Apr 27
Taking music from your iPod is difficult, if, like me, you have several macs, but only one iPod. That was the case until Senuti stepped in to my life.
Over 4 years or so, I have bought many songs from iTunes across a few different mac computers, meaning that I have a great iPod full of songs and videos, but if I were to lose it, it would cost me a lot of money and time to go around all my computers and get all the music back on to a new ipod.
Well, Senuti allows you to do something that Apple it seems does not - to download your iTunes library to any computer. Now dont get me wrong, I understand that some people will use this for naughty things, for people like myself that have genuinely bought songs from Apple and genuinely need to take a backip, its perfect.
The program itself is so simple to use. Install, get your iPod ready and then transfer the tracks you need a backup of - and thats it.
Like software such as MindNode, Senuti has one simple task and does it extremely well, which makes life beautiful for its users.
Should you use Senuit to back up your ITunes library on your Mac? Yes, most definitely, but please dont do it for illegal reasons.
Apr 15
One of my favourite open source mac applications is Seashore.
An image editing program that is now my favoured choice for basic image manipulation, it doesn’t require X11 like Gimp does, which makes it the easy option for installing and getting going.
I have added it to a few of my macs over the past year or so and on my recent G5 iMac computer, I decided that this will be the only image editor that I will use. I am trying to keep this computer as simple as possible when it comes to software with only iWork 08 as a commercial package. Seashore helps me to do that along with other software for different jobs.
Regarding the actual program itself, its very simple in operation and acts like most other image editing packages that you have used over the years. It is never going to be a photoshop or fireworks beater, and I wouldn’t expect people to think it is, but its the best alternative to those packages.
If you are only editing images for use on normal (ie non-intensive graphic) sites, then its absolutely perfect and a great addition to your apple mac. I have used it for editing on a few of my sites recently and the results are professional, with images created in the same time that I could have created them in fireworks, which has been my choice over the past 4 years now.
On the fireworks point, I am still using a 2004 version which is obviously non-intel, which means its slow and its now time for an upgrade to Adobe CS3 - or is it? With the features abundant in Seashore, it has helped me to put off that decision and to be honest, I will probably not even upgrade now!
So thank you Seashore for saving me having to spend a few hundred pounds. I think I will go and celebrate with a few extra beers 