The iPad has certainly created a lot of buzz over the past couple of months, and with that buzz comes the positive and the negative. Tech pundits and tech critics alike all weigh in, and it’s important to remember that this happens with every single new product that Apple has ever released. I enjoyed this article a lot, and I suspect you will too.
Enjoy!

Editor’s Note: This article is a repost from asktog.com. Bookmark them, if you’re not already following their site, asktog.com is a great resource.

For those of us around Apple for the launch of the 1984 Mac, things are awfully familiar.

In bringing that original Mac to market, Steve hit on a formula that worked for him. He keeps repeating it, and it seems to get better every time. It worked for the iPhone, and it worked for the iPad, too. Here are the necessary elements.

Small team

The first iteration of any new Apple product brought to market by Steve tends to look, at the onset, somewhat primitive. The iPhone, for example, was lacking such basics as cut-and-paste, the ability to search for a contact, and sported only a tiny handful of apps with none others available. The original Mac, likewise, shipped with a memo maker, a drawing program, and a painting program. Few others existed at launch.

Why so little on launch day? Because the Mac and the iPhone were both created by a tiny group of intensely-focussed young people working in extreme secrecy. The iPad was, too, but in its case, some hundred and sixty thousand apps could be ported from the iPhone, giving it a big head start. Strip away those apps, however, and you would be left with some bright, shiny technology with a handful of apps and some severe limitations, such as lack of support for multitasking or even something as fundamental as printing.

It’s easy to talk about Steve’s paranoia and how that forces him to keep the project small, but, in truth, the secrecy is more of a useful by-product of the way he manages new projects, rather than the central goal. Steve assembles and motivates a small team of young geniuses, then sets them to work for “90 hours a week and loving it.” The results are highly-integrated designs that far outpace the competition.

It is this small-team approach that, of necessity, results in important capabilities being left out of the first release. The payoff, though, is that Steve ends up with a central core of perfectly-integrated functionality instead of a rambling labyrinth of disjointed “features.” This design framework is so well conceived that it can be built upon for years, even decades, without being stripped out and restarted. Compare that with the history of Windows, with false start after false start, resulting in their repeatedly beginning design anew.

In stage 2, the second-release software, a much larger team builds upon those central capabilities without losing the tight integration originally achieved. That was true with the Mac in 1985, it was true with the iPhone 3G and iPhone software 2.0, and it will be true with next year’s iPad and especially this year’s 4.0 software.

Of course, secrecy does matter: As Steve learned with the release of the first Mac, “event marketing” is a powerful force. The carefully-planned generation of excitement surrounding each first release results in tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars of free advertising.

Fearless Leader

Probably the strongest character trait of Steve Jobs is his absolute lack of fear. While every other CEO in America, it seems, shakes in his boots at the very thought of not having a good next quarter, my experience in knowing Steve Jobs is that, frankly, he could care less about the next quarter. He’s much more focused on the next five years, rather than the next 90 days. But even more than that, it is his quest to change the world, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish that end even if he risks failure in the process.

Every Apple employee, from the CEO on down, knew we were literally “betting the company” with the Mac. Both the Xerox Star and Apple Lisa, the first two attempts to commercialize the GUI interface, were failing in the marketplace, but Steve was so convinced that this new graphical user interface was the future, that he—and Apple—just flew ahead, in the full knowledge that he might be steering the plane right for a mountain.

The Mac has never been the runaway success it could have been due to a combination of subsequent abysmal marketing and the belief, on the part of Apple’s management once Steve left, that the Mac interface was now perfect and complete. (They watched, amused, as Microsoft crashed and burned, crashed and burned, until Microsoft, more than a decade later, finally figured out how to copy the Mac and swiftly pulled ahead in sales and even, in some areas, technology.)

The lessons of the Mac were not lost on Steve, and he pushes second and third generation products with all the fervor with which he pushes the first.

Today, Apple is a big enough company that it could absorb a failure with no danger of collapse, but Steve still bets heavily, and he doesn’t do so in order to swell the coffers in the next 90 days, but in the next decade or two.

Steve’s Razor

Steve, for such an uncommon individual, has a keenly accurate sense of what will appeal to the common person. His young geniuses pile up huge slabs of interesting ideas, and he carves away at those ideas, relentlessly, until all that is left is a perfectly-formed, extensible core.

