant user interface, beautiful graphics, and smooth, subtle animations for fluid gameplay.  Instead of reinventing the game with yet another variation of the rules, the goal of Quinn is to combine the simplicity of the original idea with the genuine Mac experience for perfect user enjoyment.

3rd – Glest

Glest is a free 3D real-time strategy game, where you control the armies of two different factions: Tech, which is mainly composed of warriors and mechanical devices, and Magic, that prefers mages and summoned creatures in the battlefield.

2nd – FreeCiv

Freeciv is a Free and Open Source empire-building strategy game inspired by the history of human civilization. The game commences in prehistory and your mission is to lead your tribe from the stone age to the space age.

1st – PlaneShift

PlaneShift is a Role Playing Game immersed into a 3D virtual fantasy world which is FULLY FREE to play. Fully free means you will have no surprises of premium content which will limit your game play or unbalance the game. There are no limitations in skills, ranks, abilities, items you can gain with your free account.

Enjoy!

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All the new features can be found here.

The major new feature is the ability to sync with a Microsoft Exchange server.

Apple is selling it as a refined version with lots of little improvements to things like startup times, finder and file sharing.

Check out the link for the full list of refinements.

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Supporting PHP, ROR and Python this is a serious tool. Although I have only used it for basic HTML, CSS editing I found that a breeze with helpful hints and colour coding of syntax. It’s going to be around for the long run as they just secured $7.8 Million in Funding. Its 100% free and monetises via its web app hosting platform.

GIMP

An alternative to Photoshop its completely open source and has a plug-in available that converts the layout closer to Photoshop for an easy learning curve. A great way for aspiring web designers to start honing there skills.

Handbrake

For converting your video files into a web friendly format you cannot go past this one.

Caliper Project

For pixel perfect designs you need a simple measurement tool like Caliper.

MAMP: Mac – Apache – MySQL – PHP

The essential coding environment just a few clicks away :>.

Cyberduck

FTP browser that also supports, SFTP, WebDAV, Cloud Files & Amazon S3.

Dashalytics

Google Analytics on your Dashboard.

Sequel Pro

MySQL database management app.

Dropbox

File sharing the way it should be :>. Great if you are often moving between the office, your home Mac and your MacBook.

Paparazzi!

A tiny app that makes screenshots of websites.

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