The Independent Guide to the Mac

Just because you’ve bought a Mac, it doesn’t mean that you are only limited to applications specifically built for the Mac. By using emulation software or Boot Camp, you can turn your Intel Mac into a Windows PC to run Windows software. Why would you want to do that? Because regardless of how wide the range of software you can run on the Mac might be, there are some notable exceptions that are PC only. And besides, you may just want to test a website you’ve designed on both platforms. Much as you may love your Mac, there may be times when you have to run an application that is only available for Windows. Perhaps this is because you still need tools like Visio and Access that simply don’t run on…

There’s a third option if you want to run Windows applications within Mac OS X, and it’s very cheap – you don’t even have to pay for a copy of Windows. That’s because the applications designed to run under Windows are recompiled to run natively under OS X. This is achieved thanks to Wine, a project that allows Unix-like operating systems such as OS X to execute Windows applications via the X Window System. Install discs for OS X also contain X11 to provide this X Window System, so all you need is a copy of Wine. We should state clearly that the Wine system, originally designed to allow Windows applications to run under Linux, should be regarded at best as a beta software experience; it’s not usually for the faint-hearted. There…

The Mac is the computer of choice for many professional designers. In part this is because in the earliest days it was the only affordable machine to sport a graphical interface controlled by a mouse, and because it sported an excellent range of creative software. Today that’s also true of the PC, but the Mac has nonetheless remained a key choice for arty pros. A lot of that is thanks to the continued existence of Creative Suite on the platform. But what exactly is it, and what does it do? ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE 4 If one company – other than Apple – can be said to have ensured the continued production of Macs, it’s Adobe. As the owner of Photoshop and page layout application InDesign, it has ensured a healthy stream of…

All new Macs ship with iWeb, a sophisticated tool for developing personal websites. The results are impressive, and by calling on features that form part of the .Mac hosting service, it can perform some pretty cool tricks, rivalling applications many times its price. However, it’s not entirely friendly, and getting the best out of it can require jumping through some hoops. Fortunately, there is an alternative in the form of RapidWeaver, an approachable, powerful, template-based designer for everyone. Unless you want to learn a powerful, complex tool like Adobe Dreamweaver, the best tool for consumer web design on the Mac is Real Mac Software’s RapidWeaver. It may have a similar name as Adobe’s highend software, and it may perform the same function – designing pages for the web – but that…

Like sending text messages on your mobile, instant messaging is a convenient way of having a conversation with a friend or colleague over the course of a day. Apple bundles an instant messaging client, iChat, with Mac OS X. This allows you to chat, have voice conversations, and even video conferences, but only with people on the Aim network. If you want to talk to friends on Yahoo! or MSN, you’ll need to look further afield. Luckily there is a variety of clients available, so we take a look at the options available to you. Instant messaging, once the preserve of teenagers who couldn’t bear to be out of contact with one another for more than a few minutes at a time, is fast becoming a seriously useful tool for a…

The Internet is alive with audio and video content, with everything from teenagers miming to their favourite tracks on YouTube to the latest news bulletins available for viewing. Yet to the uninitiated, watching streaming content can be complex process. It needn’t be, though. With the help of a few additional applications and plug-ins watching video, whether it is streamed or downloaded, is a simple as doing anything else on your Mac. Watching video on the Internet used to be a frustrating experience. Postage stampsized clips, poor video and audio quality, and long download times made it a pastime for only those with bags of patience to spare. Add to that the various different formats for viewing downloads and streaming content and its little wonder that for most of the web’s lifetime…