His harsh treatment of both the ideas of, as well as the people of, the original Mac team led them to buy Steve a special red rubber stamp that said, “THIS IS S___!” so he could just stamp each page of their design submissions, instead of having to wear out his hand writing. [Underline substitutions are mine.]

Rumor has it that Steve has been throwing away entire design approaches for the iPad since before the advent of the iPhone. That’s what he does best, and it harkens back to his fearlessness: He’s never been afraid to make those around him utterly miserable if it will eventually result in the “right” product. It results in most of us not wanting to work for Steve Jobs more than once, but it also results in products that most of us want to buy, and buy, and buy. Besides, there’s always a new crop of geniuses ready to bend to Steve’s bidding.

Closed system

The blogs have been filled for three years now with the constant wailing of the technorati complaining bitterly about the iPhone’s, now the iPad’s, closed system.

It’s nothing new.

The Mac now connects to everything, but the first Mac did not. It was designed to always have a fixed amount of memory—128k—with no way of ever expanding it. The core of the OS was in ROM, not RAM. It was Steve’s vision that if you made every single computer with the same exact OS and the same amount of memory, developers would always have a fixed platform for which to develop, making their jobs easier.

Users could forget about plugging in add-ons, too, because there wasn’t anywhere to plug them. The system could not even connect to anything as basic as a hard disk, for example, again “supporting” developers by giving them a single, known quantity for which to develop.

Sound familiar?

Flash & the Arrow Keys

Jobs doesn’t like flash. It has a slow, clumsy, weird interface, and he’s elected to “cripple” his mobile devices to rid the industry of its dependence on it. In the next 90 days, as in the last 90 days, that decision will cost Apple money. Steve doesn’t care, and, if the stockholders do, they can get rid of Steve and go back to the way things were before his reappearance.

He did the same thing with the original Mac, although then, Flash was not the issue. Few will remember, but, when the Mac debuted in 1984, there were no arrow keys on the keyboard. That was a big deal. Almost every application then in existence depended on the arrow keys (then called cursor keys) for navigation. With that one stroke, Steve reduced the number of apps that could be easily ported to the Mac from tens of thousands to zero, ensuring that this new computer would have a long and painful childhood.

Steve’s button mania, which grew from his earlier parts-count mania, was already in full flower, and many have ascribed this crippling omission to some sort of self-destructive obsession. It was not. It was one of several strategies specifically designed to ensure that existing software would not run on this new machine because existing software, in Steve’s eyes, sucked (an opinion I share). The absence of those four keys ensured that any developer who wanted to have software appear on the Mac was going to have to start over and write software that conformed to the Mac interface, not the keyboard-oriented precursors to MS-DOS.

Steve’s fearless crippling of that original Mac saved that computer and saved the graphical user interface.

Childhood’s End

I was responsible for putting the arrow keys on the Mac some 18 months after first release. I didn’t do it because I thought Steve’s original decision was wrong. On the contrary, I believed then and I believe now that decision was critically important. Without it, the new machine with its rodentiometer* and unproven interface would have been overrun with great hordes of horrific software, likely preventing the new interface from taking hold.

Rather, I added the cursor keys a year and a half later because the interface had taken hold and was growing vigorously. The Mac’s childhood was over. Not only had the value of the Mac interface been proven, but those few developers that had tried a straight port had been publicly humiliated by the press and had faced immediate financial failure. It was time to open the system up more, particularly to people who are visually impaired, by overlaying a complete keyboard-driven interface onto the primary, mouse-driven interface.

The tide has turned a lot more slowly with Flash. It is only now that HTML5, “the Flash killer,” has finally made an appearance. I predict things will look a lot different a year from now. If HTML5 builds out as well as it appears, if more and more systems can alternately serve Flash or HTML5 based on the calling system, HTML5 may, in fairly short order, be universally available to iPhone/iPod/iPad users, and there may be no reason to ever support Flash.

On the other hand, Apple needs to consider opening up their mobile devices more and more as time goes on, just as we opened up the Mac. Either Apple doesn’t have the resources or Steve is unwilling to commit the resources to keeping up with the needs of the users and the competition. Multitasking, for example, is already a year late. So’s a competitive camera. (So, also, is Verizon compatibility, but that’s another subject.)

It goes deeper than that, however. There’s an overall problem at Apple, the same one that dogged the Mac twenty years ago, with keeping up with the users, as well as the competition. Try loading 20,000 photographs in the iPhone’s or iPad’s Photos app and try to find the one you’re looking for. All the keywording you spent dozens of hours entering in iPhoto is stripped off on the photo’s journey to the mobile device. It’s been three years now that serious photographers have been suffering. Where is it?

Steve and Apple keep a laser-like focus on that next sale, ensuring that the first two-weeks’ experience is absolutely perfect, but today’s new, naive user will be tomorrow’s expert. And you know what expert’s do? They tell their friends to buy. They are Apple’s best sales force, and they are not being properly supported.

Yes, continue giving new products the childhood they need to take root and grow, but, as with children, there’s a time to open the products up, still controlling what is important, while allowing the products to reach full bloom. Consider what Apple would be like today had the Mac, indeed, stayed at 128K of memory with no hard disk. The apricot orchards would have long since returned to Cupertino.

Word on the street is that Google has already powered up its copiers, and will be chunking out an iPad clone. Unlike Microsoft in the early days, these guys move fast, and they add real additional value along the way.

Steve already took the first necessary step to opening the mobile environment up when he opened the iPhone to external developers–or at least sort of opened it. More will be required if Apple is not again to end up a niche player in a market they created.

*Early technical term for a mouse

Here’s a great tutorial that appeared this week on Macworld.com about how-to use your camera’s white balance controls.

Below is an example of a poorly white balanced image.

There’s a lot of color correction that can be done inside of your image editing software, such as iPhoto or Photoshop, but the best way to fix color issues is to have your camera setup properly before you shoot.

Enjoy!

Author Credit: Ben Long

The human eye has a lot of amazing capabilities. It can see in 3D, it has continuous auto-focus, and it is so light-sensitive that it can detect a single photon of light. Amongst these and other astounding feats is the ability to perceive color correctly under any lighting conditions. If this seems like a ho-hum achievement, consider that we have yet to develop an imaging technology that can do this. Film can’t, and neither can digital sensors.

What is white balance?

The problem is that different types of light shine with different colors. Sunlight, for example, shines a very blue light (no, our sun does not cast yellow light; take a look at your shadow next time you’re outside and you’ll find that it’s slightly blue), and incandescent light bulbs shine very red. While your eye can adjust automatically to these different light sources, so that color appears correct under each of them, your digital camera must be calibrated to a light source to properly represent color. This calibration process is called white balancing.

If you think back to elementary school, there was probably a day that you learned about rainbows and prisms, and how both of these split light into its component colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. In other words: white light contains every other color. The idea with white balancing is that if you can get your camera to properly represent white, then all other colors will be correct.

Choose a white balance preset

By default, your camera is configured to use its auto white balance mode. When in this mode, the camera analyzes the scene and tries to determine the best white balance—the one that will yield the most accurate colors. These days, the auto white balance mechanisms on most cameras are very good, and will almost always yield accurate results when shooting in bright daylight, and several other types of light. However, even the best auto white balance system can begin to fail when shooting in shade.

Read the rest of the article HERE.

Inspired by @kenleyneufeld, who posted a photo of his best iPad apps picks on his Facebook page, here is a screenshot of my own iPad, taken just a few moments ago.  These is my home page, and contains the apps I like the most for the iPad.

Here’s an excerpt from an article which appeared this morning at Computerworld.com
by Mitch Wagner

I agree with Mitch on every item, with the sole exception being Tweetdeck for iPad.  I was sorely disappointed with it, and have been using Twitterific instead.

Enjoy!

Computerworld – Apple’s iPad has been available for a short time, and you can already find apps to watch streaming movies, manage your Web passwords, use Twitter, do word processing and more.

But it’s still early days yet. Apple gave only a chosen few developers early access to the iPad — everybody else had to make do with software simulators and homemade cardboard mockups. They rushed their apps to market, and it shows. Many of the early apps are buggy and missing features.

These are the best apps I’ve found so far. They are all iPad-optimized, not iPhone apps stretched to fit the iPad. They get the job done, they’re fun to use, and several of them are free.

1Password for iPad
1Password encrypts, stores and organizes your passwords and other private information, and it automates log-ins for Web sites and other Internet services. You can also use it to store credit card numbers, bank account numbers, ATM PINs and more. 1Password is an extremely useful app for both the Mac and the iPhone, and now it’s available for the iPad too.

Continue reading HERE.

From the EXCELLENT Macgasm.net Blog

Author Credit: Gerard Lagana

In this on-going debate of whether a Windows computer is cheaper than a Mac computer, you need to take two things into account.  First, the upfront cost of each of the computers. Second, the total cost of ownership, or TCO for short.  For the sake of this article I’m going to compare a Dell and an iMac.  First I’ll price them out as stock without warranties; then, I’ll configure the Dell to match the hardware and software specs of the iMac.  Finally, I’ll look at the total cost of ownership for both.

Dell Inspiron 560s and the 21″ iMac

I configured a Dell Inspiron 560s with a 21.5” LCD Display, an integrated webcam and microphone.  I also added anti-virus software; which is something that is needed to protect a Windows computer from Viruses.  I tried to match the hardware and Software as close as possible to the iMac that I will be talking about in just a bit.  The total price of the Dell Inspiron 560s was $1,136.50.  This price was after discounts that were applied.  The original total price if Dell did not include discounts would have been – $1,420.75.  This is a $284.25 difference.  The thing with Dell’s discounts are that they change weekly.  So, if you don’t act quickly on the configured computer, you could be paying that extra $284.25.

Next, I configured an iMac 21.5” 3.06GHz computer.  The only thing I added to the iMac configuration was iWork to match the Office Productivity software from the Dell Inspiron 560s.  The new iMacs come standard with a wireless Bluetooth keyboard and Magic Mouse.  In contrast to the Dell Inspiron 560s, it only comes with a wired USB keyboard and mouse.  The total price of the 21.5” iMac configured was $1385.68.

As you can see the Dell Inspiron 560s costs more than the equivalently configured 21.5” iMac without the discount on the Dell computer.  The Dell is actually $35.07 more than the iMac.  However, the iMac is $249.18 more than the Dell with the discounts applied.  Basically, if you can get the Dell with the discount, it will be less than the iMac.  However, if you don’t get the discount, it will end up being more than the iMac.

Total Cost Of Ownership (TCO)

I would now like to talk about Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).  If this phrase is a new concept to you, here’s a quick and dirty example.  Total Cost of Ownership is what the total cost of the computer would cost you during the time you own the computer.  Maintenance and repairs are included in this.  One of the biggest costs for Windows owners is Virus and malware annual software subscriptions.  Generally, you can use free malware removal tools, as well as anti-virus applications.  But for anti-virus software you’re probably going to want something with a subscription.  With that said, you’re probably going to pay annually about $60.00 to $70.00 to protect your Windows computer from being attacked.

Click HERE to read the rest of this article at the EXCELLENT Macgasm.net Blog.

Photo management software gets curves, and a whole lot more

I’m very excited about Apple’s rabidly anticipated upgrade to its professionally image storage and editing application, Aperture.  Many of us who have chosen Aperture over Adobe’s excellent (though in my opinion, unduly confusing) Lightroom, have been frustrated with the amount of time spent waiting for Apple to finally release a feature update or at least a bug fix update for Aperture 2.

I know a few photographers who have thrown up their hands in defeat and have gone over to Adobe.  Well, I’m pleased to say that this new release puts Aperture back on the map as a feature-rich and competitive application.  Those of us who shoot a lot of photos, but aren’t necessarily good with Photoshop will rejoice at Aperture 3′s incredible new features, interface updates, and stability.

Russ Jaskalian has written an excellent overview article at Macworld.com.

Here’s an excerpt:

Apple has finally updated its pro photo management app, Aperture, to version 3, and there’s something in this new release for every level of photographer—Apple says Aperture has over 200 new features. There are features that have been long awaited and mysteriously absent from previous versions, like a curves adjustment tool. There are iPhoto () carryovers, like Faces, and there are scores of new additions aimed at making the sometimes tortuous workflow of photo management and RAW processing as painless as possible.

This review covers some of my favorite features, as well as issues that some Aperture users have experienced.

Faces and Places

One thing is clear in this new release: Apple wants to entice amateur photographers to step up from iPhoto, but they don’t want to alienate the pros. To do this, Aperture 3 now has new ways to organize images using Faces (based on image analysis and user input) and Places (based on geographic location information), both of which will be familiar to iPhoto users.

Places can be used to link images to a map of the world; the map has various levels of magnification, and an ever-growing, impressive database of worldwide locations. It’s incredibly easy to drop images right onto the map to assign a location, or import and link GPS data to images in a project.

If you already use Aperture 2 () with a large library, when you upgrade it can take Faces a long time to churn through the image analysis for the first time. With my library of 20,000-plus Canon 5D RAW images, it took about 24 consecutive hours on a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo iMac with 4GB of RAM. A hint: Turning off Faces can make Aperture’s performance snappier.

These features are fine and make it easier to locate specific images hidden in large photo libraries. But for most pros (myself included), neither is going to dramatically improve workflow.

Read the rest of this article HERE at Macworld.com

Here’s a great (and brief) article from MacWorld’s Christopher Breen covering what to do when your permissions issues go beyond what your Mac’s built-in Disk Utility software will repair.   While rare, this issue is one I’ve seen before, often when someone is moving from an older version of OSX (like 10.2 Jaguar or 10.3 Panther) to Leopard or Snow Leopard.

This issue is also likely to rear its ugly head when installing a fresh instance of OSX, and creating a new user profile with a different short name than your old one.  Whoops.

[MacWorld] Reader Paul Moortgat’s Mac appears to be unhappy with a new hard drive. He writes:

I replaced the 500GB internal with a 1TB drive in my Mac Pro. I used SuperDuper to copy the disk. Now each time I create a file or a folder on the Desktop and place it on the hard drive icon or trash an item, I’m asked to enter my password. I reset the PRAM and repaired permissions to no avail. How can I get rid of that authentication dialog box?

This is indeed a permissions issue, but it can’t be treated with Disk Utility. And the reason it can’t is because Disk Utility’s Repair Permissions feature repairs permissions only for files installed by OS X, Software Update, or an Apple software installer. It won’t touch your documents, the stuff in your Home folder, or third-party applications.

That said, something definitely got mucked up when you copied your files from your old drive to the new one. What I suggest you do is select one of these files, press Command-I, and in the Sharing & Permissions area of the resulting window, see who “owns” the file. If it’s not you but some other entity, there’s your problem. If you change the permissions so that you own the file, you won’t see the warning.

Continue reading this article HERE at MacWorld.com.

This is a great question, and to be fair, is the story of my (professional) life.  I found this article on LifeHacker.com.

I’d love to hear your ideas and stories.  Who knows, your comment my wind up in the book I’m writing on exactly this topic.

Enjoy!

If you’ve ever been called on to diagnose, fix, upgrade, or shop for a new computer, you know that hardware and software features can be hard to convey in plain English. We’re searching for the best non-geek explanations you’ve heard.

In response to the How-To Geek’s roundup of explanations at the Q&A tech forum Super User, reader Allan sent in this explanation of computer basics he’d heard a sales person use while helping a couple pick out a computer for their grandchild:

He used the library analogy: The hard drive size was compared to the amount of shelving for books. The CPU speed was the librarian’s quickness on his/her feet (this was a full service library), and the RAM was the size of the table at which one sat. Larger table meant more books could be opened simultaneously. When the table had been covered with books, each time a new book was to be opened, one from the table would have to be closed (pagefile). The last part seemed superfluous in this scenario, but the overall description, with a few stated benchmarks and questions about the grandchild’s habits, seemed a much better than average sales transaction.

That’s pretty clean and simple, and a good variation on the “desk covered with folders and files” metaphor I can recall from my early school days.

Now it’s your turn: How would you explain why Firefox or Google Chrome are so much better than Internet Explorer, if you’d already covered the security angle? Why do 64-bit processors and operating systems matter to the average user? Let’s hear the best explanations you’ve used, or received from others, in the comments.

Check out the comments people left on the original article HERE at LifeHacker.com.

Author Credit: Keven Purdy

Here’s one I get pretty frequently:

What dSLR should I buy, Canon’s Rebel T1i or the Nikon D5000.  Well this excellent post from Mac|Life’s Zack Stern covers the details very nicely.

Here’s an excerpt:

Coke versus Pepsi. Mac versus PC. Canon versus Nikon. Among these great rivalries, we can only pick out one clear winner. (Here’s a hint: It’s not the colored sugar water.) In the latest Canon-versus-Nikon entry-level digital SLR (single-lens reflex) battle, both cameras score hits against the other.

It’s the DSLR version of Mac vs. PC–except without as obvious a winner.

But in the end, they’re much more similar than different. If you already use a film camera from either camera maker–and own a few lenses–don’t bother switching sides. If you’re not already invested in hardware that only works with one of them, your decision is much more nuanced. After much debate, we give a tiny edge to the Nikon D5000 for its impressive high-ISO performance. But you could just as easily fall in love with the Canon Rebel T1i for its slightly brighter, clearer LCD.

Canon Digital Rebel T1i

The T1i is light in your palm, weighing about 1.5 pounds with the bundled lens. We felt comfortable slinging it around and shooting with just one hand in one of the auto modes. Like the D5000, the T1i uses a single LCD screen to show your exposure data. (Most midrange and high-end DSLRs include a top-mounted screen too.) But the clear markings give enough details for manual photos, and you can also see the most important information inside the viewfinder.

The T1i LCD edges out the D5000 in a direct comparison. Canon’s slightly larger screen sports a higher resolution and looks great when reviewing recent images. It also looks a little better outdoors, but just as the D5000’s, this screen washes out in bright sun. When you sight through the eyepiece, the screen automatically turns off, which is a major benefit at night.

Images look good overall, although the T1i has a few weaknesses. We shot clean colors in many different lighting conditions, but the auto settings look more muted than higher-priced cameras. While bright daylight can wash out the hues, and night images without a flash run too warm, they are common problems that can be combated with manual controls. Earmark a lot of storage space for best results: The T1i’s 15.1-megapixel RAW photos can run 20MB each.

Mid- and high-ISO night photos mark the T1i’s biggest weakness. Images show moderate noise–random, colored pixels in dark areas—at about 400 ISO. Significant noise enters past 800 ISO, a setting you’d try to use to compensate for minimal lighting.

Nikon D5000

The D5000 is roughly the same shape and weight as the T1i. Nikon’s camera felt just as comfortable to shoot with, and its versatile LCD helps you shoot in awkward positions.

Like the T1i, the D5000 includes a live-view shooting mode, so instead of looking through the eyepiece, the preview image gets diverted to the LCD just like a point-and-shoot camera. But since the D5000 LCD swivels and turns, you can hold the camera high above your head, around a corner, or at ground level and still get a clear view of the screen. The 2.7-inch screen unfortunately stays lit when you compose shots through the eyepiece. But you can rotate it against the body, giving up exposure details for just the viewfinder information.

We thought that colors in photos shot with the D5000 popped a little more than those shot with the T1i, although the 12.3-megapixel D5000 scored only a subtle edge. And like the T1i, fine details looked excellent, such as the furry texture on a flower’s leaf.

In low light, the D5000’s clearer high-ISO modes perform better. We cranked the setting up to 2500 ISO before the noise seemed too distracting, but you could go even higher in a pinch. Images brightened up in this mode, helping us shoot in certain night conditions–indoors or with a streetlight–with no flash.

Click HERE to read the rest o the article, and see who wins the race (it’s a photo finish..)

I read Mac|Life regularly, and you should too.

~ Chris

I just found out about this great tool from a story over at the LifeHacker website, which I read quite often.

Click through to the original article HERE to download the FREE Adobe Shortcut App.

Here’s an excerpt from the Lifehacker article:

Windows/Mac/Linux: The free Adobe Shortcut App gives fast access to look up keyboard shortcuts for the entire array of Adobe products from one simple place.

Once you’ve installed the Adobe AIR application, you can choose a program from the buttons on the top, and find a shortcut using the search box, browsing, or even adding them to a favorites list. You can switch between viewing Windows or Mac shortcuts, or even view the cheat sheet in PDF format. It’s a quick and easy way to look up the shortcuts without having to pull out the help file. Adobe Shortcut App is a free download for all platforms, requires Adobe AIR.

Yet another great article from Mac|Life.  Arvind Srinivasan covers a handful of super-useful plug-ins no Mac user should be without.

Who says you need an application? Sometimes, all you need is a plug-in to make your regular apps run harder, better, faster, and stronger. However, plug-ins don’t get the respect and recognition that full fledged apps do. And while there are applications to do most things, who needs an application when a simple plug-in can do everything behind the scenes?
We introduce the ten “Flugins” (free plug-ins) that will make you forget there were ever shortcomings in your favorite OS X apps…..

Read the full article at Mac|Life HERE.

Enjoy
~ Chris